Permission given to Auxiliary Boards to appoint Assistance

In October 1973, the Universal House of Justice gave the “Continental Board of Counsellors the discretion to authorize individual Auxiliary Board members to appoint assistants … The exact nature of the duties and the duration of the appointment of the assistants is also left to each Continental Board to decide for itself. Their aims should be to activate and encourage Local Spiritual Assemblies, to call the attention of Local Spiritual Assembly members to the importance of holding regular meetings, to encourage local communities to meet for the Nineteen Day Feasts and Holy Days, to help deepen their fellow-believers' understanding of the Teachings, and generally to assist the Auxiliary Board members in the discharge of their duties. Appointments may be made for a limited period, such as a year or two, with the possibility of reappointment. Believers can serve at the same time both as assistants to Auxiliary Board members and on administrative institutions.” 

- The Universal House of Justice  (Messages from the Universal House of Justice 1963 to 1986)

Jan. 1960: Horace Holley Left U.S. for Holy Land after Thirty-Six Years Service on U.S. National Spiritual Assembly

On March 12, 1923, the beloved Guardian addressed a letter to the Baha'is throughout America, Great Britain, Germany, France, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, and Australia emphasizing the responsibility of believers in spreading the Teachings and in establishing local assemblies in all cities having nine or more adult Baha'is. In the same letter the institution of the National Spiritual Assembly was presented in detail.

During Ridvan of that year there were elected for the first time local and national institutions having the functions of spiritual assemblies as we now recognize them in East and West. Horace Holley was elected a member of the New York Local Spiritual Assembly and of the National Spiritual Assembly of the United States and Canada that year. He has continued his services on the National Spiritual Assembly for thirty-six years without interruption, and has been its secretary since 1924. He has therefore been an active participant in the evolution of the Baha'i community throughout all its stages of administrative development following the ascension of 'Abdu'l-Baha, including the two seven-year teaching plans formulated by the Guardian, the celebration of tine Centenary of the Bab, the celebration of the Centenary of Baha'u'llah, and the Guardian's World Crusade up to the present hour.  …Read more

-U.S. National Spiritual Assembly (Baha’i News, January 1960)

June 17, 2017 - First Baha’i to live in Vancouver, Canada

In April of 1920, Marion Jack [then 56 years old] moved to Vancouver and was the first Baha'i to live there. She worked with Mrs. Laura Luther of Seattle to arrange for the visit of Jenab-i-Fadl Mazandarani to Vancouver. He spent seven days there in January and February of 1921. As a result of the teaching efforts made during this visit, four people became Baha’is. Marion stayed a few months longer in order to deepen the new believers and in 1922 returned to New Brunswick …

('Marion Jack Immortal Heroine', publication Baha’i Canada, 1985) (For a brief write-up about Marion Jack, please visit Baha’i Heroes and Heroines)

Socrates, Hippocrates and other Greek philosophers visited Palestine and acquired wisdom from the Jewish prophets

This unique Personage [Moses], single and alone, rescued the children of Israel from bondage through the power of religious training and discipline. He led them to the Holy Land and founded there a great civilization which has become permanent and renowned and under which these people attained the highest degree of honor and glory. He freed them from bondage and captivity. He imbued them with qualities of progressiveness and capability. They proved to be a civilizing people with instincts toward education and scholastic attainment. Their philosophy became renowned; their industries were celebrated throughout the nations. In all lines of advancement which characterize a progressive people they achieved distinction. In the splendor of the reign of Solomon their sciences and arts advanced to such a degree that even the Greek philosophers journeyed to Jerusalem to sit at the feet of the Hebrew sages and acquire the basis of Israelitish law. According to eastern history this is an established fact. Even Socrates visited the Jewish doctors in the Holy Land, consorting with them and discussing the principles and basis of their religious belief. After his return to Greece he formulated his philosophical teaching of divine unity and advanced his belief in the immortality of the spirit beyond the dissolution of the body. Without doubt, Socrates absorbed these verities from the wise men of the Jews with whom he came in contact. Hippocrates and other philosophers of the Greeks likewise visited Palestine and acquired wisdom from the Jewish prophets, studying the basis of ethics and morality, returning to their country with contributions which have made Greece famous. 

- ‘Abdu’l-Baha  (From a talk, 12 October 1912, San Francisco, California; ‘The Promulgation of Universal Peace: Talks Delivered by 'Abdu'l-Bahá during His Visit to the United States and Canada in 1912’)

“The Báb wrote a letter containing three hundred and sixty derivatives of the root Baha” – Baha’u’llah’s name

The Báb announced that the greater Manifestation would take place after Him and called the Promised One "Him Whom God shall make manifest," saying that nine years later the reality of His own mission would become apparent. In His writings He stated that in the ninth year this expected One would be known; in the ninth year they would attain to all glory and felicity; in the ninth year they would advance rapidly. Between Bahá'u'lláh and the Báb there was communication privately. The Báb wrote a letter containing three hundred and sixty derivatives of the root Baha. 

