Memorial of Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Furúghí

In the long roll of believers from the Khurásán province whom 'Abdu'l-Bahá remembers, Mírzá Maḥmúd-i-Furúghí stands as a representative figure of a particular kind of saintliness the Cause produced in great quantity but the world records in small.

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Mírzá Maḥmúd was born in the small town of Furúgh, in the broad eastern Persian province of Khurásán. His family was modest. His education was modest. He embraced the Cause as a young man, drawn by the testimony of an itinerant teacher who had passed through his home town. The recognition was complete; the conviction unshakable; the conduct that followed unbroken to the end of his life.

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What 'Abdu'l-Bahá emphasises is the *kind* of service Mírzá Maḥmúd offered. He did not become a famous teacher. He did not write learned commentaries. He did not undertake the celebrated journeys to 'Akká that would have drawn the notice of the wider Bahá'í world. He took up, instead, the patient quiet work of village teaching across Khurásán.

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He travelled from village to village on foot, with whatever small store of food the previous host had pressed on him for the next stretch of road. He stayed with whoever would receive him — a small farmer here, a village schoolteacher there, an older couple in the next place. He spoke with the locals on their own terms, in their own dialect, about their own concerns. He read the small extracts of the Writings he had with him aloud in the evenings. He answered questions patiently. He made no demand of the listener.

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The result, accumulated over a working lifetime, was the slow introduction of the Cause into perhaps a hundred Khurásání villages whose names did not appear in the records of the larger Bahá'í world but whose households would, generation by generation, raise up their own teachers and their own small Local Spiritual Assemblies.

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The Master records the quality of the man. *He was patient in privation, he was joyful in difficulty, he was unfailing in attendance on the believers' small needs.* He never sought elevated company. He never accepted the small honours the local friends would have liked to confer on him. He insisted, to the end, on being a *brother among brothers* in the village circles he served.

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He died at length in his own native Furúgh, surrounded by the small group of villagers who had become, through his patient work, the local Bahá'í community of the place. The Master closes the *Memorial* with the observation that *he asked for no notice; he received the imperishable.*

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