The Greatest Holy Leaf’s role in Bahá’í history is unparalleled in religious history. To assess this role, it is necessary to take into consideration the constraints under which women in the Middle East lived in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Women in the Islamic world were largely invisible. They enjoyed few rights and had no status in the community. They were veiled and led a cloistered existence separated from all men except the members of their immediate family. Deprived of the opportunity for education and confined to the home, they tended to be illiterate. They were not permitted to participate in public affairs and had no role in religion. In addition, the historical record of the era contains few references to women, since it was considered unethical and im- proper for historians, who were mostly male, to invade the privacy of women by inquiring into their lives.
While the sources of information about Bahíyyih Khánum are scattered and sometimes sparse, it is particularly significant that Bahá’u’lláh Himself chose to withdraw "the veil of concealment” [1] from His daughter, thereby opening the way for historians to study her life, to rescue her from invisibility, to appreciate her role in society, and to assess her contribution to history.
- Janet Khan (‘Prophet’s Daughter’)
[1] Shoghi Effendi (‘Bahíyyih Khánum, The Greatest Holy Leaf’, a compilation by the Research Department of the Universal House of Justice, 1982)