- ‘Abdu’l-Baha  (From a talk, 18 April 1912, New York; ‘The Promulgation of Universal Peace: Talks Delivered by 'Abdu'l-Bahá during His Visit to the United States and Canada in 1912’)

1910: The first thirty children attending Tarbiat school in Tehran, Iran

Fate of those who persecuted the Báb

• Muhammad Shah, who disregarded the appeal of the Báb  to meet Him in person and plead His Cause, sustained a sudden reverse of fortune, and succumbed, at the age of forty, to a complication of maladies.
• Nasiri’d-Din Shah, during whose reign the Báb  was executed, and under whose aegis the greatest massacre of the Bábis  took place, was, in the plenitude of his power, dramatically assassinated on the eve of his jubilee. The Qajar dynasty, to which he belonged, was subsequently brought to an ignominious end.
• Haji Mirza Aqasi, the Grand Vazir of Muhammad Shah and chief instigator of the outrages perpetrated against the Báb , was disgraced by his sovereign, lost his fortune, was expelled to Karbila, and became a victim of disease and poverty.
• Miza Taqi Khan, the Amir Nizam, the Grand Vazir of Nasiri'd-Din Shah, who was directly responsible for the execution of the Báb , was disgraced and put to death by royal order in the bath of the Palace of Fin, near Kashan.
• Mirza Hasan Khan, who carried out the execution of the Báb , was subjected, two years after, to a dreadful punishment which ended in his death.
• Miza ‘Ali-Asghar, the Shaykhu’l-Islam of Tabriz, who inflicted the bastinado on the Báb  with his own hand, was stricken, in that same year, with paralysis, and died a miserable death.
• The Regiment, which constituted the firing squad that executed the Báb , lost, in that same year, two hundred and fifty of its officers and men in an earthquake near Ardibil, while the remaining five hundred were shot, two years later, in Tabriz, for mutiny. The head of the regiment, Aqa Jan Big, lost his life, six years after the Martyrdom of the Báb , during the bombardment of Muhammarih by the British.
• The Shi’ih Sacerdotal, which violently opposed the Báb , aroused the populace and instigated the government against Him, was discredited, fell from power, and ceased to exercise its paramount influence on both the people and the government.          

('The Baha’i Faith 1844 -1963, Statistical and Comparative', compiled by the Hands of the Cause Residing in the Holy Land)

Baha’u’llah was released from Siyah-Chal in December 1852

It was during the month of December in 1852 that Baha’u’llah was released from the Siyah-Chal (Black Pit) of Tehran. Here is how Baha’u’llah’s daughter, Bahiyyih Khanum, the Greatest Holy Leaf, recalled the circumstances involved many years later:

We listened eagerly to the accounts she [her mother, Asiyih Khanum] gave to my uncle [Baha’u’llah’s faithful brother, Mirza Musa]. This information came through the kindness of a sister of my grandfather, who was married to Mirza Yusif, a Russian subject, and a friend of the Russian Consul in Tihran. This gentleman, my great uncle by marriage, used to attend the courts to find out some particulars as to the victims chosen for execution day by day, and thus was able to relieve to some extent my mother's overwhelming anxiety as these appalling days passed over us.

It was Mirza Yusif, who was able to help my mother about getting food taken to my father, and who brought us to the two little rooms near the prison, where we stayed in close hiding. He had to be very careful in thus defying the authorities, although the danger in this case was mitigated by the fact of his being under the protection of the Russian Consulate, as a Russian subject.

Nobody at all, of all our friends and relations, dared to come to see my mother during these days of death, but the wife of Mirza Yusif, the aunt of my father.

One day the discovery was made by Mirza Yusif that our untiring enemies, the most fanatical of the mullas, were plotting the death of Mirza Husayn 'Ali Nuri [Baha’u’llah], my father. … Read more

- Lady Blomfield  ('The Chosen Highway')

Queen Marie of Rumania

In his monumental history of the first century of the Baha'i Era, God Passes By, Shoghi Effendi has referred at some length to the conversion of Marie, Queen of Rumania, and her services to the Baha'i Faith. In other works, too, he has strongly emphasized the great importance of these thrilling events.

