`Abdu'l-Bahá's journeys to the West

`Abdu'l-Bahá's journeys to the West were a series of trips `Abdu'l-Bahá undertook starting at the age of 67 from Palestine to the West from 1910 to 1913. `Abdu'l-Bahá, the son of Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Bahá'í Faith, was imprisoned at the age of 8 and suffered various degrees of privation most of his life. He was appointed as the successor and head of the Bahá'í Faith upon the death of his father on 29 May 1892. Sixteen years later he was suddenly freed at the age of 64 as a ramification of the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. At the time of his release, the major centres of Bahá'í population and scholarly activity were mostly in Iran, with other large communities in Baku, Azerbaijan,Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, and Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

Meanwhile in the Occident the religion had been introduced in the late 1890s in several locales, however by 1910 the religion's followers still numbered less than a few thousand across the entire West. `Abdu'l-Bahá thus took steps to personally present the Bahá'í teachings to the West by travelling to Europe and North America. His first excursion outside of Palestine and Iran was to Egypt in 1910 where he stayed for around a year, followed by a near five-month trip to France and Great Britain in 1911. After returning to Egypt, he left on a trip to North America which lasted nearly 8 months. During that trip he visited many cities across the United States, from major metropolitan areas on the eastern coast of the country, to cities in the midwest, and California on the west coast; he also visited Montreal in Canada. Following his trip in North America he visited various countries in Europe, including France, Britain and Germany for six months, followed by a six-month stay again in Egypt, before returning to Haifa.

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