Introduction to the book

This book tells the story of the Baha’i faith through the eyes of some of the children and grandchildren of its founder, and others who knew Baha’u’llah personally. Despite their sincere belief, they were excommunicated and shunned by their own relatives and fellow believers after the prophet’s death. They called themselves Unitarian Baha’is and stood for a broad-minded faith based on reason and individual freedom of conscience.
Shua Ullah Behai, the eldest grandson of Baha’u’llah, led a Unitarian Baha’i denomination in the United States and compiled an introduction to the Baha’i faith in the 1940s. This historically significant manuscript was preserved by the author’s niece — the great-granddaughter of Baha’u’llah — and is published for the first time in this annotated volume.

Book Details

A Lost History of the Baha’i Faith:
The Progressive Tradition of Baha’u’llah’s Forgotten Family
By Shua Ullah Behai and Eric Stetson (Editor)
602 pages. 6″ x 9″ paperback. Published December 2014.
Includes extensive editorial notes and 30+ pages of black-and-white historical photos.

About the Author

Shua Ullah Behai (1878 – 1950), also known to Baha’is as Mirza Shu’a’u’llah, was the son of Mohammed Ali Bahai (Mirza Muhammad ‘Ali), son of Baha’u’llah. He was Baha’u’llah’s eldest grandson and knew him personally in his childhood and adolescence.
Mr. Behai was fluent in English and is the only known descendant of the Baha’i prophet to have become an American citizen. He emigrated from Akka (Acre), now part of Israel, to the United States in 1904, and lived there for most of his adult life as a successful businessman, later retiring to the Holy Land.
During his time in America he served as representative and spokesperson for the Unitarian Baha’i movement which was founded by his father, resisting the claims of infallibility of ‘Abdu’l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi and promoting a liberal interpretation of the Baha’i faith. In the 1930s he published a magazine called Behai Quarterly, which circulated among American Baha’is who followed Mohammed Ali Bahai and disagreed with Shoghi Effendi.

After he left the United States, Shua Ullah Behai’s alternative Baha’i community dwindled and eventually disappeared, but he preserved many of the important writings of this tradition in his book, which is now published 70 years later.

A Lost History of the Baha’i Faith includes writings by all of the following people:

• Baha’u’llah (including some original translations by Shua Ullah Behai)
• ‘Abdu’l-Baha Abbas Effendi, son of Baha’u’llah
• Mohammed Ali Bahai, son of Baha’u’llah
• Badi Ullah Bahai, son of Baha’u’llah
• Shua Ullah Behai, grandson of Baha’u’llah
• Kamar Bahai, granddaughter of Baha’u’llah
• Mousa Bahai, grandson of Baha’u’llah
• Majdeddin bin Moussa Irani, nephew and son-in-law of Baha’u’llah
• Mirza Aqa Jan Kashani, chief secretary of Baha’u’llah for 40 years
• Mohammed Jawad Gazvini, companion of Baha’u’llah and Baha’i historian
• Ibrahim G. Kheiralla, first Baha’i missionary to America
• And more!