Iṣfáhán

The Báb spent four months in Iṣfáhán in 1846 as the guest, first of the Imám-Jum'ih and then of the Governor Manúchihr Khán. The Imám-Jum'ih had asked, as a test, for a commentary on a Súrih of the Qur'án; the Báb produced one in two hours of writing — a quantity of verse that the host afterwards estimated at a third of the Qur'án itself.

In the *Epistle to the Son of the Wolf*, Bahá'u'lláh recounts the persecutions launched against the believers of Iṣfáhán by Áqá Najafí, the powerful Iṣfahání cleric who instigated the martyrdoms of the *King of Martyrs* and the *Beloved of Martyrs* in 1879.

Fáṭimih Begum, widow of the King of Martyrs of Iṣfáhán, lost her father at Badasht in childhood, married a husband whose faith would cost him his life, was stripped of every possession by the government, and ended her years in 'Akká, where the ascension of Bahá'u'lláh proved more than her heart could bear.

'Abdu'l-Bahá's tribute to Sakínih Sulṭán — the mother of the Iṣfahán martyrs, whose life of steady faith carried her through the deaths of her sons and into the long quiet years of teaching that followed.

*World Order* magazine carried, in a historical profile, the story of Keith Ransom-Kehler — the American Bahá'í pioneer who died in Iṣfáhán in 1933 of smallpox contracted during her teaching tour of Persia, and who was named by Shoghi Effendi the first American Bahá'í martyr.