Ibrahim George Kheiralla
| Ibrahim George Kheiralla | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | 11 November 1849 Lebanon |
| Died | 6 March 1929 (aged 79) Beirut, Lebanon. |
Ibrahim George Kheiralla (11 November 1849 - 6 March 1929) was a founder of the first American Bahá'í community along with Anton Haddad. He was born to a Christian family in a village on Mount Lebanon in 1849 and later studied medicine at the Syrian Protestant College in Beirut.
Ibrahim George Kheiralla converted to the Bahá'í Faith while living in Egypt in 1889 when he met Hájí `Abdu’l-Karím-i-Tihrání. Kheiralla went through Europe and eventually came to the United States in late 1892 where he joined Anton Haddad, the first Bahá'í to come to America. Initially, Kheiralla settled in New York where he began teaching "Truth Seeker" classes. He visited Charles Augustus Briggs and others, as well as the Syrian community in New York.
In 1894 Kheiralla moved on to Chicago following the interest fostered by the World's Columbian Exposition's World Parliament of Religions. In Chicago he taught "Truth Seeker" classes. One of the early converts while Kheiralla was in Chicago was Thornton Chase, who had read the presentation about the Bahá'ís at the Exposition, and is generally considered the first Bahá'í convert in the West. Other individuals had converted, but none remained members of the religion. Researcher considers Chase's importance as an early North American Bahá’í thinker, publicist, administrator, and organizer is still underappreciated and that in many ways Chase’s death left a gap in the North American Bahá’í community that remained unfilled until the rise to prominence in the early 1920s of Horace Holley, the chief developer of Bahá’í organization in the United States and Canada. Another to join the religion from Kheiralla's early classes was Howard MacNutt, who would later compile The Promulgation of Universal Peace, a prominent collection of the addresses of `Abdu'l-Bahá during his journeys in America. Both men were designated as "Disciples of `Abdu'l-Bahá" and "Heralds of the Covenant" by Shoghi Effendi. Another student of the classes and Disciple was Lua Getsinger, designated as the "mother teacher of the West". Another who "passed" the class and joined the religion was the maverick Honoré Jackson. Kheiralla moved once again, to Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 1895, where a large Bahá'í community soon developed.
...
Wikipedia