Built from the Rear

A retelling based on The Priceless Pearl by Rúhíyyih Khánum. Words in quotation marks are from that book.

For years Shoghi Effendi had been gathering relics of the Faith in the Holy Land. As pilgrims saw how carefully they were kept and how reverently they were displayed, believers in Persia began to send truly priceless articles associated with the Báb, Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá. The collection grew until a second building had to be made into an additional Archives, and the sacred and historic objects were spread through six rooms in two separate buildings.

In 1954, the first year of the World Crusade, the Guardian decided to begin what he called "the first of the major edifices destined to constitute the seat of the World Bahá'í Administrative Centre to be established on Mt. Carmel": a single building to house them.

Rúhíyyih Khánum writes that three things guided him. The building must be beautiful; it must be dignified; and it must have lasting value and not reflect the passing style of an age of experiment, which to him was "for the most part very ugly." He greatly admired Greek architecture and considered the Parthenon one of the most beautiful buildings ever created. He took its proportions as his model, changing the order of the capitals from Doric to Ionic. He set the design to such an extent, she writes elsewhere, that its architect would invariably say it was Shoghi Effendi's design, not his.

Like the Shrine of the Báb, the building was ordered in Italy, carved and completed there, and shipped to Haifa to be put up. Each stone was numbered, and charts showed where each one belonged. Ugo Giachery supervised the work in Italy, and Leroy Ioas was to supervise it in Haifa.

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Nothing Shoghi Effendi undertook, in her view, better showed "his originality, his independence of the views and advice of others and his determination to get things done expeditiously" than the way he handled this project himself.

First he spent much time studying strings laid out on the ground to mark the building's dimensions, and changed its position a number of times until he was satisfied. Then he landscaped the whole area in front of it, laying out paths and planting trees and lawns. Only then did he tell Leroy Ioas that the building would have to be built from the rear, fitting its front into the gardens that already surrounded it for practically its full length on all three sides. The builders would have about five metres' leeway to work in.

So the building rose among gardens that already looked well-grown and mature. When it was finished there was none of the usual desolate stretch of trampled ground around it; it "looked as if it had been standing there for years."

He planned the interior as closely. To gain one great hall for the exhibits, he had two narrow balconies built along its full length on either side, behind a wooden balustrade. Most of the cabinets lining the walls downstairs were Japanese lacquer or Chinese carved teak, and the six great chandeliers were of cut crystal and European in design. When she asked what he would put on the balconies, he said some of the cabinets from the old Archives, which were, she admits, "really of no style at all." Yet the whole assortment, from different periods and countries, came together, she writes, into an impression of beauty, dignity, richness and splendour that would be hard to equal anywhere.

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The building was completed in 1957. In his last Ridván message the Guardian announced its completion and wrote that it was contributing, "through its colourfulness, its classic style and graceful proportions," to the unfolding glory of the Faith's central institutions on God's holy mountain. He passed away in November of that year.

Rúhíyyih Khánum writes: "How providential it was that the Guardian did this, that under his guidance, with his impeccable taste, his perfect sense of proportion, it was all completed before he passed away." When the time came to furnish the Archives, practically everything needed was already at hand, and the relics he had gathered could be placed in the setting he had designed for them, more or less as he would have placed them himself.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Priceless Pearl by Rúhíyyih Khánum.

Khánum, R.. *The Priceless Pearl*.