moat, and continued to roam the countryside around
Nazareth, Haifa, Jerusalem and Hebron, until the gradual relaxation of
restrictions enabled him to join the exiles.

To the galling weight of these tribulations was now added the bitter grief
of a sudden tragedy--the premature loss of the noble, the pious Mirza
Mihdi, the Purest Branch, 'Abdu'l-Baha's twenty-two year old brother, an
amanuensis of Baha'u'llah and a companion of His exile from the days when,
as a child, he was brought from Tihran to Ba_gh_dad to join his Father
after His return from Sulaymaniyyih. He was pacing the roof of the
barracks in the twilight, one evening, wrapped in his customary devotions,
when he fell through the unguarded skylight onto a wooden crate, standing
on the floor beneath, which pierced his ribs, and caused, twenty-two hours
later, his death, on the 23rd of Rabi'u'l-Avval 1287 A.H. (June 23, 1870).
His dying supplication to a grieving Father was that his life might be
accepted as a ransom for those who were prevented from attaining the
presence of their Beloved.

In a highly significant prayer, revealed by Baha'u'llah in memory of His
son--a prayer that exalts his death to the rank of those great acts of
atonement associated with Abraham's intended sacrifice of His son, with
the crucifixion of Jesus Christ and the martyrdom of the Imam Husayn--we
read the following: "I have, O my Lord, offered up that which Thou hast
given Me, that Thy servants may be quickened, and all that dwell on earth
be united." And, likewise, these prophetic words, addressed to His
martyred son: "Thou art the Trust of God and His Treasure in this Land.
Erelong will God reveal through thee that which He hath desired."

After he had been washed in the presence of Baha'u'llah, he "that was
created of the light of Baha," to whose "meekness" the Supreme Pen had
testified, and of the "mysteries" of whose ascension that same Pen had
made mention, was borne forth, escorted by the fortress guards, and laid
to rest, beyond the city walls, in a spot adjacent to the shrine of Nabi
Salih, from whence, seventy years later, his remains, simultaneously with
those of his illustrious mother, were to be translated to the slopes of
Mt. Carmel, in the precincts of the grave of his sister, and under the
shadow of the Bab's holy sepulcher.

Nor was this the full measure of the afflictions endured by the Prisoner
of Akka and His fellow-exiles. Four months after this tragic event a