During His second tour in Europe from December 1912 to June 1913, ‘Abdu’l-Baha made a great number of profound and important statements on a wide range of subjects. Yet for more than a hundred years, many of these utterances—let alone the particulars of the journey itself—were not well known to the English-speaking world. Only limited glimpses into this momentous trip were available through scattered reports printed in early Baha’i periodicals and, to an even smaller degree, unpublished local records and personal accounts of the time. The two main sources that cover this period most comprehensively—a volume by Mirza Mahmud Zarqani chronicling this journey in Persian, which the Universal House of Justice has called an authentic record of ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s utterances, and a series of unpublished diary letters by Mirza Ahmad Sohrab narrating the events of each day in English for a Baha’i in America—had, during all this time, remained almost entirely inaccessible to English speakers. However, with the recent publication of a translation of Zarqani’s chronicle that incorporates many clarifying details from the contemporaneous diary letters of Ahmad Sohrab, the English-speaking world now has ample insight not only into what ‘Abdu’l-Baha did on these travels, but also what He said. How did He address large audiences at grand halls and other formal venues? How does it compare with what He talked about at His various residences with private audiences? Did it make a difference whether they were Baha’i or not? Did He tailor His words according to the country He was in? These are the sorts of questions that will be explored in this presentation, in which we will conduct a survey of the themes discussed by ‘Abdu’l-Baha based on His location and audience. The presentation will include several quotations from ‘Abdu’l-Baha that have been made available for the first time through the aforementioned translation of Zarqani’s chronicle.
Adib Masumian received his Bachelor’s degree in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 2012, and his Master’s in Learning Technologies from that same institution in 2015. During his last year of graduate school, he spent a summer abroad in Jordan to study the fundamentals of Classical Arabic (fuṣḥá), with the goal of being able to understand the Arabic Baháʼí Writings well enough to be able to translate them. He has been working in the field of e-learning since 2013.
Adib has contributed articles on various Baháʼí topics to online spaces like Iran Press Watch, the Baháʼí Library Online, and BahaiTeachings.org, as well as peer-reviewed publications such as Lights of ʻIrfán and Baháʼí Studies Review. He has also self-published one book, Debunking the Myths, and co-authored a book with his parents, The Secrets of True Happiness, which was published by George Ronald.
Adib has a website which features more than three hundred of his provisional
translations of the Arabic and Persian Baháʼí Writings—a list to which he is regularly adding as time permits. Additionally, he has translated, from Persian into English, a number of news articles, essays, letters, poems, and peer-reviewed articles, as well as one book chapter included in The Bab and the Babi Community of Iran, published by Oneworld Academic in 2022. His translation of Mírzá Maḥmúd Zarqání’s account of ʻAbdu’l-Bahá’s talks and travels in Europe from December 1912 to June 1913, known in Persian as Badáyiʻu’l-Áthár volume 2, was published by George Ronald in 2024 under
the title ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Europe, 1912–1913.
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