onumental main entrance, flanked by
minarets--a high arched portico extending two stories in height recalling
in arrangement the architecture of the world famous Taj Mahal at Agra in
India, the delight of the world to travelers, many of whom pronounce it to
be the most beautiful temple in the world. Thus the principal doorway
opens toward the direction of the Holy land. The entire building is
surrounded by two series of loggias--one upper and one lower--which opens
out upon the garden giving a very beautiful architectural effect in
harmony with the luxuriant semi-tropical vegetation which fills the
garden... The interior walls of the rotunda are treated in five distinct
stories. First, a series of nine arches and piers which separate the
rotunda from the ambulatory. Second, a similar treatment with balustrades
which separate the triforium gallery (which is above the ambulatory and is
reached by two staircases in the loggias placed one on either side of the
main entrance) from the well of the rotunda. Third, a series of nine blank
arches filled with fretwork, between which are escutcheons bearing the
Greatest Name. Fourth, a series of nine large arched windows. Fifth, a
series of eighteen bull's eye windows. Above and resting on a cornice
surmounting this last story rises the inner hemispherical shell of the
dome. The interior is elaborately decorated in plaster relief work... The
whole structure impresses one by its mass and strength."

Nor should mention be omitted of the two schools for boys and girls which
were established in that city, of the pilgrim house instituted in the
close vicinity of the Temple, of the Spiritual Assembly and its auxiliary
bodies formed to administer the affairs of a growing community, and of the
new centers of activity inaugurated in various towns and cities in the
province of Turkistan--all testifying to the vitality which the Faith had
displayed ever since its inception in that land.

A parallel if less spectacular development could be observed in the
Caucasus. After the establishment of the first center and the formation of
an Assembly in Baku, a city which Baha'i pilgrims, traveling in increasing
numbers from Persia to the Holy Land via Turkey, invariably visited, new
groups began to be organized, and, evolving later into well-established
communities, cooperated in increasing measure with their brethren both in
Turkistan and Persia.

In Egypt a steady increase in the number of the adher