A Quiet Wedding in Haifa: Shoghi Effendi and Mary Maxwell

In *The Priceless Pearl* Rúḥíyyih Khánum tells, in her own voice, the story of her marriage to Shoghi Effendi on March 25, 1937. She is the most reliable witness; she is also the bride.

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She had grown up in Montreal, the daughter of May Bolles Maxwell and the architect William Sutherland Maxwell — a household that had received ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in 1912 and that had been, ever since, a centre of the Cause in Canada. Her mother had been one of the first Western pilgrims to Bahá’u’lláh’s son; her father was already a respected Bahá’í architect. She had visited Haifa as a young woman; she had served on national committees; she was already, in her late twenties, a working Bahá’í.

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Her engagement to the Guardian was kept entirely private. The Greatest Holy Leaf, Bahíyyih Khánum, had passed from this world in 1932; her old room in the Master’s house was the room in which the wedding ceremony would take place. There would be no public announcement until after the fact. The Maxwell family was permitted to attend; a few members of the Holy Family were present; nothing else.

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The ceremony itself, Rúḥíyyih Khánum writes, was the spare Bahá’í wedding vow — *We will all, verily, abide by the will of God* — exchanged in front of the small gathering. There was no sermon, no procession, no public meal. The newly-married Guardian returned, the same evening, to his work.

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Only after the ceremony was a cable sent to the Bahá’í world announcing the marriage. The brief text honoured the bride’s parents, named her by her Bahá’í title, *Rúḥíyyih,* meaning *spiritual,* and asked the believers to pray for the union.

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She does not, in *The Priceless Pearl,* indulge in private detail; she writes almost as if of someone else. But she does record one thing she felt the believers should know. The marriage joined a Persian Guardian to a Western Bahá’í of long service; it joined the Maxwell house in Montreal to the holy household in Haifa; it expressed, by its very fact, the union of East and West that the Faith was already enacting in its worldwide community.

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*Paraphrased from The Priceless Pearl (Rúḥíyyih Khánum, Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1969); see original for full text.*

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