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EPILOGUE
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NEVER had the fortunes of the Faith proclaimed
by the Báb sunk to a lower ebb than when Bahá’u’lláh
was banished from His native land to ‘Iráq.
The Cause for which the Báb had given His life,
for which Bahá’u’lláh had toiled and suffered, seemed to be
on the very verge of extinction. Its force appeared to have
been spent, its resistance irretrievably broken. Discouragements
and disasters, each more devastating in its effect than
the preceding one, had succeeded one another with bewildering
rapidity, sapping its vitality and dimming the hope of
its stoutest supporters. Indeed, to a superficial reader of the
pages of Nabíl’s narrative, the whole story from its very beginning
appears to be a mere recital of reverses and massacres,
of humiliations and disappointments, each more severe than
the previous one, culminating at last in the banishment of
Bahá’u’lláh from His own country. To the sceptical reader,
unwilling to recognise the celestial potency with which that
Faith was endowed, the entire conception that had evolved
in the mind of its Author seems to have been foredoomed to
failure. The work of the Báb, so gloriously conceived, so
heroically undertaken, would appear to have ended in a
colossal disaster. To such a reader, the life of the ill-fated
Youth of Shíráz would seem, judging from the cruel blows
it sustained, to be one of the saddest and most fruitless that
had ever been the lot of mortal men. That short and heroic
career, which, swift as a meteor, flashed across the firmament
of Persia, and seemed for a time to have brought the longed-for
light of eternal salvation into the gloom that encircled
the country, was plunged at last into an abyss of darkness and
despair.
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Every step He took, every endeavour He made, had but
served to intensify the sorrows and disappointments that
weighed upon His soul. The plan He had, at the very outset
of His career, conceived of inaugurating His Mission with a
public proclamation in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina
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failed to materialise as He had hoped. The Sherif of Mecca,
to whom Quddús was bidden deliver His Message, accorded
him a reception that betrayed by its icy indifference the
contemptuous disregard in which the Cause of a Youth of
Shíráz was held by the ruler of Hijáz and custodian of its
Ka‘bih. The project He had in mind of returning triumphantly
from His pilgrimage to the cities of Karbilá and
Najaf, where He hoped to establish His Cause, in the very
heart of that stronghold of shí’ah orthodoxy, was likewise
hopelessly shattered. The programme which He had thought
out, the essentials of which He had already communicated
to the chosen nineteen of His disciples, remained for the
most part unfulfilled. The moderation He had exhorted them
to observe was forgotten in the first flush of enthusiasm that
seized the early missionaries of His Faith, which behaviour
was in no small measure responsible for the failure of the
hopes He had so fondly cherished. The Mu’tamíd, that wise
and sagacious ruler, who had so ably warded off the danger
with which that precious Life was threatened, and who had
proved his capacity to render Him services of such distinction
as few of His more modest companions could have hoped
to offer, was suddenly taken from Him, leaving Him at the
mercy of the perfidious Gurgín Khán, the most detestable
and unscrupulous of all His enemies. The Báb’s only chance
of meeting Muhammad Sháh—a meeting which He Himself
had requested and on which He had pinned His fondest hopes—was dashed to the ground by the intervention of the cowardly
and capricious Hájí Mírzá Aqásí, who trembled at the
thought lest His contact with the sovereign, already unduly
inclined to befriend that Cause, should prove fatal to his own
interests. The attempts, inspired and initiated by the Báb,
which two of His foremost disciples, Mullá ‘Alíy-i-Bastamí
and Shay kh Sa’íd-i-Hindí, had made to introduce the Faith,
the one in Turkish territory and the other in India, ended in
dismal failure. The first enterprise collapsed at its very outset
by reason of the cruel martyrdom of its promoter, whilst
the latter was productive of what might seem a negligible
result, its only fruit being the conversion of a certain siyyid
whose chequered career of service was brought to a sudden
end in Luristán by the action of the treacherous Íldírím
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Mírzá. The captivity to which the Báb Himself, during the
greater part of the years of His ministry, was condemned;
His isolation in the mountain fastnesses of Á dhirbayján
from the body of His followers, who were being sorely tried
by a rapacious enemy; above all, the tragedy of His own
martyrdom, so intense, so terribly humiliating, would appear
to have marked the lowest depths of ignominy which so noble
a Cause, from the very hour of its birth, was doomed to
suffer. His death, the culmination of a swift and stormy
career, would seem to have set the seal of failure upon a task
which, however heroic in the efforts it inspired, was impossible
of achievement.
