Guardian (Bahá'í Faith)

The Guardian is a hereditary office of the Bahá'í Faith that is first mentioned in the Will and Testament of `Abdu'l-Bahá. Shoghi Effendi was named as the first Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, and future Guardians were to be appointed from among the male descendants of Bahá'u'lláh. However, since Shoghi Effendi died without having named a successor Guardian, no person could be named to fulfill the position after his death on November 4, 1957, and he remains the only individual acknowledged as Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, but his guidance remains in the written record of his many writings.

Being `Abdu'l-Bahá's eldest grandson, the first son of `Abdu'l-Bahá's eldest daughter Ḍiyá'iyyih Khánum, Shoghi Effendi had a special relationship with his grandfather. Zia Baghdadi, a contemporary Bahá'í, relates that when Shoghi Effendi was only five years of age, he pestered his grandfather to write a Tablet for him, which `Abdu'l-Bahá obliged.

`Abdu'l-Bahá's family physician, a German doctor who later became a Bahá'í, would relate that in 1910, when Shoghi Effendi was thirteen years old, `Abdu'l-Bahá named him his successor, referring to him as his "future Elisha." Shoghi Effendi remained close to his grandfather during his years as a student, first at the LaSallian Collège des Frères in Haifa and later as a boarder in Beirut, first at a Catholic school and later at the Syrian Protestant College. Shoghi Effendi was to accompany his grandfather on his journeys to the West but was unable to proceed after port authorities in Naples prevented Shoghi Effendi from continuing due to illness. At the end of World War I, after he had received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Beirut, Shoghi Effendi spent nearly two years of constant companionship with `Abdu'l-Bahá before proceeding to Oxford to further his studies and improve his English.

At the time of `Abdu'l-Bahá's death in Acre on November 28, 1921, Shoghi Effendi was a twenty-four-year-old student enrolled at Balliol College, Oxford. Upon reading the telegram announcing `Abdu'l-Bahá's death, in the home of Wellesley Tudor Pole who was Secretary of the London Local Spiritual Assembly, Shoghi Effendi passed out. After spending a few days with John Esslemont, Shoghi Effendi left England on December 16, 1921, accompanied by Lady Blomfield and his sister Ruhangiz, and arrived in Haifa on December 29. `Abdu'l-Bahá's Will and Testament, addressed to Shoghi Effendi, was read a few days after Shoghi Effendi's arrival in Haifa.

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