The Purest Branch: A Memorial in the First Issue of the Star of the West

When the *Star of the West* — the first English-language Bahá'í magazine in America — was launched in Chicago on the 21st of March, 1910, its opening issue gave pride of place to a photograph and account of Mírzá Mihdí, the *Purest Branch.* He was the younger brother of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and a son of Bahá'u'lláh and Ásíyih Khánum. He was twenty-two years old when he died in 'Akká in 1870.

1 / 7

The circumstances of his death were already, in 1910, well known to the believers in the East and were now being told for the first time to the wider American Bahá'í community. The young man had been pacing the rooftop of the barracks in the prison-city of 'Akká, lost — by some accounts — in chant and prayer. His foot caught a skylight that lay flush with the roof. He fell through it to the floor below. The wound was severe and the few medical helps available in the prison were insufficient.

2 / 7

Bahá'u'lláh came to him. He told His son that, if Mírzá Mihdí asked, He would heal him. The Purest Branch made the request that has marked him in Bahá'í memory ever since.

3 / 7

> I want the believers to be admitted to see their Lord.

4 / 7

In the years of strict confinement in the barracks, the Persian believers who had walked across continents to attain the presence of Bahá'u'lláh were being turned away at the gates of the city. Mírzá Mihdí asked that his death might purchase what his life had not been able to: the lifting of that prohibition. He asked God, in effect, to receive his life in exchange for the visits of the pilgrims.

5 / 7

The exchange was accepted. Mírzá Mihdí died of his injuries. Within a relatively short period, the rules at the gates began to ease, and pilgrims, one by one and then in growing numbers, were admitted to the presence of the Blessed Beauty. Bahá'u'lláh later honoured His son in Tablets that named him a sacrifice freely offered, on whose head the believers' yearning had been placed.

6 / 7

The *Star of the West* opened its first issue with this account deliberately. The Bahá'ís of America, the editors knew, were now themselves the spiritual heirs of the believers Mírzá Mihdí had asked to be admitted. The young man's sacrifice had purchased, across decades and oceans, the very presence of the Master that the American friends would soon share when 'Abdu'l-Bahá Himself came to the West.

7 / 7