History of the Baha'i Faith in Egypt

The Bahá’í community of Egypt was among the first to be established outside of Iran, birthplace of the Faith’s Founder, Bahá’u’lláh. Bahá’í merchants settled in Alexandria and Cairo in the 1860s. In the mid-1890s, one of the most respected early Bahá’í scholars, Mirza Abu’l-Fadl Gulpaygani, arrived in Cairo. He subsequently lectured at Al-Azhar, where his scholarship attracted many adherents to the Faith.

By 1900, a number of Arabic language Bahá’í books were being published in Cairo, and Egypt had become a transit point for Western Bahá’ís coming to and from Acre (Akka) in what was then Palestine, where the son of Bahá’u’lláh, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, was imprisoned.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá, himself, visited Egypt in September 1910, shortly after his release from prison, and there made the acquaintance of a number of intellectuals and other influential figures. He had already won the sympathy and interest of the most prominent of these liberal Islamic thinkers, Muhammad Abduh, who had spent time with him in Beirut during the 1880s. The two had subsequently maintained a correspondence on the subject of Islamic reform. On his return to Egypt, Abduh was appointed Grand Mufti and became a leading teacher at Al-Azhar University.He extended a particularly warm welcome to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, despite the opposition of some of the more insular elements in his own intellectual circle.

Significantly, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá spent a total of almost two years in Egypt, visiting on two other occasions. He became quite well known and influential — as evidenced by extensive press coverage in Egypt of his funeral in 1921. For Bahá’ís around the world, the extended visits of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá give Egypt a special significance.

The Bahá’í community of Egypt grew steadily among the general population during the period from the turn of the century to the mid-1920s, and included individuals from minority groups such as those of Kurdish, Coptic, and Armenian origin. A photograph from the early 1920s, for example, shows some 47 Bahá’ís in Port Said. And Bahá’í communities in Cairo, Port Said, and Alexandria were sufficiently prosperous to be able to send to the United States of America a donation to help fund the construction of a Bahá’í House of Worship in Wilmette, Illinois, the first Bahá’í House of Worship in the West.

In 1924, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of Egypt was formed. This represents the highest administrative body on a national level in the Bahá’í Faith, a sign of a community’s maturity.

this article is Taken from Bahai.org http://www.bahai.org/persecution/egypt/2005bicreport/historyofcomm#2