e
brutal Hajibu'd-Dawlih, who, after thrusting his dagger into the belly of
the father and cutting him into pieces, before the eyes of his son,
adjured the boy to recant, and, meeting with a blunt refusal, strangled
him with a rope.

Three years previously a youth, named Muhammad-Riday-i-Yazdi, was shot in
Yazd, on the night of his wedding while proceeding from the public bath to
his home, the first to suffer martyrdom during 'Abdu'l-Baha's ministry. In
Turbat-i-Haydariyyih, in consequence of the _Sh_ah's assassination, five
persons, known as the _Sh_uhaday-i-_Kh_amsih (Five Martyrs), were put to
death. In Ma_sh_had a well-known merchant, Haji Muhammad-i-Tabrizi, was
murdered and his corpse set on fire. An interview was granted by the new
sovereign and his Grand Vizir, the unprincipled and reactionary Mirza
'Ali-As_gh_ar _Kh_an, the Atabik-i-A'zam, to two representative followers
of the Faith in Paris (1902), but it produced no real results whatever. On
the contrary, a fresh storm of persecutions broke out a few years later,
persecutions which, as the constitutional movement developed in that
country, grew ever fiercer as reactionaries brought groundless accusations
against the Baha'is, and publicly denounced them as supporters and
inspirers of the nationalist cause.

A certain Muhammad-Javad was stripped naked in Isfahan, and was severely
beaten with a whip of braided wires, while in Ka_sh_an the adherents of
the Faith of Jewish extraction were fined, beaten and chained at the
instigation of both the Muhammadan clergy and the Jewish doctors. It was,
however, in Yazd and its environs that the most bloody outrages committed
during 'Abdu'l-Baha's ministry occurred. In that city Haji
Mirzay-i-Halabi-Saz was so mercilessly flogged that his wife flung herself
upon his body, and was in her turn severely beaten, after which his skull
was lacerated by the cleaver of a butcher. His eleven-year-old son was
pitilessly thrashed, stabbed with penknives and tortured to death. Within
the space of half a day nine people met their death. A crowd of about six
thousand people, of both sexes, vented their fury upon the helpless
victims, a few going so far as to drink their blood. In some instances, as
was the case with a man named Mirza Asadu'llah-i-Sabba_gh_, they plundered
their property and fought over its possession. They evinced such cruelty
that some of the government officials were moved to tears at the sight of
the harrowing scene