DEVELOPMENT OF BAHÁ’Í WORLD CENTER
In the Holy Land, the center and pivot round which the divinely appointed, fast multiplying institutions of a world-encircling, resistlessly marching Faith revolve, the double process, so noticeable in recent years, involving a rapid decline in the fortunes of the breakers of Bahá’u’lláh’s Covenant and proclaiming the rise of the institutions of its World Administrative Center, in the shadow of His Shrine, has been accelerated on the one hand, through the death, in miserable circumstances, of the treacherous and malignant Majdi’d-Dín, the last survivor of the principal instigators of the rebellion against the Will of the Founder of our Faith, and, on the other, through the laying of the foundation, and the erection of some of the pillars, of the facade and of the northern side of the International Bahá’í Archives—the first of the major edifices destined to constitute the seat of the World Bahá’í Administrative Center to be established on Mt. Carmel. No less than thirty of the fifty-two pillars, each over seven meters high, of this imposing and strikingly beautiful edifice have already been raised, whilst half of the nine hundred tons of stone ordered in Italy for its construction have already been safely delivered at the Port of Haifa. A contract, moreover, for over fifteen thousand dollars has been placed with a tile factory in Utrecht for the manufacture of over seven thousand green tiles designed to cover the five hundred square meters of the roof of the building.
Coincident with these building operations an extensive plot, adjoining the resting-place of the Greatest Holy Leaf has, after protracted and difficult negotiations, been purchased for the sum of one hundred thousand dollars, for the purpose of extending and safeguarding, on the one hand, the area of the international Bahá’í endowments on Mt. Carmel, and of providing, on the other, the much needed space for the extension and completion of the far-flung arc around which the edifices of the World Bahá’í Administrative Order are to be built. The recently acquired area surrounding the holiest Shrine in the Bahá’í World and its appointed Qiblih in the plain of Akká has been further extended through the purchase from the Development Authority of the State of Israel of a dilapidated house, situated south of the Mansion and blessed by the presence of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and in which He was wont to receive His friends, amongst them the first party of western Bahá’í pilgrims to arrive in the Holy Land after the passing of Bahá’u’lláh. To these latest acquisitions must be added the purchase of another plot situated in the neighborhood of the Báb’s Sepulcher and adjoining the area surrounding the future seat of the World Bahá’í Administrative Order, raising thereby the total area of the international Bahá’í endowments in the Holy Land to over four hundred thousand square meters. Furthermore, the necessary formalities have been completed in connection with the purchase of the site of the future Mashriqu’l-Adhkár on Mt. Carmel, while the transfer of the title deeds of recently acquired plots to the name of the Israel branches of the United States, the British, the Persian, the Canadian and Australian Bahá’í National Spiritual Assemblies is being expeditiously carried out.