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Much as He Himself had suffered, the agony He was
made to endure was but a drop compared to the calamities
which were to rain down upon the multitude of His avowed
followers. The cup of sorrow that had touched His lips had
yet to be drained to its very dregs by those who still remained
after Him. The catastrophe of Shay kh Tabarsí, which
robbed Him of His ablest lieutenants, Quddús and Mullá
Husayn, and which engulfed no less than three hundred and
thirteen of His staunch companions, came as the cruelest
blow that had yet fallen upon Him, and enveloped with a
shroud of darkness the closing days of His fast-ebbing life.
The struggle of Nayríz, with its attendant horrors and
cruelties, involving as it did the loss of Vahíd, the most
learned, the most influential, and the most accomplished
among the followers of the Báb, was an added blow to the
resources and numbers of those who continued to hold aloft
the torch in their hands. The siege of Zanján, following closely
in the wake of the disaster that had befallen the Faith in
Nayríz, and marked by the butcheries with which the name
of that province will ever remain associated, depleted still
further the ranks of the upholders of the Faith, and deprived
them of the sustaining strength with which the presence
of Hujjat inspired them. With him was gone the last outstanding
figure among the representative leaders of the
Faith who towered, by virtue of their ecclesiastical authority,
their learning, their fearlessness and force of character, above
the rank and file of their fellow-disciples. The flower of the
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Báb’s followers had been mown down in a ruthless carnage,
leaving behind it a vast company of enslaved women and
children, who groaned beneath the yoke of an unrelenting
foe. Their leaders, who, alike by their knowledge and example,
had fed and sustained the flame that glowed in those
valiant hearts, had also perished, their work seemingly
abandoned amidst the confusion that afflicted a persecuted
community.
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Of all those who had shown themselves capable of carrying
on the work which the Báb had handed down to His
followers, Bahá’u’lláh alone remained.
All the rest had
fallen by the sword of the enemy. Mírzá Yahyá, the nominal
leader of the band that survived the Báb, had ingloriously
sought refuge in the mountains of Mázindarán from the
perils of the turmoil that had seized the capital. In the
guise of a dervish, ka shkúl
in hand, he had deserted his
companions and fled the scene of danger to the forests
of Gílán. Siyyid Husayn, the Báb’s amanuensis, and Mírzá
Ahmad, his collaborator, who were both well-versed in the
teachings and implications of the newly revealed Bayán and,
by virtue of their intimacy with their Master and their
familiarity with the precepts of His Faith, were in a position
to enlighten the understanding, and consolidate the foundations
of the faith, of their companions, lay in chains in the
Síyáh- Chál of Tihrán, cut off entirely from the body of the
believers who so greatly needed their counsel, both doomed
to suffer, at an early date, a cruel martyrdom. Even His
own maternal uncle, who, ever since His childhood, had surrounded
Him with a paternal solicitude that no father could
have surpassed, who had rendered Him signal services in the
early days of His sufferings in Shíráz, and who, had he been
allowed to survive Him by only a few years, could have rendered
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inestimable services to His Cause, languished in prison,
forlorn and hopeless of ever continuing the work that was so
close to his heart. Táhirih, that flaming emblem of His
Cause who, alike by her indomitable courage, her impetuous
character, her dauntless faith, her fiery ardour and vast
knowledge, seemed for a time able to win the whole womanhood
of Persia to the Cause of her Beloved, fell, alas, at the
very hour when victory seemed near at hand, a victim to
the wrath of a calumnious enemy. The influence of her work,
the course of which was so prematurely arrested, seemed to
those who stood near as they lowered her into the pit that
served as her grave, to have been completely extinguished.
The Báb’s remaining Letters of the Living either had perished
by the sword or were fettered in prison, or again were leading
an obscure life in some remote corner of the realm. The body
of the Báb’s voluminous writings suffered, for the most part,
a fate no less humiliating than that which had befallen His
disciples. Many of His copious works were utterly obliterated,
others were torn and reduced to ashes, a few were
corrupted, much was seized by the enemy, and the rest lay
a mass of disorganised and undeciphered manuscripts, precariously
hidden and widely scattered among the survivors
of His companions.
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The Faith the Báb had proclaimed, and for which He had
given His all, had indeed reached its lowest ebb. The fires
kindled against it had almost consumed the fabric upon
which its continued existence depended. The wings of death
seemed to be hovering above it. Extermination, complete
and irremediable, appeared to be threatening its very life.
