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A certain Muhammad- Javad was stripped naked in Isfahan, and was severely beaten with a whip of braided wires, while in Kashan the adherents of the Faith of Jewish extraction were fined, beaten and chained at the instigation of both the Muhammadan clergy and the Jewish doctors. It was, however, in Yazd and its environs that the most bloody outrages committed during Abdu'l- Baha's ministry occurred. In that city Haji Mirzay- i- Halabi- Saz was so mercilessly flogged that his wife flung herself upon his body, and was in her turn severely beaten, after which his skull was lacerated by the cleaver of a butcher. His eleven- year- old son was pitilessly thrashed, stabbed with penknives and tortured to death. Within the space of half a day nine people met their death. A crowd of about six thousand people, of both sexes, vented their fury upon the helpless victims, a few going so far as to drink their blood. In some instances, as was the case with a man named Mirza Asadu'llah- i- Sabbagh, they plundered their property and fought over its possession. They evinced such cruelty that some of the government officials were moved to tears at the sight of the harrowing scenes in which the women of that city played a conspicuously shameful part.
(297:1)
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