llah, his chief accomplice,
betrayed his cause, published a signed denunciation of his evil acts, but
rejoined him again, only to be alienated from him in consequence of the
scandalous behavior of his own daughter. Mirza Muhammad-'Ali's
half-sister, Furu_gh_iyyih, died of cancer, whilst her husband, Siyyid
'Ali, passed away from a heart attack before his sons could reach him, the
eldest being subsequently stricken in the prime of life, by the same
malady. Muhammad-Javad-i-Qazvini, a notorious Covenant-breaker, perished
miserably. _Sh_u'a'u'llah who, as witnessed by 'Abdu'l-Baha in His Will,
had counted on the murder of the Center of the Covenant, and who had been
despatched to the United States by his father to join forces with Ibrahim
_Kh_ayru'llah, returned crestfallen and empty-handed from his inglorious
mission. Jamal-i-Burujirdi, Mirza Muhammad-'Ali's ablest lieutenant in
Persia, fell a prey to a fatal and loathsome disease; Siyyid
Mihdiy-i-Dahaji, who, betraying 'Abdu'l-Baha, joined the
Covenant-breakers, died in obscurity and poverty, followed by his wife and
his two sons; Mirza Husayn-'Aliy-i-Jahrumi, Mirza
Husayn-i-_Sh_iraziy-i-_Kh_urtumi and Haji Muhammad-Husayn-i-Ka_sh_ani, who
represented the arch-breaker of the Covenant in Persia, India and Egypt,
failed utterly in their missions; whilst the greedy and conceited
Ibrahim-i-_Kh_ayru'llah, who had chosen to uphold the banner of his
rebellion in America for no less than twenty years, and who had the
temerity to denounce, in writing, 'Abdu'l-Baha, His "false teachings, His
misrepresentations of Bahaism, His dissimulation," and to stigmatize His
visit to America as "a death-blow" to the "Cause of God," met his death
soon after he had uttered these denunciations, utterly abandoned and
despised by the entire body of the members of a community, whose founders
he himself had converted to the Faith, and in the very land that bore
witness to the multiplying evidences of the established ascendancy of
'Abdu'l-Baha, Whose authority he had, in his later years, vowed to uproot.

As to those who had openly espoused the cause of this arch-breaker of
Baha'u'llah's Covenant, or who had secretly sympathized with him, whilst
outwardly supporting 'Abdu'l-Baha, some eventually repented and were
forgiven; others became disillusioned and lost their faith entirely; a few
apostatized, whilst the rest dwindled away, leaving him in the end, except
for a handful of his relatives, alone and