The conference of Badasht in the summer of 1848 was convened by Bahá'u'lláh, then a Bábí of standing, and gathered eighty-one leading believers to determine whether the Báb's revelation was a reform within Islam or an independent dispensation abrogating Islamic law. Táhirih resolved the question by acting. She entered the assembled gathering unveiled and, according to the accounts, declared that the trumpet was sounding and that the day of the new order had come. The effect on a group of nineteenth-century Persian men was extreme: several fled, and 'Abdu'l-Karím of Qazvin cut his own throat and ran from the tent bleeding. Quddús, the senior figure present, was visibly angry. The break with Islamic law was nonetheless made, and made by a woman removing a piece of cloth. The episode is central to Bahá'í accounts of the equality of women, and it is also frequently cited by Iranian feminist writers outside the faith as an early moment in the history of Iranian women's emancipation.