The services of an engineer and architect were secured, and the Bahá’ís throughout the Orient arose with fervor to give of their means toward the building and within a very few years the building was completed.

The Mashriqu’l-Adhkár stands in the heart of the city; its high dome standing out above the trees and house tops being visible for miles to the travelers as they approach the town. It is in the centre of a garden bounded by four streets. In the four corners of this enclosure are four buildings. One is the Bahá’í school; one is the traveler’s house, where pilgrims and wayfarers are lodged; one is for the keepers, while the fourth one is to be used as a hospital. Nine radial avenues approach the Temple from the several parts of the grounds, one of which, the principal approach to the building, leads from the main gateway of the grounds to the principal portal of the Temple.

In plan the building is composed of three sections; namely, the central rotunda, the aisle or ambulatory which surrounds it, and the loggia which surrounds the entire building. It is built on the plan of a regular polygon of nine sides. One side is occupied by the monumental main entrance, flanked by minarets—a high arched portico extending two stories in height recalling in arrangement the architecture of the world famous Taj Mahal at Agra in India, the delight of the world to travelers many of whom pronounce it to be the most beautiful temple in the world. Thus the principal doorway opens toward the direction of the Holy Land. The entire building is surrounded by two series of loggias—one upper and one lower—which open out upon the garden giving a very beautiful architectural effect in harmony with the luxuriant semi-tropical vegetation which fills the garden.

The principal feature of the interior is the rotunda beneath the dome, which latter is the dominant feature of the exterior. On the main floor the principal entrance is through the large doorway, but there are also several minor doors, which connect the ambulatory with the loggia. An abundance of light is admitted through the windows in the upper portion of the rotunda, as well as through the windows of the upper gallery and ambulatory, which open upon the loggias.

The interior walls of the rotunda are treated in five distinct stories. First, a series of nine arches and piers which separate the rotunda from the ambulatory. Second, a similar treatment with balustrades which separate the triforium gallery (which is above the ambulatory and is reached by two staircases in the loggias placed one on either side of the main entrance) from the well of the rotunda. Third, a series of nine blank arches filled with fretwork, between which are escutcheons bearing the Greatest Name. Fourth, a series of nine large arched windows. Fifth, a series of eighteen bull’s eye windows. Above and resting on a cornice surmounting this last story rises the inner hemispherical shell of the dome.

The interior is elaborately decorated in plaster relief work. The writer is under the impression that eventually it is the intention to treat the interior in colors and gold, but when he visited ‘Ishqábád in 1901 it was still in the simple white stucco. The exterior is also done in stucco, which in that climate resists quite well the action of the elements. The walls, which are of brick, are massively built, while the floors and dome are of concrete and iron. The whole structure impresses one by its mass and strength.