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To the galling weight of these tribulations was now added the bitter grief of a sudden tragedy-- the premature loss of the noble, the pious Mirza Mihdi, the Purest Branch, Abdu'l- Baha's twenty- two year old brother, an amanuensis of Baha'u'llah and a companion of His exile from the days when, as a child, he was brought from Tihran to Baghdad to join his Father after His return from Sulaymaniyyih. He was pacing the roof of the barracks in the twilight, one evening, wrapped in his customary devotions, when he fell through the unguarded skylight onto a wooden crate, standing on the floor beneath, which pierced his ribs, and caused, twenty- two hours later, his death, on the 23rd of Rabi'u'l- Avval 1287 A.H. (June 23, 1870). His dying supplication to a grieving Father was that his life might be accepted as a ransom for those who were prevented from attaining the presence of their Beloved.
(188:1)
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