Shoghi Effendi Through The Pilgrim’s Eye: Building the Administrative Order, 1922-1952

The life and work of the Guardian told through accounts by pilgrims and visitors as well as those who worked to assist him. 'Fascinating . . . thoroughly enjoyable . . . truly inspirational' Literature Review Panel of the Bahá’ís of the United Kingdom Shoghi Effendi Through the Pilgrim’s Eye tells the story of the Guardian’s ministry from 1922 when the young Shoghi Effendi, just 24 years old, was charged with guiding the affairs of a worldwide Faith. Rather than a biography, it draws on the diary entries and letters (many now published for the first time) of the many pilgrims and visitors to the Bahá’í Holy Places in Haifa and ‘Akká, as well as the accounts of those who worked to assist the Guardian in his many extraordinary achievements. As in all such cases, these recollections must be taken in the spirit of pilgrim notes – interesting and thought-provoking highlights and observations, but not any part of the Bahá’í Sacred Text. They do, however, provide unique insights and inspiration. Volume I (1922−1952) covers the years when the Guardian was laying the foundations of the Bahá’í Administrative Order destined to culminate in the World Order of Bahá’u’lláh, while at the same time planning and carrying out the extension and development of the Shrines of the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh, translating the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh as well as The Dawn-Breakers and writing his own major works, as well as facing challenges to his authority and responding to the confiscation of the House of Bahá’u’lláh in Baghdad and the persecution of Bahá’ís in Iran and Egypt. The volume ends just before the dramatic decade that was to begin in 1953 with the celebration of the Bahá’í Holy Year, the first intercontinental conferences and the launching of the ten-year worldwide spiritual plan to carry the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh to every place on the planet.