Amidst the shadows that were fast gathering about it, the
figure of Bahá’u’lláh alone shone as the potential Deliverer
of a Cause that was fast speeding to its end. The marks of
clear vision, of courage and sagacity which He had shown on
more than one occasion ever since He had risen to champion
the Cause of the Báb, appeared to qualify Him, should His
life and continued existence in Persia be ensured, to revive
the fortunes of an expiring Faith. But this was not to be.
A catastrophe, unexampled in the whole history of that
Faith, precipitated a persecution fiercer than any that had
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hitherto taken place, and this time drew into its vortex the
person of Bahá’u’lláh Himself. The slender hopes which the
remnants of the believers still entertained were wrecked
amidst the confusion that ensued. For Bahá’u’lláh, their
only hope and the sole object of their confidence, was so
struck down by the severity of that storm that no recovery
could any longer be thought possible. After He had been
despoiled of all His possessions in Núr and Tihrán, denounced
as the prime mover of a dastardly attempt upon the life of
His sovereign, abandoned by His kindred and despised by
His former friends and admirers, plunged into a dark and
pestilential dungeon, and at last, with the members of His
family, driven into hopeless exile beyond the confines of His
native land, all the hopes that had centred round Him as
the possible Redeemer of an afflicted Faith seemed for a
moment to have completely vanished.
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No wonder Násiri’d-Dín Sháh, under whose eyes and by
whose impulse such blows were being dealt, was already
priding himself on being the wrecker of a Cause against
which he had so consistently battled, and which he had at
last, to outward seeming, been able to crush. No wonder
he imagined, as he sat musing over the successive stages of
this vast and bloody enterprise, that by the act of banishment
which his hands had signed, he was sounding the death-knell
of that hateful heresy which had struck such terror to the
hearts of his people. To Násiri’d-Dín Sháh it appeared, at
that supreme moment, that the spell of that terror was
broken, that the tide that had swept over his country was at
last turning and bringing back to his fellow-countrymen the
peace for which they cried. Now that the Báb was no more;
now that the mighty pillars that sustained His Cause had
been crushed into dust; now that the mass of its devotees,
throughout the length and breadth of his dominion, were
cowed and exhausted; now that Bahá’u’lláh Himself, the
one remaining hope of a leaderless community, had been
driven into exile and had, of His own accord, sought refuge
in the neighbourhood of the stronghold of shí’ah fanaticism,
the spectre that had haunted him ever since he had ascended
the throne had vanished for ever. Never again, he imagined,
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would he hear of that detestable Movement which, if he were
to believe his best counsellors, was swiftly receding into the
shadows of impotence and oblivion.
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To even the followers of the Faith who were left to survive
the abominations heaped upon their Cause—to even that
small caravan, with perhaps a few exceptions, wending its
way in the depth of winter through the snows of the mountains
bordering on ‘Iráq,
the Cause of the Báb, one can well
imagine, might for a moment have seemed to have failed in
accomplishing its purpose. The forces of darkness that had
encompassed it on every side would seem to have at last
triumphed over, and put out, the light which that young
Prince of Glory had kindled in His land.
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In the eyes of Násiri’d-Dín Sháh, at all events, the power
that had seemed for a time to have swept within its orbit
the entire forces of his realm had ceased to count. Ill-starred
from its very birth, it had eventually been forced to surrender
to the violence of the blows which his sword had dealt. The
Faith had suffered a disruption certainly well deserved. Delivered
from its curse, which for many nights had robbed him
of his sleep, he could now, with undivided attention, set about
the task of rescuing his land from the devastating effects of
that vast delusion. Henceforth his real mission, as he conceived
it, was to enable both Church and State to consolidate
their foundations and to reinforce their ranks against the
intrusion of similar heresies, which might, in a future day,
poison the life of his countrymen.
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How vain were his imaginings, how vast his own delusion!
The Cause he had fondly imagined to have been crushed
was still living, destined to emerge from the midst of that great
convulsion stronger, purer, and nobler than ever. The Cause
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which, to the mind of that foolish monarch, seemed to be
speeding towards destruction was but passing through the
fiery tests of a phase of transition that was to carry it a step
further on the path of its high destiny. A new chapter in
its history was being unfolded, more glorious than any that
had marked its birth or its rise. The repression which that
monarch had believed to have succeeded in sealing its doom
was but the initial stage in an evolution destined to blossom,
in the fulness of time, into a Revelation mightier than any
that the Báb Himself had proclaimed. The seed His hand
had sown, though subjected, for a time, to the fury of a storm
of unexampled violence and though later transplanted to a
foreign soil, was to continue to develop and grow, in due time,
into a Tree destined to spread its shelter over all the kindreds
and peoples of the earth. Though the Báb’s disciples might
be tortured and slain, and His companions humiliated and
crushed; though His followers might dwindle in number;
though the voice of the Faith itself might be silenced by the
arm of violence; though despair might settle upon its fortunes;
though its ablest defenders might apostatise from their faith,
yet the promise embedded within the shell of His word no
hand could succeed in ravishing, and no power stand in the
way of its germination and growth.
