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Shrine of the Báb

Tomb of the founder of the Bábí Faith in Haifa, Israel

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Crowning the design, as anticipated by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, is a dome, which is set on an 18-windowed drum. That, in turn, is mounted on an octagon, a feature suggested by Shoghi Effendi. An arcade surrounds the stone edifice. A restoration project of the exterior and interior of the shrine started in 2008 and was completed in April 2011.

History

First mausoleum

Bahá'u'lláh arrived in the Haifa-Akka region as a prisoner of the Ottoman Empire in the same year as the first German Templer colony in Palestine was founded in Haifa. Years later, after his release from strict confinement, he visited the Templer Colony on Mount Carmel several times and wrote a letter to Georg David Hardegg, the co-founder of the Templer movement. He subsequently asked his son, ‘Abdu’l-Baha, to build, on the alignment of the Templer Colony road (Carmel Avenue) with the shrine to the forerunner of the religion, known as "the Báb", halfway up the mountain. The conjunction of the Templer buildings and the Shrine have become the most significant landmark in the modern city of Haifa.

The remains of the Báb were buried on March 21, 1909 in a six-room mausoleum made of local stone. In a separate room, the remains of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá were buried in November 1921. In 1929 three rooms were added to the mausoleum.

Final shrine

In 1949 the first threshold stone of the superstructure was laid by Shoghi Effendi. The construction was completed over the mausoleum in 1953 and was entirely paid for by Baháʼís around the world.

The architect was William Sutherland Maxwell, a Canadian Baháʼí who was a Beaux-Arts architect and the father-in-law of Shoghi Effendi. Shoghi Effendi provided overall guidance, including in the use of Western and Eastern styles, but left the artistic details to Maxwell. Maxwell's design of the Baveno rose granite colonnade, Oriental-style Chiampo stone arches, and golden dome is meant to harmonize Eastern and Western proportions and style. Maxwell died in 1952, and Shoghi Effendi named the southern door of the Shrine after him. Some remaining aspects of the dome's structural engineering were designed by Professor H. Neumann of Haifa's Technion University.

In 1952, Leroy Ioas, an American Baháʼí who had been closely associated with the construction of the Baháʼí House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois helped Shoghi Effendi in the construction process. Ioas employed his administrative skills and practical mind to supervise the building of the drum and dome, a task done without the availability of sophisticated machinery. Shoghi Effendi named the door on the octagon after him.

Because of the scarcity of building materials in the area after World War II, most of the stones for the Shrine of the Báb were carved in Italy with the assistance of Ugo Giachery and then shipped to Haifa. One of the doors of the Shrine was named after Giachery. The superstructure was said to be at the time the largest prefabricated building to move from Europe to any point in the world.

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