A Gift for the Shrine of the Báb

A retelling for children based on Bahá'í Chronicles, which draws on Ugo Giachery's Shoghi Effendi: Recollections (chapter 6, "The Queen of Carmel", and the appendix listing the doors of the Shrine of the Báb).

The Báb is buried on Mount Carmel, in Haifa. In the early years of the twentieth century 'Abdu'l-Bahá raised a building there over the Báb's resting-place. It was oblong in shape and had six rooms.

Not long after Shoghi Effendi became the Guardian, he added three more rooms along the south side of the building. The money for this work was given by a devoted Bahá'í from Iraq, Haji Mahmud Qassabchi.

With the new rooms, the building changed from an oblong into a square. Ugo Giachery explains that this made it ready to be surrounded, in time, by the graceful and lofty outer structure that 'Abdu'l-Bahá had wanted for the resting-place of the Báb. That outer building, with its arcade and dome, was finished in 1953.

Shortly after the three rooms were added, the Guardian used them for a time to house the first Bahá'í Archives at the World Centre, where relics of Bahá'u'lláh and 'Abdu'l-Bahá were kept.

Shoghi Effendi named one of the Shrine's doors, on its eastern side, after Haji Mahmud Qassabchi, whose gift had built the three rooms.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "Haji Mahmud Qassabchi".

editors, B. C.. *Bahá'í Chronicles*. https://bahaichronicles.org/haji-mahmud-qassabchi/