The Greatest Holy Leaf at Her Brother's Side

The bahaistories.com archive draws together, from many household memoirs of the 'Akká years, the small daily portrait of Bahíyyih Khánum — *Khánum,* the Greatest Holy Leaf — the elder sister of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and the constant invisible support at His elbow.

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Khánum had been raised in the same household as the Master. She had shared every imprisonment, every banishment, every extended grief of the family. By the 'Akká years she was a woman in her sixties, of slender bearing and quiet voice, who ran the practical life of the Master's household so efficiently that the visiting pilgrims rarely noticed she was running it. Meals appeared. Linens were changed. The young grandchildren were taught and disciplined.

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Visiting Western women, who could not easily mix with the men in the Master's public reception room under the customs of the local Levant, were received privately by Khánum in her own quarters and took tea with her in long unhurried conversations.

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The Master Himself depended on her without disguise. Several of the household memoirs preserve His characteristic reference to her.

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> My sister is My right hand and My second self.

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The phrase, paraphrased through several of the bahaistories.com pieces, named the relationship the visiting pilgrims rarely fully appreciated. The work of the Cause, on which the Master was the visible centre, rested in its daily practice on the steady hidden labour of His sister. When she predeceased Him by some years, the Master mourned her in language He used for no other family member. Shoghi Effendi, in his own later writings, would set Khánum's station as among the highest in the Bahá'í Dispensation.

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