edifice that shall prove
eternal and everlasting, so that the sovereignty of heart and soul may be
established and secure in both worlds.(10)

Social historians of the future, with a perspective far more dispassionate
and universal than is presently possible, and benefiting from unimpeded
access to all of the primary documentation, will study minutely the
transformation that the Master achieved in these early years. Day after
day, month after month, from a distant exile where He was endlessly
harried by the host of enemies surrounding Him, 'Abdu'l-Baha was able not
only to stimulate the expansion of the Persian Baha'i community, but to
shape its consciousness and collective life. The result was the emergence
of a culture, however localized, that was unlike anything humanity had
ever known. Our century, with all its upheavals and its grandiloquent
claims to create a new order, has no comparable example of the systematic
application of the powers of a single Mind to the building of a
distinctive and successful community that saw its ultimate sphere of work
as the globe itself.

Although suffering intermittent atrocities at the hands of the Muslim
clergy and their supporters--without protection from a succession of
indolent Qajar monarchs--the Persian Baha'i community found a new lease on
life. The number of believers multiplied in all regions of the country,
persons prominent in the life of society were enrolled, including several
influential members of the clergy, and the forerunners of administrative
institutions emerged in the form of rudimentary consultative bodies. The
importance of the latter development alone would be impossible to
exaggerate. In a land and among a people accustomed for centuries to a
patriarchal system that concentrated all decision-making authority in the
hands of an absolute monarch or _Sh_i'ih mujtahids, a community
representing a cross section of that society had broken with the past,
taking into its own hands the responsibility for deciding its collective
affairs through consultative action.

In the society and culture the Master was developing, spiritual energies
expressed themselves in the practical affairs of day-to-day life. The
emphasis in the teachings on education provided the impulse for the
establishment of Baha'i schools--including the Tarbiyat school for
girls,(11) which gained national renown--in the capital, as well as in
provincial centres. With the assistance of American and