Shoghi Effendi called her "the spiritual mother of Canada" and Montreal the "mother city of Canada". [OBCC35]

"Sister Mehrangis [Mehrangiz] followed example Ruhi's sister. Justice demands announce believers her expulsion."(UD149)

The publication in 1865 of the Comte de Gobineau’s (1816-1882),Les Religions et Les Philosophies dans l'Asie Centrale created an interest in Europe. A scholar that was inspired by Gobineau was E.G.Browne. He travelled to Iran and also visited Bahá’u’lláh in Akka in the latter days of His life. He translated two histories of the new religion and published two other books as well as a number of articles. He also made an important collection of manuscripts that he gave to Cambridge University Library. Bahá'ís have criticized Browne's work for being too sympathetic to Azal, Baha'u'llah's half-brother and implacable enemy. One of the books that Cobineau for Les Religions... was Násikhu't-Taváríkh (the 'history to abrogate all previous historiies') by Lisánu'l-Mulk. This book had been condemned by Bahá'u'lláh as a falsification of history one which even an infidel would not have had the effrontery to produce. [SUR36-37]      

A.L.M. Nicolas (1864-1939) was a French consular official in Iran who researched and wrote a biography of the Báb as well as translating three of the Báb's major works into French.

     Just as the Báb was the centre of the scholarly interests of Gobineau, Browne and Nicolas, some Russian scholars who were more interested in Bahá'u'lláh. Baron Viktor Rosen (1849-1908), the director of the Oriental Department of the University of St. Petersburg was assisted by Aleksandr Tumanski (1861-1920). He spent a great deal of time with the Bahá'í community of Ashkhabad and with Mirza Abu'l-Fadl Gulpaygani. Although he did not write as much as Browne or Nicolas, what he did write was derived from a very deep and thorough investigation. [L&E43-83]

See An Officer and an Orientalist: Alexander Grigorevich Tumanskii and His Contribution to Russian Historiography on and Policy towards the Babi-Baha’i Religion by Soli Shahvar, Bahá'í Studies Review 20 (1), 3-19

     There was much interest in scholarship in the early days of the Faith because almost all of the most important disciples of the Báb were Islamic religious scholars, as were many of the leading converts to the Bahá'í Faith in later years. The most important of these was the above mentioned Mirza Abu'l-Fadl Gulpaygani (1844-1914). He was learned in the Zoroastrian and Jewish scriptures and spent some time in the Christian West at the request of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá prior to His visit.

     During the 1930s to 1960s, a second generation of Iranian Bahá'í scholars, such as Fadil Mazandarani (1881-1957), 'Abdul-Hamid Ishraq-Khavari (1902-1972), and 'Azizu'llah Sulaymani (1901-1985) systematized Bahá'í theology and law, developed aids for scholars such as dictionaries of Bahá'í terminology, and wrote histories and biographies. This was of course a more traditional style of scholarship than is current in the West, but it continues to be useful to all present scholars.

     The above-described initial flurry of interest in the Bábí and Bahá'í religions in the West was not sustained and from the 1920s to the 1970s, there were no Western scholars who were as deeply engaged as the above-named ones and only a handful of studies that can be said to have done much to advance knowledge. From the 1970s onward, there gradually emerged a new stream of scholars who can be said to be a fusion of the above two groups, the Western and the Bahá'í scholars. This new generation of scholars mostly began as Bahá'ís, although some have subsequently left the religion. They use Western academic methodology and most operate from within Western universities but they have access to insider information and resources. Apart from these individuals, the Bahá'í Faith has been very little studied by Western scholars of religion.

     A word must also be said about what passes for scholarship on the Bahá'í Faith in Iran and to a lesser extent in the rest of the Middle East. Bahá'ís have been persecuted in many Middle Eastern countries and rejected by Islamic leaders, and one form of this discrimination has involved the manipulation of information. For most of the last 100 years, deliberately distorted or falsified information and documents have been created mostly by some within the Islamic religious establishment and then distributed as though these were facts about the Bahá'í Faith. Since the Bahá'ís have had no ability to respond to this material in the Middle East, these distortions have gradually become accepted in the Middle East as the truth. One example is the forged memoirs of Count Dolgorukov, the Russian ambassador to Iran in the 1840s to 1850s. This and other contradictions were so clearly spurious that even some Iranian scholars debunked them when they were first published in the 1940s. But despite this, they are often regularly cited by Middle Eastern writers up to the present day as though they are a reliable source for the history of the religion.

     Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, this manufacturing of disinformation and forged material has increased greatly with programs in the media, articles, and books appearing on a frequent basis, especially in the government-run media. The result is that there is almost nothing published in the Middle East that has reliable information about the Bahá'í Faith in it. A little of this sort of scholarship has also appeared in the West; some Christian missionaries, notably Reverend William McElwee Miller(1892-1993)(Also see WOB83) have written anti-Bahá'í material and ex-Bahá'ís have published academic work that is calculated to make the Bahá'í community resemble a cult as portrayed in the anti-cult campaigns that were carried out in the Western media in the 1980s. [The above was copied from the website Patheos and has been edited for brevity. It was contributed by Dr. Natalie Mobini]

After Abdu'l-Fadl passed away in early 1914 the American believers, in gratitude for the contribution he had made to the American Bahá'í community, collected a sum of money for the construction of a suitable monument for his grave. The work was interrupted with the Ascension of the Master and the money collected was reverted the National Fund. That money was now sent to the National Spiritual Assembly of Egypt. [BW9p89] [key]

She first heard of the Faith at the age of 21 in 1899 under miraculous circumstances. [Mable Ives & The Mysterious Trolley Car Ride]

In 1903 she married Theron Canfield Rice-Wray and had three children. They lived in California from 1909 to 1914 where her marriage ended and she returned to the East.

