Ravian Bilani

Ibrahim George Kheiralla was born at Mount Lebanon in Syria and educated at Beirut University. He moved to Cairo where he went into business. While there he learned about the Baha'i faith and accepted it. In 1892 he immigrated to New York, and then to Chicago where he started converting people to the Baha'i religion. He married four times and had three children. He wrote several books and eventually broke with Abdul Baha who was the head of the world movement.

His early partner Anton Haddad wrote about this period here.

Ibrahim's third wife was Marian Miller, they were divorced. He married his fourth wife Augusta Linderborg in 1904 and she died in 1912.

Ibrahim took some of his converts into a new society that he formed called the "Society of Behaists". From 1934 to 1937, Shua'U'llah edited their periodical here.

Ibrahim had two daughters and one son George Ibrahim Kheiralla. Ibrahim's daughter Nabeeha married Ameer Hani Shehab, according to Anton Haddad on page 10.

Muhammed al-Ahari has collected the writings of Kheiralla's student August Stendtrend and published them as "The Complete Call to the Heaven of the Bayan."

Muhammed al-Ahari adds this : "Further, George's daughter became a well-known art historian, Gulnar K. Bosch. While a son wrote a biography of the Prophet Muhammed "Islam and the Arabian Prophet," edited the journal "Arab World," made Hajj, wrote a history of the Saud family, and translated poetry by Kahlil Gibran and other Arab poets. His grandson Aly is a medical doctor, but I'm not sure if he is in Florida where his mother lived and died."

Reproduced with permission from :
Will Johnson

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