The Greatest Holy Leaf After the Ascension

*A retelling based on **Bahíyyih Khánum: The Greatest Holy Leaf**, the compilation published by the Bahá'í World Centre, with the dates of Shoghi Effendi's journey from Rúḥíyyih Khánum's The Priceless Pearl. Words in quotation marks are quoted from the compilation.*

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'Abdu'l-Bahá passed away in Haifa in the early hours of 28 November 1921. His Will and Testament named His eldest grandson, Shoghi Effendi, as Guardian of the Cause of God. Shoghi Effendi was twenty-four and a student at Oxford. He read the cable telling of the Master's passing in the London office of Major Wellesley Tudor Pole, and he reached Haifa on 29 December.

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The grief and the weight of his new charge were too much for him at first.

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In a letter preserved in the compilation he wrote: "This servant, after that grievous event and great calamity, the ascension of His Holiness 'Abdu'l-Bahá to the Abhá Kingdom, has been so stricken with grief and pain and so entangled in the troubles created by the enemies of the Cause of God, that I consider that my presence here, at such a time and in such an atmosphere, is not in accordance with the fulfilment of my important and sacred duties." And so, he went on, "I have left for a time the affairs of the Cause both at home and abroad, under the supervision of the Holy Family and the headship of the Greatest Holy Leaf."

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Bahíyyih Khánum, 'Abdu'l-Bahá's sister, wrote to the Bahá'ís that Shoghi Effendi, "as a result of intense and unceasing grief over this great bereavement," had "determined to absent himself for a short period, in an effort to rest, and to regain his health, after which he will return to the Holy Land and resume his services and obligations to the Cause of God." In the meantime she had been appointed "to administer the affairs of the Faith, in consultation with the members of the Holy Household," and she arranged for the persons Shoghi Effendi had named to meet and conduct its affairs.

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She told the friends that although their hearts were burning with grief, "this day is the day of service, and this time the time to spread the holy Teachings far and wide."

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She had known hardship since childhood. Shoghi Effendi later recalled how she told him that when Bahá'u'lláh was imprisoned in Tihrán, her family lost all its possessions within a single day, and her mother, Navváb, placed a handful of flour in her hand as a substitute for her daily bread. She shared her Father's banishment to Baghdád, Adrianople and 'Akká.

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When 'Abdu'l-Bahá travelled to the West, He left her to attend to "the multitudinous details arising out of His protracted absence from the Holy Land." During the war, the hungry who came to His house in Haifa received from her food, money, clothing and remedies she prepared herself.

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His passing was, Shoghi Effendi wrote, "a terrible blow from the effects of which she never completely recovered." He marvelled that "a woman of her age, so frail in body, so sensitive of heart, so loaded with the cares of almost eighty years of incessant tribulation, could so long survive so shattering a blow." Of what she meant to him in those years he wrote: "Which of the blessings am I to recount, which in her unfailing solicitude she showered upon me, in the most critical and agitated hours of my life?" She was, he said, "a continual reminder" of 'Abdu'l-Bahá.

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The Greatest Holy Leaf died in July 1932. In his lament for her, Shoghi Effendi called her "the Remnant of Bahá, and His trust."

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*This is a retelling. For the full account, see **Bahíyyih Khánum: The Greatest Holy Leaf**, published by the Bahá'í World Centre.*

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