In 1919 she met Howard Colby Ives and they married in 1920 and she became known to many who loved her as "Rizwanea". For nearly twenty years they traveled and taught the Faith often teaming with Grace and Harlan Ober as well as Doris and Willard McKay in both business and the teaching work. It was their entire life. They traveled through the New England states, through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, New York and many many more in Canada as well-always teaching, always leaving an established Assembly behind them." For example they came to Toronto in November of 1938 and stayed for about 10 months. During that time Mabel gave more than 150 lectures in Toronto and about 70 in Hamilton, Toronto's expansion goal. Howard, who was had had heart problems and who was rapidly losing for sight and hearing at the time, complemented her abilities by doing personal deepening with receptive souls. [TMLF62-67, SEBW139-154]

• See Fires in Many Hearts - Memoirs of an early American believer by Doris McKay.

See the story of how Mabel resolved the situation when she could no longer tolerate the itinerate lifestyle in the story When Mable Ives Could Endure No More, She Prayed .

See the tribute paid to her in the Canadian Bahá'í News No 202 November 1966 p4.

The inability, under restrictions imposed by the war, to hold Convention sessions this year challenged the National Spiritual Assembly to maintain the important functions of the annual meeting through other means. Steps were therefore taken to provide for Voting by mail, with a committee of tellers to serve in the customary way, to conduct a public meeting or Bahá’í Congress in Foundation Hall during the Riḍván Period, and to provide the delegates with subjects for written suggestions and views. [BN No 174 April-May 145 p2]

...the Bahá'ís should continue to apply, under all circumstances, for exemption from any military duty that necessitates the taking of life. There is no justification for any change of attitude on our part at the present time.

The Universal House of Justice amplified this later statement:

There is no objection in a Bahá'í enlisting voluntarily in the armed forces of a country in order to obtain a training in some trade or profession, provided that he can do so without making himself liable to undertake combatant service. [BW17:384–5]

1. Consolidation of all local Bahá'í communities.

2. Reestablishment of 62 dissolved Assemblies. (93 LSAs formed)

3. Formation of 22 groups. (37 established)

4. Creation of 13 new centres. (24 localities established)

5. Development of Assemblies from groups in three adjoining countries, namely in Kabul, Afghanistan, Mecca, Arabia and Bahrein Island, Persian Gulf.

6. The formation of groups in four localities on the Arabian Peninsula.

7. The sending pioneers to India and 'Iráq to assist in the formation of new groups.

The Bahá'ís of Tehran were called upon to send out 50 families into the pioneer field. (160 arose) Every individual Bahá'í was included in the operation of the Plan-as a volunteer, by deputizing a pioneer, by contributing funds, by circuit teaching or by providing hospitality to students whose parents had become pioneers. [BW4p34-35; BW11p34-36]

The goals were:
  - To establish two new Spiritual Assemblies in Australia
  - To establish nineteen groups in Australasia

The goals were:
   -To increase the number of Bahá’í centres
   -To complete the construction of the National Hazíratu’l-Quds
   -To raise contributions to support the National Fund
   -To establish ten new Local Assemblies
   -To encourage Bahá’í communities in the south of the country

One of his daughters, Dame Robin White, is a New Zealand painter and printmaker, recognized as a key figure in the regionalist movement of 20th-century New Zealand art. Her art is the subject of a book called Robin White: Something is Happening Here by Dr Sarah Farrar, Dr Nina Tonga and Jill Trevelyan.

Some goals were:
  - To raise to nine the number of Local Spiritual Assemblies
  - To raise to thirty-three the number of localities where Bahá’ís reside
  - To send pioneers to Tunisia, Algeria and Libya
  - To acquire property for a Bahá’í school
  - To issue a Bahá’í magazine
  - To consolidate the community in Ethiopia

Some goals were:
  - To double the number of Local Spiritual Assemblies from fourteen to twenty-eight, increasing the Bahá’í membership in each community
  - To raise the number of localities in Germany and Austria where Bahá’ís reside
  - To deepen the understanding of the friends in the operation of the Administrative Order
  - To encourage deeper study of the teachings
  - To construct the National Hazíratu’l-Quds in Frankfurt
  - To enrich Bahá’í literature with two publications by March 1949, fifteen by March 1950, six by March 1951 and nine by 1952

Some objectives were;
  - To incorporate the National Spiritual Assembly
  - To establish national endowments
  - To increase to thirty the number of Local Spiritual Assemblies
  - To increase to one hundred the number of localities where Bahá’ís reside
  - To form a group in Newfoundland
  - To form a group in Greenland
  - To enroll (Eskimos) Inuit and (Native Indians) First Nations in the Faith

After the Islamic Revolution, the Mostazafan Foundation – in English, the Foundation for the Oppressed – confiscated properties belonging to members of the Bahá'í community. The Misaghieh Hospital was among these properties. After its confiscation, the hospital’s name was changed to Shahid Mostafa Khomeini Hospital. [Iran Wire] [key]