Sara Louisa Blomfield

Sara Louisa, Lady Blomfield (born Sara Louisa Ryan , * 1859 in Ireland ; † December 31, 1939 in the London Borough of Camden , United Kingdom ) was the first English Baha'i , the first Baha'i of Ireland and the author of The Chosen Highway ".

Life

She was the second wife of the famous architect Sir Arthur William Blomfield (1829-1899).

In Paris she got to know the Baha'i Faith, which she adopted in 1907. In 1911 she was the hostess of Abdu'l Baha in London. She followed him to Paris, where she recorded his speeches with her two daughters Mary Esther and Rose Ellinor and a friend and translated them into English at his request . These talks were published as Paris Talks and were later translated into numerous languages. In German they are published as speeches in Paris . In 1913 she was again the hostess of Abdu'l Baha in London. In recognition of her, Abdu'l Baha gave her the Persian name "Sitárih Khánum", where Sitárih means star and Khanum lady.

During the First World War she helped in various hospitals.

In Geneva she founded a Baha'i center and spread the Baha'i faith among the founders of the League of Nations . She supported the Save the Children Fund from its inception (1919) until her death. Mainly through Lady Blomfield, the League of Nations adopted the organization's Geneva Declaration of Children's Rights in 1924 .

She helped Shoghi Effendi when he was studying at Oxford and accompanied him back to Haifa when he received news of Abdu'l Baha's death on November 28, 1921. Together with Shoghi Effendi she wrote the brochure "The Passing of Abdu'l Baha", of which a German translation has also been published. She also collected information for her book "The Chosen Highway" there.

She called on her friends in the British Parliament to defend the persecuted Baha'i in Persia .

In addition to all of these activities, she served on the London Local Spiritual Council and the British Isles' National Spiritual Council .

Shoghi Effendi invited Lady Blomfield to Haifa in 1930 to welcome the Queen of Romania Marie of Edinburgh . However, the Queen's itinerary was changed at short notice by her advisors.

Lady Blomfield's book "The Chosen Highway" contains oral chronicles of the sister, wife and daughter of Abdu'l Baha as well as Mirza Asadu'llah Kashani, Sakinih-Sultan Khanum and Siyyid Ali Yazdi. In addition, the stay of Abdu'l Baha in London is mainly described. She finished the book on the eve of her death. Hasan Balyuzi wrote the foreword to this work, which was published in 1940 in the Publishing Trust.

Lady Blomfield was buried in Hampstead Municipal Cemetery. In 1950 their daughter Mary Esther Hall was buried in the same grave.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Memorial to a shining star London, United Kingdom, August 10, 2003 (BWNS)
2. ↑ A memorial to Lady Blomfield by Rob Weinberg and originally published in Bahá'í Journal UK ( Memento of November 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
3. ↑ The First Obligation - Lady Blomfield and the Save the Children Fund ( Memento of February 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive )

Works

• Sara Louisa Blomfield: The Chosen Highway . Bahai Publishing Trust, London 1940.
• Sara Louisa Blomfield: The Chosen Highway . Ed .: George Ronald. Oxford, ISBN 0-85398-509-X ( online ).
• Sara Louisa Blomfield: The Passing of 'Abdu'l-Bahá . Ed .: Shoghi Effendi. 1922.
• Sara Louisa Blomfield: The passing of 'Abdu'l-Bahá . Ed .: Shoghi Effendi. Publishing house of the German Baha'i Federation, Stuttgart 1925.
• Sara Louisa Blomfield (Ed.): 'Abdu'l-Bahá in London . Bahá'í-Verlag, Hofheim a.Ts. 2011.

literature

• Mary Basil Hall: A Compendium of Volumes of The Bahai World I-XII . Ed .: George Ronald. Oxford 1981, p. 536-540 .
• Hasan M. Balyuzi: Abdul Baha: The Center of the Alliance, Vol. 2 . Ed .: Bahai-Verlag. Hofheim-Langenhain 1984, p. 733-734 .