The Tenderness of the Greatest Holy Leaf

*A retelling based on **Bahíyyih Khánum: The Greatest Holy Leaf**, the compilation of writings by and about the daughter of Bahá'u'lláh published by the Bahá'í World Centre. Words in quotation marks are from Shoghi Effendi's tribute to her in that volume.*

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Bahíyyih Khánum, the daughter of Bahá'u'lláh, was "still in her infancy" when her Father was imprisoned in the Síyáh-Chál of Ṭihrán in 1852. Shoghi Effendi remembered hearing her describe those days: waiting at the door of the plundered house for news of Bahá'u'lláh's execution, and seeing the family lose everything in a single day. Her mother, Navváb, had nothing to give her but a handful of flour, which she placed in her daughter's palm in place of her daily bread.

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She went with her Father into exile, to Baghdád, Constantinople, Adrianople and finally the prison-city of 'Akká. In Adrianople a winter of exceptional severity, unhealthy lodgings and "dire financial distress" undermined her health for good. In 'Akká, "renouncing the very idea of matrimony," she stood by her brother 'Abdu'l-Bahá and gave her life to the service of her Father's Cause. She managed the household and cared for the daily needs of Bahá'u'lláh.

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With 'Abdu'l-Bahá she was generous to the officials of the city and their families, though many of them answered her kindness with hostility. Shoghi Effendi wrote that her heart "instantaneously reacted to the slightest injury that befell the least significant of creatures, whether friend or foe."

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In later years she was hostess to the growing number of pilgrims who came to 'Abdu'l-Bahá's house from East and West. When He travelled to Europe and America, He left her in charge of affairs in the Holy Land.

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Throughout the First World War, 'Abdu'l-Bahá's house in Haifa was besieged by famished men, women and children. Shoghi Effendi describes what she gave them: "Her words of cheer and comfort, the food, the money, the clothing she freely dispensed, the remedies which, by a process of her own, she herself prepared and diligently applied--all these had their share in comforting the disconsolate, in restoring sight to the blind, in sheltering the orphan, in healing the sick, and in succouring the homeless and the wanderer."

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The passing of 'Abdu'l-Bahá in 1921 was, in Shoghi Effendi's words, "a terrible blow from the effects of which she never completely recovered." Yet she became the young Guardian's support in what he called "the most critical and agitated hours" of his life. He wrote of her: "To me she was an incarnation of His winsome graciousness, of His all-encompassing tenderness and love." Among her qualities he named "a tenderness of heart that obliterated every distinction of creed, class and colour."

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **Bahíyyih Khánum: The Greatest Holy Leaf**.*

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