...quite in order to utilise the Bahá’í Fund for the payment of at least half of the travelling expenses of the Friends who come to London from a distance, “one chief object of the Fund should be to help the Friends in these difficulties”. (Quoted in National Spiritual Assembly Minutes) Letter of 22 March 1927 22 March 1927 LOVING APPRECIATION AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE. SHOGHI Letter of 27 April 1927 27 April 1927(17) Dearly-beloved friends: With feelings of horror and indignation I communicate to you the tale of yet another tragedy involving the shedding of the blood of a martyr of the Faith on Persia’s sacred soil. I have before me, as I pen these lines, the report of the local Spiritual Assembly of Ardibíl, a town on the north-east confines of the province of Á_dh_irbayján, not far distant from those hallowed spots where the Báb suffered His last confinement and martyrdom. Addressed to the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Persia, this report recounts in simple but moving language the circumstances that have led to the cowardly crime committed in the darkness of the night at the instigation of the fanatical clergy—the deadliest opponents of the Faith in that town. Our martyred brother, Amínu’l-‘Ulamá by name had for some time past become notorious in the eyes of the Muslim inhabitants of Ardibíl for his tenacity of faith by openly refusing at every instance to vilify and renounce his most cherished convictions. In the latter part of Ramadán—the month associated with prayer, pious deeds and fasting—his use of 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 Islám, who, by boldly rejecting the repeated entreaties showered upon him to execrate the Bahá’í name, had lawfully incurred the penalty of immediate death at the hands of every pious upholder of the Muslim tradition.