Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Moojan Momen, Fayzi, Abu'l-Qasim (Hand of the Cause), New York: Columbia University, 1999, bahai-library.com.
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

Fayzí, Abu'l-Qásim (Hand of the Cause)

Moojan Momen
published in Encyclopaedia IranicaVolume 9

New York: Columbia University, 1999

FAYŻĪ, ABU’L-QĀSEM (b. Qom, 1906; d. Haifa, 19 November 1980), Bahai teacher, missionary, and author. Fayżī’s father, ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Khan, and mother, Ṣeddīqa, were first cousins and descendants of Mollā Moḥsen Fayż. Fayżī moved with his family to Tehran at the age fifteen, where his parents, although they were not Bahais, enrolled him in the Bahai-run Tarbīat school. Influenced by his Bahai teachers and the Bahai weekly classes of dars-e aḵlāq (lit: instructions on ethics), he eventually came to consider himself a Bahai. In 1927 he went to Beirut to study English literature at the American University, and used the occasion to make several trips to Haifa to meet Shoghi Effendi, the then guardian of the Bahai faith (Baháʾí World 18, p. 660). He returned to Persia in 1934 and worked for a short time at the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company before resigning his post and moving to Najafābād to teach the Bahai children there, whose school had been closed down by the government. In 1939 he married Gloria ʿAlāʾī in Tehran; they had a daughter and a son as well as an adopted son. In 1940 Fayżī left Najafābād for Qazvīn. After one year in Qazvīn, he and his wife moved to Iraq for a year before proceeding to Bahrain, where they were the first Bahais to settle. Despite many hardships, they remained there until 1958. He worked as a teacher of English and, at the same time, oversaw the establishment of a Bahai community there. Fayżī was praised by Shoghi Effendi for his work for the Bahai cause in Bahrain. (Baháʾí World 18, p. 664)

In October 1957, Fayżī was appointed one of the Hands of the Cause (Ayādī-e amr Allāh, by Shoghi Effendi. The next year, after the passing of Shoghi Effendi, Fayżī was elected as one of the nine Hands to reside permanently at the Bahai World Center at Haifa, where he settled with his family. This began a phase of Fayżī’s life in which he was constantly traveling until ill-health overtook him shortly before his death. He visited most parts of the world, especially North America, Europe, Asia, and the Pacific on Bahai missions. Fayżī was a poet and an excellent calligrapher. His writings consist mostly of short tracts. He contributed to the journal Rāh-e now and its successor Jahān-e now. He also translated from English into Persian (R. Rabbani, The Priceless Heart, tr. as Gohar-e yaktā, Tehran, 1969); and vice versa (Ḥājī Mīrzā Ḥaydar-ʿAlī, Bahjat al-ṣodūr, tr. as Delight of Hearts, Los Angeles, 1980)

Bibliography: Obituary by his wife in Baháʾí World 18, pp. 659-65. B. Harper, Lights of Fortitude, Oxford, 1997, pp. 426-33. A special issue of Payām-e Bahāʾī (Paris, no. 132, 1990) dedicated to him includes a bibliography (by A. Ṣādeqīān, pp. 55-59) of his Persian writings, including 19 books (e.g., Dāstān-e dūstān, Tehran, 124 B.E=1336 Š./1957) and booklets, 20 articles for general reading, 34 articles on Bahai subjects, and 5 books translated into Persian. The list includes also 14 booklets in English. A forthcoming volume of Ḵūšahā-ī az ḵarman-e honar wa adab,Landegg (Switzerland, 1998) will be devoted to him, and an anthology of his writings is forthcoming.

METADATA

Views7860 views since posted 2002; last edit 2025-04-04 02:40 UTC;

previous at archive.org.../momen_iranica_abul-qasim_faizi;
URLs changed in 2010, see archive.org.../bahai-library.org
Language
English
Permission
fair use
Share

Shortlink: bahai-library.com/3462
Citation: ris/3462

select Collection:
Archives
Articles
Articles-unpublished
Audio
Bibliographies
BIC
Biographies
Books
Chronologies
Compilations
Compilations-NSA
Compilations-personal
Documents
East-asia
Encyclopedia
Essays
Etc
Excerpts
Fiction
Glossaries
Guardian
Histories
Introductory
Letters
Maps
Music
Newspapers
NSA-documents
NSA-letters
Personal
Pilgrims
Poetry
Presentations
Resources
Reviews
Scripts
Software
Statistics
Study
Talks
Theses
Transcripts
Translations
UHJ-documents
UHJ-letters
Video
Visual
Writings

home

sitemap

series

chronology

search:
author

title

date

tags

adv. search
languages

inventory

bibliography

abbreviations

links

about

contact

RSS

new

Wählen Sie einen zweiten Text zum parallelen Lesen — eine Übersetzung oder einen beliebigen anderen Text.