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Indeed, the first glimmerings of the dawning Revelation,
of which the Báb had declared Himself to be the Herald, and
to the approach and certainty of which He had so repeatedly
alluded,
could already be discerned amidst the gloom that
encircled Bahá’u’lláh in the Síyáh- Chál of Tihrán.
The
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force that, growing out of the momentous Revelation released
by the Báb, was at a later time to unfold itself in all
its glory and encompass the globe, was already pulsating in
the veins of Bahá’u’lláh as He lay exposed in His cell to the
sword of His executioner. The still voice which, in the hour
of bitter agony, announced to the Prisoner the Revelation of
which He was chosen to be the Mouthpiece, could not, of a
certainty, have reached the ears of the monarch who was
already preparing the celebration of the extinction of the
Faith his Captive had championed. That imprisonment which
he who had caused it, believed to have branded with infamy
the fair name of Bahá’u’lláh, and which he regarded as a
prelude to a still more humiliating banishment to ‘Iráq, was,
indeed, the very scene that witnessed the first stirrings of
that Movement of which Bahá’u’lláh was to be the Author,
a Movement which was first to be made known in the city
of Ba ghdád and at a later time to be proclaimed from the
prison-city of ‘Akká to the Sháh, no less than to the other
rulers and crowned heads of the world.
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Little did Násiri’d-Dín Sháh imagine that by the very
act of pronouncing the sentence of banishment against Bahá’u’lláh
he was helping in the unfolding of God’s irrepressible
Purpose and that he himself was but an instrument in the
execution of that Design. Little did he imagine that as his
reign was drawing to a close it would witness a revival of
the very forces he had sought so strenuously to exterminate—a revival that would manifest a vitality such as he, in the
hour of darkest despair, had never believed that Faith to
possess. Not only within the confines of his own realm,
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not only throughout the adjacent territories of ‘Iráq and
Russia, but as far as India in the East,
as far as Egypt and
European Turkey in the West, a recrudescence of the Faith
such as he had never expected, awakened him from the
dreams in which he had so fondly indulged. The Cause of
the Báb seemed as if risen from the dead. It appeared under
a form infinitely more formidable than any under which it
had appeared in the past. The fresh impetus which, despite
his calculations, the personality of Bahá’u’lláh, and, above
all, the inherent strength of the Revelation which He personified,
had lent to the Cause of the Báb, was one Násiri’d Dín
Sháh had never imagined. The rapidity with which a
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slumbering Faith had been revived and consolidated within
his own territory; its spreading out to States beyond its confines;
the stupendous claims advanced by Bahá’u’lláh almost
in the midst of the stronghold where He had chosen to dwell;
the public declaration of that claim in European Turkey,
and its proclamation in challenging Epistles to the crowned
heads of the earth, one of which the Sháh himself was destined
to receive; the enthusiasm that announcement evoked in the
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hearts of countless followers; the transference to the Holy Land
of the centre of His Cause; the gradual relaxation of the
severity of His confinement which marked the closing days
of His life; the lifting of the ban that had been imposed by
the Sultán of Turkey on His intercourse with visitors and pilgrims
who flocked from various parts of the East to His
prison; the awakening of the spirit of enquiry among the
thinkers of the West; the utter disruption of the forces that
had attempted to effect a schism in the ranks of His followers,
and the fate that had befallen its chief instigator; above all,
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the sublimity of those teachings with which His published
works abounded and which were being read, disseminated,
and taught by an ever-increasing number of adherents in
Russian Turkistán, in ‘Iráq, in India, in Syria, and as far off
as European Turkey—these were among the chief factors
that convincingly revealed to the eyes of the Sháh the invincible
character of a Faith he believed himself to have
bridled and destroyed. The futility of his efforts, however
much he might attempt to conceal his feelings, was only too
apparent. The Cause of the Báb, the birth and tribulations
of which he had himself witnessed, and the triumphant progress
of which he was now beholding, had risen phoenix-like
from its ashes and was pressing forward along the road leading
to undreamt-of achievements.
