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Nor were the Jews and the Parsis who had been newly converted to the Faith, and were living, the former in Hamadán, and the latter in Yazd, immune to the assaults of enemies whose fury was exasperated by the evidences of the penetration of the light of the Faith in quarters they had fondly imagined to be beyond its reach.
To the stern and savage rule of the astute Mas’úd Mírzá, commonly known as Zillu’s-Sulṭán, his eldest surviving son, whose mother had been of plebeian origin, he had committed over two-fifths of his kingdom, including the provinces of Yazd and Iṣfáhán, whilst upon Kámrán Mírzá, his favorite son, commonly called by his title the Nayibu’s-Saltanih, he had bestowed the rulership of Gílán and Mázindarán, and made him governor of Ṭihrán, his minister of war and the commander-in-chief of his army.
But these innocent victims of Yazd looked on their murderers with smiles, and gently welcomed them, and in exchange for the swords’ blows offered honey and milk. Those set the blade to the victims’ throats, but the martyrs presented them with sweets; those cursed and vilified them, while the martyrs implored God to forgive their murderers.
Already, as reported from an outlying center in the province of Yazd, a leading but fair-minded Mulláh has, upon the discovery of the specific prophecy of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá regarding the forced abandonment of the traditional headdress of Muslim clericals, acknowledged the Divine origin of the Bahá’í Faith, embraced its truth, and openly enlisted as an active supporter of its institutions.
The depths of degradation to which these so-called adherents of the Faith of the Báb had sunk could not but evoke in Nabíl the memory of the sublime renunciation shown by the conduct of the companions of Mullá Ḥusayn, who, at the suggestion of their leader, had scornfully cast by the wayside the gold, the silver and turquoise in their possession, or shown by the behavior of Vahíd who refused to allow even the least valuable amongst the treasures which his sumptuously furnished house in Yazd contained to be removed ere it was pillaged by the mob, or shown by the decision of Hujjat not to permit his companions, who were on the brink of starvation, to lay hands on the property of others, even though it were to save their own lives.
The rapacious Prince Jalálu’d-Dawlih, branded by the Supreme Pen as “the tyrant of Yazd,” was, about a year after the iniquities he had perpetrated, deprived of his post, recalled to Ṭihrán, and forced to return a part of the property he had stolen from his victims.
But the martyrs of Yazd, at the onslaught of the foe, and under the tyrant’s sword, uttered not even an unseemly word... Truly the harried survivors of these wronged ones have been subjected to the severest of ordeals, nor can any balm be found to soothe their wound, nor is there any antidote against this lethal drink. For them, every new morning is a new martyrdom.
Three years previously a youth, named Muḥammad-Riḍáy-i-Yazdí, was shot in Yazd, on the night of his wedding while proceeding from the public bath to his home, the first to suffer martyrdom during ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s ministry. In Mashhad a well-known merchant, Ḥájí Muḥammad-i-Tabrízí, was murdered and his corpse set on fire.
Approve star for graves. Owing to aggravation of the situation, the hacking to pieces of the bodies of seven believers in the vicinity of Yazd, and the likelihood of worse massacre in the approaching months, advise all groups and assemblies in the United States to address telegraphically President Eisenhower, appealing for his intervention for protection from further massacres of our offenseless, law-abiding co-religionists in Írán and the safeguard of their human rights.
Even the houses of the people were leveled with the ground, after which the entire village was set on fire. The commotion that had seized Ṭihrán and had given rise to the campaign of outrage and spoliation in Mázindarán spread even as far as Yazd, Nayríz and Shíráz, rocking the remotest hamlets, and rekindling the flames of persecution.
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