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Despite these intermittent severe persecutions the Faith that had evoked in its heroes so rare a spirit of self- sacrifice was steadily and silently growing. Engulfed for a time and almost extinguished in the sombre days following the martyrdom of the Bab, driven underground throughout the period of Baha'u'llah's ministry, it began, after His ascension, under the unerring guidance, and as a result of the unfailing solicitude, of a wise, a vigilant and loving Master, to gather its forces, and gradually to erect the embryonic institutions which were to pave the way for the establishment, at a later period, of its Administrative Order. It was during this period that the number of its adherents rapidly multiplied, that its range, now embracing every province of that kingdom, steadily widened, and the rudimentary forms of its future Assemblies were inaugurated. It was during this period, at a time when state schools and colleges were practically non- existent in that country, and when the education given in existing religious institutions was lamentably defective, that its earliest schools were established, beginning with the Tarbiyat, schools in Tihran for both boys and girls, and followed by the Ta'yid and Mawhibat schools in Hamadan, the Vahdat- i- Bashar school in Kashan and other similar educational institutions in Barfurush and Qazvin. It was during these years that concrete and effectual assistance, both spiritual and material, in the form of visiting teachers from both Europe and America, of nurses, instructors, and physicians, was first extended to the Baha'i community in that land, these workers constituting the vanguard of that host of helpers which Abdu'l- Baha promised would arise in time to further the interests of the Faith as well as those of the country in which it was born. It was in the course of these years that the term Babi, as an appellation, designating the followers of Baha'u'llah in that country, was universally discarded by the masses in favor of the word Baha'i, the former henceforth being exclusively applied to the fast dwindling number of the followers of Mirza Yahya. During this period, moreover, the first systematic attempts were made to organize and stimulate the teaching work undertaken by the Persian believers, attempts which, apart from reinforcing the foundations of the community, were instrumental in attracting to its cause several outstanding figures in the public life of that country, not excluding certain prominent members of the Shi'ah sacerdotal order, and even descendants of some of the worst persecutors of the Faith. It was during the years of that ministry that the House of the Bab in Shiraz, ordained by Baha'u'llah as a center of pilgrimage for His followers, and now so recognized, was by order of Abdu'l- Baha and through His assistance, restored, and that it became increasingly a focus of Baha'i life and activity for those who were deprived by circumstances of visiting either the Most Great House in Baghdad or the Most Holy Tomb in Akka.
(299:1)
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