, at a later period, of its Administrative Order. It was
during this period that the number of its adherents rapidly multiplied,
that its range, now embracing every province of that kingdom, steadily
widened, and the rudimentary forms of its future Assemblies were
inaugurated. It was during this period, at a time when state schools and
colleges were practically non-existent in that country, and when the
education given in existing religious institutions was lamentably
defective, that its earliest schools were established, beginning with the
Tarbiyat, schools in Tihran for both boys and girls, and followed by the
Ta'yid and Mawhibat schools in Hamadan, the Vahdat-i-Ba_sh_ar school in
Ka_sh_an and other similar educational institutions in Barfuru_sh_ and
Qazvin. It was during these years that concrete and effectual assistance,
both spiritual and material, in the form of visiting teachers from both
Europe and America, of nurses, instructors, and physicians, was first
extended to the Baha'i community in that land, these workers constituting
the vanguard of that host of helpers which 'Abdu'l-Baha promised would
arise in time to further the interests of the Faith as well as those of
the country in which it was born. It was in the course of these years that
the term Babi, as an appellation, designating the followers of Baha'u'llah
in that country, was universally discarded by the masses in favor of the
word Baha'i, the former henceforth being exclusively applied to the fast
dwindling number of the followers of Mirza Yahya. During this period,
moreover, the first systematic attempts were made to organize and
stimulate the teaching work undertaken by the Persian believers, attempts
which, apart from reinforcing the foundations of the community, were
instrumental in attracting to its cause several outstanding figures in the
public life of that country, not excluding certain prominent members of
the _Sh_i'ah sacerdotal order, and even descendants of some of the worst
persecutors of the Faith. It was during the years of that ministry that
the House of the Bab in _Sh_iraz, ordained by Baha'u'llah as a center of
pilgrimage for His followers, and now so recognized, was by order of
'Abdu'l-Baha and through His assistance, restored, and that it became
increasingly a focus of Baha'i life and activity for those who were
deprived by circumstances of visiting either the Most Great House in
Ba_gh_dad or the Most Holy Tomb in Akka.

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