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Little did Nabíl himself imagine that within twoscore
years of the writing of his narrative the Revelation of Bahá’u’lláh,
the flower and fruit of all the Dispensations of the past,
would have been capable of advancing thus far on the road
leading to its world-wide recognition and triumph. Little
did he imagine that less than forty years after the death of
Bahá’u’lláh His Cause, bursting beyond the confines of Persia
and the East, would have penetrated the furthermost regions
of the globe and would have encircled the whole earth.
Scarcely would he have believed the prediction had he been
told that the Cause would, within that period, have implanted
its banner in the heart of the American continent, would have
made itself felt in the leading capitals of Europe, would have
reached out to the southern confines of Africa, and would
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have established its outposts as far as Australasia. Hardly
would his imagination, fired as it was by a conviction as to
the destiny of his Faith, have carried him to a point at which
he could have pictured to his mind the Tomb Shrine of the
Báb, of the ultimate destination of whose remains he confesses
himself to be ignorant, embosomed in the heart of Carmel,
a place of pilgrimage and a beacon of light to many a visitor
from the ends of the earth. Hardly could he have imagined
that the humble dwelling of Bahá’u’lláh, lost amid the tortuous
lanes of old Ba ghdád, would one day, as a result of the
machinations of a tireless enemy, have forced itself on the
attention, and become the object of the earnest deliberations,
of the assembled representatives of the leading Powers of
Europe. Little did he imagine that, with all the praise he,
in his narrative, lavishes upon Him, there would proceed
from the Most Great Branch
a power that within a short
period would have awakened the northern States of the
American continent to the glory of the Revelation bequeathed
to Him by Bahá’u’lláh. Little did he imagine that the dynasties
of those monarchs the evidences of whose tyranny
he recounts so vividly in his narrative, would have tottered
to their fall and suffered the very fate which their representatives
had so desperately striven to inflict upon their dreaded
opponents. Little did he imagine that the whole ecclesiastical
hierarchy of his country, the prime mover and the willing
instrument of the abominations heaped upon his Faith,
would so swiftly and easily be overthrown by the very forces
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it had attempted to subdue. Never would he have believed
that the highest institutions of sunní Islám, the Sultanate
and the Caliphate,
those twin oppressors of the Faith of
Bahá’u’lláh, would have been swept away so ruthlessly by
the very hands of the professing adherents of the Faith of
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Islám. Little did he imagine that side by side with the steady
expansion of the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh the forces of consolidation
and internal administration would so progress as to
present to the world the unique spectacle of a Commonwealth
of peoples, world-wide in its ramifications, united in its purpose,
co-ordinated in its efforts, and fired by a zeal and
enthusiasm that no amount of adversity can quench.
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And yet who knows what achievements, greater than any
that the past and the present have witnessed, may not still
be in store for those into whose hands so precious a heritage
has been entrusted? Who knows but that out of the turmoil
which agitates the face of present-day society there may
not emerge, sooner than we expect, the World-Order of
Bahá’u’lláh, the bare outline of which is being but faintly
discerned among the world-wide communities that bear His
name? For, great and marvellous as have been the achievements
of the past, the glory of the golden age of the Cause,
whose promise lies embedded within the shell of Bahá’u’lláh’s
immortal utterance, is yet to be revealed. Fierce as may
seem the onslaught of the forces of darkness that may still
afflict this Cause, desperate and prolonged as may be that
struggle, severe as may be the disappointments it may still
experience, the ascendancy it will eventually obtain will be
such as no other Faith has ever in its history achieved. The
welding of the communities of East and West into the world-wide
Brotherhood of which poets and dreamers have sung,
and the promise of which lies at the very core of the Revelation
conceived by Bahá’u’lláh; the recognition of His law as the
indissoluble bond uniting the peoples and nations of the
earth; and the proclamation of the reign of the Most Great
Peace, are but a few among the chapters of the glorious tale
which the consummation of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh will
unfold.
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Who knows but that triumphs, unsurpassed in splendour,
are not in store for the mass of Bahá’u’lláh’s toiling followers?
Surely, we stand too near the colossal edifice His hand has
reared to be able, at the present stage of the evolution of His
Revelation, to claim to be able even to conceive the full
measure of its promised glory. Its past history, stained by
the blood of countless martyrs, may well inspire us with the
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thought that, whatever may yet befall this Cause, however
formidable the forces that may still assail it, however numerous
the reverses it will inevitably suffer, its onward march
can never be stayed, and that it will continue to advance
until the very last promise, enshrined within the words of
Bahá’u’lláh, shall have been completely redeemed.
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