Dr. `Abdu'l-Bahá — Profile, Specialty, Credentials & Public Visibility

Summary

Updated 2026-06-09

He spent 56 years as a prisoner — first following his father into exile at age eight, then locked in the fortress city of Acre until his sixties — and used the moment of his release to carry a Persian-rooted faith across Europe and North America.

Biography

About

Born Abbas to an aristocratic family in Tehran in 1844, he was eight when his father Baháʼu'lláh was imprisoned during a crackdown on the Bábí Faith and the family lost everything. Exile followed: a decade in Baghdad, brief stops in Istanbul and Edirne, then the prison-city of Acre, where he remained captive under Ottoman rule. When the Young Turk Revolution freed him in 1908 at 64, he traveled west — Europe, North America — expanding the Baháʼí message beyond the Middle East until World War I pinned him in Haifa. His father's 1892 will named him successor and head of the Faith; his Tablets of…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from `Abdu'l-Bahá

`Abdu'l-Bahá

said2 Dec 1912

Act in such a way that your heart may be free from hatred. Let not your heart be offended with anyone.

— Talk at Home of Mr. and Mrs. Edward B. Kinney, New York, New York (2 December 1912), p. 453

`Abdu'l-Bahá

said14 Jul 1912

In the great body of human society it is impossible to establish unity and coordination if one part is considered perfect and the other imperfect.

— Talk at All Souls Unitarian Church Fourth Avenue and Twentieth Street, New York (14 July 1912)

`Abdu'l-Bahá

said1909

Love is the mystery of divine revelations! Love is the effulgent manifestation! Love is the spiritual fulfillment!

— “O thou who art attracted by the Fragrances of God!…” in Tablets of Abdul-Baha Abbas (1909), p. 730

`Abdu'l-Bahá

saidundated

Humanity has emerged from its former degrees of limitation and preliminary training. Man must now become imbued with new virtues and powers, new moralities, new capacities.

— "The True Modernism"

`Abdu'l-Bahá

saidundated