Abdu'l-Baha

Abdu'l-Baha (1844-1921) was the eldest son of Baha'u'llah, born Abbas Effendi in Tehran on the very night, by the Baha'i reckoning, that the Bab declared his mission. He shared his father's forty years of imprisonment and exile from childhood, and after Baha'u'llah's death in 1892 he became, by his father's explicit written appointment, the head of the Baha'i Faith and the authorized interpreter of its scriptures.

He took for himself no title of grandeur but the name Abdu'l-Baha, the Servant of Baha, servant of the Glory, and Baha'is know him also as the Master. His designation is the linchpin of what Baha'is call the Covenant: the written chain of authority by which Baha'u'llah sought to preserve the unity of his community against the divisions that had followed earlier prophets. Abdu'l-Baha's authority to interpret was challenged by some of his own relatives, and Baha'is regard his vindication and the failure of those challenges as a demonstration of the Covenant's power to hold the faith together.

He remained a prisoner of the Ottoman state until the Young Turk revolution of 1908 freed all political and religious prisoners, so that only in his mid-sixties did he gain his liberty.

Abdu'l-Baha's place in Baha'i belief is carefully defined and distinctive. He is not regarded as a Manifestation of God or a prophet, that line ended with Baha'u'llah, but as the perfect exemplar of his father's teachings, the flawless human embodiment of the Baha'i life, and the one infallible interpreter of the revealed word. Baha'is look to his conduct as the model of how the teachings are to be lived.

Freed at last, and despite advancing age and poor health, he undertook a series of remarkable journeys between 1911 and 1913, travelling through Egypt, Europe and North America to proclaim his father's message. He addressed churches, synagogues, universities and peace societies from London and Paris to New York, Chicago and California, speaking on the oneness of humanity, the elimination of prejudice, he spoke pointedly on racial unity in the United States, the equality of women and men, and the necessity of world peace, warning of the great war he saw approaching.

During the famine in Palestine in the First World War he organized relief for the population regardless of creed, and in 1920 the British administration conferred a knighthood upon him for this humanitarian work, an honour he accepted while declining the style that went with it.

Abdu'l-Baha was a prolific author and correspondent, and because he is held to be an infallible interpreter, his writings and recorded talks carry scriptural authority for Baha'is. Among the best known are Some Answered Questions, a series of table talks expounding Baha'i teaching on God, the prophets, the soul and immortality; the Tablets of the Divine Plan, which set out the missionary expansion of the faith; and The Secret of Divine Civilization, an early treatise on the reform and progress of society.

His most consequential act for the faith's future was to provide, in his Will and Testament, for the continuation of authority after him. He appointed his grandson Shoghi Effendi as Guardian of the Cause and interpreter of the teachings, and confirmed the eventual establishment of the elected Universal House of Justice, together the twin institutions on which the modern Baha'i administrative order rests.

When Abdu'l-Baha died in Haifa in 1921, his funeral drew a great and diverse crowd, Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Baha'i, and officials of the new British Mandate, a measure of the regard he had won across communities. In the transition from the founder's revelation to a functioning worldwide institution, his forty-year stewardship is regarded by Baha'is as decisive.