The Queen of Carmel

A retelling based on The Priceless Pearl by Rúḥíyyih Khánum, her biography of Shoghi Effendi, with details from Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By and his Messages to the Bahá'í World. Words in quotation marks are quoted from those books.

The Báb was executed in Tabríz in 1850. His followers took His body, and that of His companion, from the edge of the moat where they had been cast, and for nearly fifty years kept the remains hidden in Persia, moving them from one hiding-place to another. In 1899 they reached the Holy Land. On Naw-Rúz 1909 'Abdu'l-Bahá laid them with His own hands in the vault of a stone Shrine He had built on Mount Carmel, on a site Bahá'u'lláh Himself had chosen.

That first building was plain. In a letter of December 1947 to the Haifa building commission, Shoghi Effendi called it "a homely building with a fortress-like appearance." He intended to keep it intact and to enclose it in a monument. Later that month he cabled the American believers that the plans for an arcade around the Shrine were complete, the first step in a process "destined to culminate in construction of the Dome anticipated by 'Abdu'l-Bahá."

The architect was Sutherland Maxwell, Rúḥíyyih Khánum's father. Shoghi Effendi found one of his early drawings "too European in emphasis," and Maxwell returned to a style of dome he had once designed for the American House of Worship, which showed Indian influence. The Guardian approved the corner minarets in December 1943 and asked for a scale model before deciding. In May 1944, at the centenary of the Báb's Declaration, he chose the design and showed the model to the believers gathered in Haifa.

Building began in the middle of another war. In April 1948, as the British Mandate was ending, Maxwell left for Italy to place contracts for the stone; his was one of the last planes out of Lydda airport before it was taken. Local quarries and skilled carvers could not be had, so every stone of the Shrine was quarried, cut and carved in Italy and shipped to Haifa, and the golden tiles of the dome were ordered in Holland. That year Shoghi Effendi himself directed the excavation of the rock behind the Shrine to make room for the arcade, on site from early morning until dark, month after month.

Maxwell died in March 1952, before the dome was built. Leroy Ioas supervised the building of the drum and dome in Haifa, and Ugo Giachery oversaw the work in Italy. In October 1953 Shoghi Effendi announced that the "five-year-old, three-quarter million dollar enterprise" was "consummated." The stained glass, the cleaning and the floodlighting were done, and visitors, "on many days exceeding a thousand," were coming to the Shrine.

Rúḥíyyih Khánum writes that Shoghi Effendi, "recognizing in it an essentially feminine quality of beauty and purity, called it the 'Queen of Carmel'." Shoghi Effendi described the Shrine as "enthroned on God's Holy Mountain, crowned with glowing gold, robed in shimmering white and girdled with emerald green, a sight enchanting every eye, whether viewed from the air, the sea, the plain or the hill."

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Priceless Pearl by Rúḥíyyih Khánum, chapter 11.

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