Marie was born at Eastwell in Kent, England, on 29th October 1875. Her father Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, was the second son of Queen Victoria. Her mother, the former Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna, was the only daughter of Czar Alexander II. On 10th January 1893, Marie married Prince Ferdinand, nephew of King Carol and Queen Carmen Silva of Rumania.

- O.Z. Whitehead  (‘Some Early Baha’is of the West’)

1914 -- First group photograph taken of 'Abdu'l-Baha in the Holy Land

'Abdu'l-Baha with some pilgrims and resident Baha'is gathered at the Shrine of the Bab on Mount Carmel

Some religious references to the city of 'Akka

'Akká had achieved fame more than once in its long history. It had refused to bow to mighty conquerors. Prophets of Israel as well as the Prophet of Arabia had alluded to it in terms that exalted it above other towns and cities of glittering splendour. Hosea had said that 'Akká was 'a door of hope'. Ezekiel had referred to it as 'the gate that looketh toward the east' to which 'the glory of the God of Israel came from the way of the east' It was Ptolemais in the days when Jesus walked the Mediterranean shore. And Muhammad had said: 'Blessed the man that hath visited 'Akká, and blessed he that hath visited the visitor of 'Akká . . . A month in 'Akká is better than a thousand years elsewhere.' 

- Hand of the Cause, Balyuzi  (‘Abdu'l-Baha - The Centre of the Covenant’; citations from God Passes By, by Shoghi Effendi. See also Hosea ii. I5, and Ezekiel xliii. I-2. Hosea refers to it as ‘the valley of Achor’)

An ingenious calligraphic representation of certain Holy Words by Mishkin Qalam -- a very famous Baha’i artist and an Apostle of Baha’u’llah

‘Abdu’l-Baha’s eldest grandson became His chief secretary in 1918

Shoghi Effendi was the eldest son of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s daughter Diya’iyyih Khanum (d. 1951) and Mirza Hadi Shirazi Afnan (d. 1955). He was born in ‘Akka on 1 March 1897, the eldest of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s grandsons, named in the Master’s Will as His successor when he was still a child. Educated at first at home with other children of the household, he was later sent to Catholic school in Haifa and Beirut and then to the Syrian Protestant College (the predecessor of the American University) in Beirut, spending his summer holidays as one of his grandfather’s assistants. He gained an arts degree from the college in 1918, and became ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s chief secretary. Then in 1920, he went to Oxford University (Balliol College), where he studied political science and economics, and also sought to perfect his English so as to be better able to translate Baha’i literature into that language. He was still in the midst of his studies when summoned to return to Haifa at the news of his grandfather’s death. 

- Peter Smith  (A Concise Encyclopedia of the Baha’i Faith)

First issue of the newsletter 'Baha’i Quarterly' by NSA of Australia

During October 1936, the National Assembly of Australia published the first issue of a newsletter entitled Baha’i Quarterly. As affirmed by his secretary, the Guardian “read it all through with the deepest pleasure and satisfaction.” A message from Father and Mother Dunn addressed to their spiritual children, which appeared in this quarterly, contained these remarks:

Our appeal to the Baha'i world would be to follow the call and desire of our beloved Guardian to read and study the 'Divine Plan' ... It might quicken some . . . to realize that it was the reading of the 'Divine Plan' that caused Mother and this servant to give up everything in America and travel to Australia for the purpose of promoting the Baha'i message on this great continent ... Pioneers must be strong and ready to face all the hardships that may appear on their path. These are as naught compared with the delights of loving response and the confirmation that follow. 

- O.Z. Whitehead  (‘Some Baha’is to Remember’)

Albert Hall - President of Bahai Temple Unity and Chairman of Annual Convention of the Baha’is of the United States and Canada – 1910 to 1914

Albert Hall will ever be remembered for his services in the early development of the Bahai Temple Unity, the body entrusted with the building of the Mashriqu’l-Adhkar in America.

From 1910 to 1914, Albert H. Hall was selected each year as chairman of the Annual Convention; he was elected a member of the Baha’i Temple Unity during the same period, and was chosen as its president in 1911, which position he held up to and during the year 1914.

