Bahaipedia:Today's featured individual/December 31
Mírzá Abu'l-Fadl (1844-1914) was a preeminent Iranian Bahá’í scholar and author, who also contributed a great deal to the advance of the Bahá’í Faith in Turkmenistan, Egypt, and the United States. Mirza Abu'l-Fadl was born in a village near Gulpaygan, central Iran between June-July in 1844. His given name was Muhammad and he chose for himself the epithet Abu'l-Fadl (progenitor of virtue), but ‘Abdu’l-Bahá frequently addressed him as Abu'l-Fada'il (progenitor of virtues). While he was living in Tehran, he had several encounters with Bahá’ís, starting in about the beginning of 1876. On one occasion he was astonished at the perceptiveness of an illiterate farrier whom he was told was a Bahá’í, and after word soon spread of his conversion and he was dismissed from his post at the religious college.
