Balyuzi, H. M.

by Moojan Momen

published in Encyclopaedia Iranica, Volume 3
New York: Columbia University, 1989

BĀLYŪZĪ, ḤASAN MOWAQQAR (b. Shiraz, 1908; d. London, 12 February 1980), Bahai author and administrator, the son of ʿAlī-Moḥammad Khan Mowaqqar-al-Dawla and member of the Afnān family. He was educated at the American University, Beirut, and the London School of Economics. He founded with Mojtabā Mīnovī the Persian service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. Bālyūzī was elected member of the national Spiritual Assembly of the Bahais of Great Britain and Ireland, 1933-60, and chairman, 1942-60. Shoghi Effendi appointed him as one of the Hands of the Cause of God (Ayādī-e Amr Allāh), 1957. He was elected as one of the Hands resident in Haifa, 1958-59. In the last twenty years of his life, when ill health prevented public activity, Bālyūzī concentrated on writing a number of histories of the Bahai faith, which have come to be regarded among the Bahais as standard works on the subject.

Bibliography : Principal works of Ḥ. M. Bālyūzī: Bahāʾuʾllāh, London, 1938. A Guide to the Administrative Order of Bahaʾuʾllah, London, 1941. Edward Granville Browne and the Bahāʾī Faith, London, 1970. ʿAbdu’l-Bahā, the Centre of the Covenant of Bahāʾuʾllāh, London, 1971. The Bāb, the Herald of the Days of Days, Oxford, 1973. Bahāʾuʾllah, the King of Glory, Oxford, 1980. Khadijih Bagum, the Wife of the Bāb, Oxford, 1981. Eminent Bahaʾis in the Time of Bahāʾuʾllah, Oxford, 1985.