The Faithful Servant Esfandayár

In Issue 3 of Volume 9 of the *Star of the West,* dated April 1918, the editors printed extracts from talks 'Abdu'l-Bahá had given in the Holy Land in January and February 1914, translated by Dr. Zia Bagdadi. Among these was a brief recollection — a small story the Master told to His pilgrims about a household servant from the years of His own childhood and youth in Tihrán.

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The servant's name was Esfandayár. He had been one of the servants of the household of Bahá'u'lláh in the years before the Báb's Declaration and on through the storm that engulfed the family after the Revelation began. When Mírzá Buzurg — the Master's grandfather — died, when the family's wealth was seized, when Bahá'u'lláh was thrown into the Síyáh-Chál and the household reduced to bewildered destitution, Esfandayár had remained.

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The Master spoke, half a century later, of *the sterling faithfulness of Esfandayár.* The phrase was His tribute. In an era when the friends of yesterday had become the persecutors of today, when neighbours had crossed the street to avoid the family's gate, when even some former servants had fled to the houses of those it would now be safer to serve, Esfandayár had held to the household he loved. He had stayed.

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> The sterling faithfulness of Esfandayár — preserved by the > Master Himself.

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The detail of his service was small. He had carried what needed carrying, kept what needed keeping, run errands that no longer brought him any earthly credit, attended a family whose social position had collapsed. He had done all of this without complaint and, by every record the Master ever gave of him, without expect of any reward beyond the work itself.

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He died, in due course, in obscurity. Of his life almost no public record remains. The fact that his name has come down to us at all is because, fifty years after the events, in a quiet afternoon talk to pilgrims in 'Akká, the Master remembered him and named him. The *Star of the West,* in printing the Master's words for the American friends, preserved the name a second time.

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The story is small. So is its lesson. The Cause of God advances through the work of countless Esfandayárs whose names will never appear in any history book. But the Concourse on High keeps the record. And, where the Master Himself names a faithful servant, no further commendation is required.

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