A Handful of Flour: Bahíyyih Khánum's Ṭihrán Childhood
Bahíyyih Khánum: The Greatest Holy Leaf, (1982), Bahá'í World Centre · Read original
When in Bahá'í history
Tehran (today: Tehran, Iran)
In July 1932, after the passing of Bahíyyih Khánum, Shoghi Effendi wrote a long tribute to her addressed to the Bahá'ís of the world. It is reproduced in the compilation Bahíyyih Khánum: The Greatest Holy Leaf. Among the memories it preserves are some that she herself had often shared with him from her earliest childhood.
In August 1852, after two young Bábís made an attempt on the life of Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh, Bahá'u'lláh was arrested and cast into the underground dungeon of the Síyáh-Chál in Ṭihrán, and His house was plundered. His daughter was then about six years old. The Guardian writes:
How well I remember her recall, at a time when her faculties were still unimpaired, the gnawing suspense that ate into the hearts of those who watched by her side, at the threshold of her pillaged house, expectant to hear at any moment the news of Bahá'u'lláh's imminent execution!
He continues:
In those sinister hours, she often recounted, her parents had so suddenly lost their earthly possessions that within the space of a single day from being the privileged member of one of the wealthiest families of Tihrán she had sunk to the state of a sufferer from unconcealed poverty. Deprived of the means of subsistence her illustrious mother, the famed Navváb, was constrained to place in the palm of her daughter's hand a handful of flour and to induce her to accept it as a substitute for her daily bread.
Navváb, whose name was Ásíyih Khánum, was the wife of Bahá'u'lláh and the mother of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and of Bahíyyih Khánum.
More than sixty years later, during the First World War, the child who had once been given a handful of flour in place of bread would be feeding the hungry who crowded to 'Abdu'l-Bahá's house in Haifa.
A retelling based on Shoghi Effendi's tribute to the Greatest Holy Leaf (July 1932), in Bahíyyih Khánum: The Greatest Holy Leaf, compiled by the Bahá'í World Centre (1982). Quoted passages are his words.
Cite this story
Various. (1982). *Bahíyyih Khánum: The Greatest Holy Leaf*. Bahá'í World Centre. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19242
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