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).*

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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*This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see ["Haji Mahmud Qassabchi"](/stories/bc-haji-mahmud-qassabchi).*

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