At the Convention of 1910, when Mr. Hall was unanimously chosen Chairman, he said: "God chooses the weak things to confound the mighty. You have made the choice of a weak instrument. I feel very weak and lowly, as nothing, and I would not bear the responsibility of this place were I not possessed with the sense of my own emptiness, seeking only the in pouring of His Spirit, strength and wisdom. This Convention but now called to order, has been in conscious, silent session for several hours. There is no need of any introduction. The opening of this Convention was sung in the heart of every one of you who turned his face to the East this morning, and if you did not then catch the message of love and unity in all its fullness, it has beautifully sounded in your ears as the inspiring Tablet has been read [refers to Tablet regarding Mashriqu’l-Adhkar received in March, 1910] There is no other word to be uttered. It is for us now to address ourselves directly to the work in hand. We are here representing the Baha’i Assemblies throughout America and Canada, to bring home the substantial offerings of our sacrifice, to encourage each other with the report of our work not to boast or overstate it. We must face His Truth just as it is. Do not let us delude ourselves. They are the worst deluded in the world who are self deluded. We are not afraid nor ashamed of the situation, but of ourselves that is all. Let us seek knowledge with the light of Truth and the Truth shall make us free." – Read more…

(Star of the West, vol. 11)

Shoghi Effendi was more akin physically to his great-grandfather, Bahá'u'lláh

Fine-boned, even as a mature man, shorter than his grandfather had been, Shoghi Effendi was more akin physically to his great-grandfather, Bahá'u'lláh. He told me himself that 'Abdu'l-Bahá's sister, the Greatest Holy Leaf, would sometimes take his hand in hers and say "These are like the hands of my father". They were what I call intellectual hands, more square than tapering, strong, nervous, the veins standing out, very expressive in their gestures, very assured in their motions. 

- Ruhiyyih Khanum  (‘The Priceless Pearl’)

Compiling about 12000 prophecies and traditions pertaining to the advent of the long awaited Promised One

Before the Advent of the Bab in 1844, “the eminent scholar, Mirza Ahmad-i-Azghandi, the most learned, the wisest and the most outstanding among the ulamas of Khurasan”, who later became an ardent believer, “… in anticipation of the advent of the promised Qá'im, had compiled above twelve thousand traditions and prophecies concerning the time and character of the expected Revelation, had circulated them among His fellow-disciples, and had encouraged them to quote them extensively to all congregations and in all meetings.” 

- Shoghi Effendi  (‘God Passes By’)

The impact of the Advent of the Báb on many European writers in late 19th century

Writing in the American periodical Forum in 1925, the French literary critic Jules Bois remembered the extraordinary impact which the story of the Báb continued to have on educated opinion in Europe as the nineteenth century closed:

“All Europe was stirred to pity and indignation .... Among the litterateurs of my generation, in the Paris of 1890, the martyrdom of the Báb was still as fresh a topic as had been the first news of His death [in 1850]. We wrote poems about Him. Sarah Bernhardt entreated Catulle Mendes for a play on the theme of this historic tragedy.” (Shoghi Effendi, ‘God Passes By’, and ‘The Baha'i World’, vol. 9, 1940-1944,)

Writers as-diverse as Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, Edward Granville Browne, Ernest Renan, Aleksandr Tumanskiy, A.L.M. Nicolas, Viktor Rosen, Clement Huart, George Curzon, Matthew Arnold, and Leo Tolstoy were affected by the spiritual drama that had unfolded in Persia during the middle years of the nineteenth century. (Douglas Martin, ‘The Mission of the Báb: Retrospective, 1944-1994’, ‘The Baha’i World, 1994-1995’)

“A Russian poetess, member of the Philosophic, Oriental and Bibliological Societies of St. Petersburg, published in 1903 a drama entitled "The Báb," which a year later was played in one of the principal theatres of that city, was subsequently given publicity in London, was translated into French in Paris, and into German by the poet Fiedler, was presented again, soon after the Russian Revolution, in the Folk Theatre in Leningrad, and succeeded in arousing the genuine sympathy and interest of the renowned Tolstoy, whose eulogy of the poem was later published in the Russian press.” (Shoghi Effendi, ‘God Passes By’)

The Báb revealed nine Commentaries on the whole of the Qur’an while incarcerated in Mah-Ku for nine months

Shaykh Hasan-i-Zunuzi who, as one of the secretaries of the Báb, was engaged in transcribing the verses which He dictated to His amanuensis while imprisoned in Mah-ku for nine months, related the following fascinating account to Nabil, the author of the Dawn-Breakers:

"When subsequently He was incarcerated in the fortress of Mah-Ku, in the province of Adhirbayjan, I was engaged in transcribing the verses which He dictated to His amanuensis. Every night, for a period of nine months, during which He was a prisoner in that fort, He revealed, after He had offered His evening prayer, a commentary on a juz' [a juz' is one-thirtieth of the Qur'án] of the Qur'án. At the end of each month a commentary on the whole of that sacred Book was thus completed. During His incarceration in Mah-Ku, nine commentaries on the whole of the Qur'án had been revealed by Him. The texts of these commentaries were entrusted, in Tabriz, to the keeping of a certain Siyyid Ibrahim-i-Khalil, who was instructed to conceal them until the time for their publication might arrive. Their fate is unknown until now.”