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In Persia, moreover, apart from sporadic outbreaks of persecution in such places as Shiraz, Abadih, Ardibil, Isfahan, and in certain districts of Adhirbayjan and Khurasan-- outbreaks greatly reduced in number and violence, owing to the marked decline in the fortunes of the erstwhile powerful Shi'ah ecclesiastics-- the institutions of a newly- established and as yet unconsolidated Administrative Order were subjected by the civil authorities, in both the capital and the provinces, to restrictions designed to circumscribe their scope, to fetter their freedom and undermine their foundations. (362:1) The gradual and wholly unexpected emergence from obscurity of a firmly- welded national community, schooled in adversity and unbroken in spirit, with centers established in every province of that country, in spite of the successive waves of inhuman persecution which had, for three quarters of a century, swept over and had all but engulfed it; the determination of its members to diffuse the spirit and principles of their Faith, broadcast its literature, enforce its laws and ordinances, penalize those who would transgress them, maintain a steady intercourse with their fellow- believers in foreign lands, and erect the edifices and institutions of its Administrative Order, could not but arouse the apprehensions and the hostility of those placed in authority, who either misunderstood the aims of that community, or were bent upon stifling its life. The insistence of its members, while obedient in all matters of a purely administrative character to the civil statutes of their country, on adhering to the fundamental spiritual principles, precepts and laws revealed by Baha'u'llah, requiring them, among other things, to hold fast to truthfulness, not to dissimulate their faith, observe the ordinances prescribed for marriage and divorce, and suspend all manner of work on the Holy Days ordained by Him, brought them, sooner or later, into conflict with a regime which, owing to its formal recognition of Islam as the state religion of Persia, refused to extend any recognition to those whom the official exponents of that religion had already condemned as heretics.
(362:2)
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