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Nor were the Jews and the Parsis who had been newly converted to the Faith, and were living, the former in Hamadan, and the latter in Yazd, immune to the assaults of enemies whose fury was exasperated by the evidences of the penetration of the light of the Faith in quarters they had fondly imagined to be beyond its reach. Even in the city of Ishqabad the newly established Shi'ah community, envious of the rising prestige of the followers of Baha'u'llah who were living in their midst, instigated two ruffians to assault the seventy- year old Haji Muhammad- Riday- i- Isfahani, whom, in broad day and in the midst of the bazaar, they stabbed in no less than thirty- two places, exposing his liver, lacerating his stomach and tearing open his breast. A military court dispatched by the Czar to Ishqabad established, after prolonged investigation, the guilt of the Shi'ahs, sentencing two to death and banishing six others-- a sentence which neither Nasiri'd- Din Shah, nor the ulamas of Tihran, of Mashhad and of Tabriz, who were appealed to, could mitigate, but which the representatives of the aggrieved community, through their magnanimous intercession which greatly surprised the Russian authorities, succeeded in having commuted to a lighter punishment.
(202:1)
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