Keith Ransom-Kehler in Iran

In December 1933 The Bahá'í Magazine (the Star of the West under its later name) printed Mariam Haney's tribute to Keith Ransom-Kehler, the American believer who had died in Isfahán that October while serving the Faith in Persia.

Keith first heard of the Bahá'í Faith in May 1921. A Vassar graduate who had held the chair of English in a western college, she gave the rest of her life to the Faith as a writer, lecturer and travelling teacher. In 1926 she made her first pilgrimage to Haifa and 'Akká. In 1931 she set out on a journey that took her to Japan, China, New Zealand and India, and she ended it with a second visit to the Guardian in Haifa.

The Guardian then asked her to serve in Persia. In August 1932 she went there as the representative of the American National Spiritual Assembly, to appeal to the Shah's government to lift the ban on the entry of Bahá'í literature and to plead for relief from the restrictions laid on the Persian believers. On 15 August 1932 the Court Minister, Taymur Tash, gave her his assurance that Bahá'í books would be admitted freely. The promise was not kept. Books sent to her were confiscated, the Court Minister was replaced, and she had to begin again. She addressed seven petitions to the Shah and met many ministers and officials. In September 1933 she cabled America: "Petition unanswered."

Alongside her appeals she visited the Bahá'í communities of the country. Her "Letters Home," printed in the magazine in 1933, began with the village of Sísán in Ádharbáyján, where the believers' welcome moved her to write:

The real meaning of Bahá'í solidarity suddenly penetrated me.

Among the other places she visited were Shíráz, the Shrine of Shaykh Ṭabarsí, Khurásán, Mázindarán and Ṭihrán. When she left Ṭihrán, hundreds of Persian believers came to see her off. She meant to visit the southern cities, stopped first at Isfahán, fell ill with smallpox, and died there on 23 October 1933. At the Guardian's instruction she was buried near the grave of the martyr whom Bahá'u'lláh had named the "King of Martyrs."

On 30 October Shoghi Effendi cabled:

Keith's precious life offered up in sacrifice to beloved Cause in Bahá'u'lláh's native land. On Persian soil, for Persia's sake, she encountered, challenged and fought the forces of darkness with high distinction, indomitable will, unswerving, exemplary loyalty. The mass of her helpless Persian brethren mourns the sudden loss of their valiant emancipator. American believers grateful and proud of the memory of their first and distinguished martyr.

He asked the Local Assemblies to hold memorial gatherings for one whose international services, he wrote, entitled her to an eminent rank among the Hands of the Cause of Bahá'u'lláh.

A retelling based on Star of the West (The Bahá'í Magazine), Volume 24, No. 9 (December 1933), Mariam Haney, "Keith Ransom-Kehler: A Brief Sketch of a Dynamic Personality," and The Bahá'í World, Volume V, "Mrs. Keith Ransom-Kehler's Mission." For the fuller account, see the original.

Editors, S. O. T. W.. (1933). *Star of the West*. Bahai News Service. https://bahai.works/Star_of_the_West/Volume_24/Issue_9/Text