All observers agree in representing Persia as a feeble and
backward nation divided against itself by corrupt practices and ferocious
bigotries. Inefficiency and wretchedness, the fruit of moral decay, filled the
land. From the highest to the lowest there appeared neither the capacity to
carry out methods of reform nor even the will seriously to institute them
National conceit preached a grandiose self-content. A pall of immobility lay
over all things, and a general paralysis of mind made any development impossible.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘Introduction to ‘The Dawn-Breakers’)
