f the
public bath--that long-established institution the amenities and privileges
of which are as a rule accorded only to the adherents of the Muslim
Faith--had served to inflame the mob, and to provide a scheming instigator
with a pretext to terminate his life. In the market-place he was ridiculed
and condemned as an apostate of the Faith of Islam, who, by boldly
rejecting the repeated entreaties showered upon him to execrate the Baha'i
name, had lawfully incurred the penalty of immediate death at the hands of
every pious upholder of the Muslim tradition.

In spite of the close surveillance exercised by a body of guards stationed
around his house, in response to the intercession of his friends with the
local authorities, the treacherous criminal found his way into his home,
and on the night of the 22nd of Ramadan, corresponding with the 26th of
March 1927, assailed him in a most atrocious and dastardly manner.
Concealing within the folds of his garment his unsheathed dagger, he
approached his victim and claiming the need of whispering a confidential
message in his ears plunged the weapon hilt-deep into his vitals, cutting
across his ribs and mutilating his body. Every attempt to secure immediate
medical assistance seems to have been foiled by malicious devices on the
part of the associates of this merciless criminal, and the helpless victim
after a few hours of agonising pain surrendered his soul to his Beloved.
His friends and fellow-believers, alarmed at the prospect of a fresh
outbreak that would inevitably result were his mortal remains to be
accorded the ordinary privileges of a decent burial, decided to inter his
body in one of the two rooms that served as his own dwelling, seeking
thereby to appease the fury of an unrelenting foe.

He leaves behind in desperate poverty a family of minors with no support
but their mother, expectant to bring forth her child, and with no hope of
relief from their non-Baha'i relatives in whose eyes they deserve to be
treated only with the meanest contempt.

It appears from the above-mentioned report that the merciless assailant
has been arrested, waiting, however, as has been the case with similar
incidents in southern Persia, to be sooner or later released under the
pressure of bribery and intimidation sedulously exercised by an impenitent
enemy.

Dearest friends! Any measure of publicity the concerted efforts of the
Baha'i Spiritual Assemblies of the West, on whom almighty Prov