Eight Months of Translation

A retelling for children, based on The Priceless Pearl by Rúḥíyyih Khánum.

Nabíl was a follower of the Báb, and later of Bahá'u'lláh, who lived through the early days of the Faith. He wrote a history of those days, full of the stories of the Báb and of the brave men and women who followed Him. But he wrote it in Persian, and few people in the West could read it.

Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, decided to turn the first part of Nabíl's history into English. Rúḥíyyih Khánum writes that his English was so fine that he may be said to have made the book new in English. He also added about two hundred pages of notes, gathered from different books, that shed more light on the events.

He worked on the translation for eight months without a break. He was so busy that he had to put off answering his letters. When he finished, in March 1931, he wrote to his friend Martha Root that he was so tired that he could hardly write.

In 1930 he also sent a Bahá'í photographer from Australia all the way to Persia, to follow in the footsteps of the Báb and take pictures of the places where the story had happened. Without those photographs, there would be no pictures of many of those places as they looked then.

In 1932 the book was published. It was called The Dawn-Breakers. Shoghi Effendi dedicated it to the one he had loved best: the Greatest Holy Leaf, the sister of 'Abdu'l-Bahá.

A well-known scholar in London wrote to Shoghi Effendi that his English could not be bettered and that it never read like a translation.

The Bahá'ís of the West were changed by the book. Reading about the heroes of the Báb's day, they understood that this was a Faith for which people were ready to give their lives. Rúḥíyyih Khánum, who later became Shoghi Effendi's wife and wrote the story of his life, said that the seeds this book planted in their hearts grew for years to come.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "Translating The Dawn-Breakers".

Khánum, R.. (1969). *The Priceless Pearl*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust.