Ezzatu’llah Zahra’i

Ezzatu’llah Zahra’i
Zahra’i (left) with Jonah Mungoshi at the 50th Anniversary of the Faith in Zimbabwe.
Born	1926 Qazvin, Iran
Spouse(s)	Annette Riis, m. 1961

Ezzatu’llah Zahra’i (b. 1926) is a Persian Bahá’í who was named a Knight of Bahá’u’lláh for pioneering to Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

Biography

Zahra’i was born into a Bahá’í family in Qazvin in 1926. In his youth he was an active Bahá’í and he pioneered to Tabríz in 1947. He made plans to make a travel teaching trip to Mexico in 1951 however he would have to stop in the United States during his journey and at the time Shoghi Effendi had advised Persian Bahá’ís should not visit the United States. He requested permission to stop in the United States through the National Spiritual Assembly of Iran and Shoghi Effendi advised he should instead teach the Faith in Africa.

In November 1952 Zahra’i pioneered to Tanganyika and was granted a one month visa. Upon the expiration of visa he pioneered to Kenya settling in Nairobi where he met fellow pioneers Aziz Yazdi and Richard St. Barbe Baker. In 1953 he attended the Intercontinental Teaching Conference held in Kamapala, Uganda, to launch the Ten Year Crusade. Shortly after the Conference he pioneered to Lourenco Marques in Mozambique, meeting with Fred Schechter and Frederick and Elizabeth Laws who passed through the country, however he was arrested after a few days and interrogated by the secret police spending a short time in prison and being continually called to the secret police offices before being expelled at the end of May, 1953.

After being expelled from Mozambique Zahra’i secured a visa for Northern Rhodesia which included a transit visa for Southern Rhodesia and he traveled to Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia where a Police Formalities officer who had lived in Iran and worked at the same company as Zahra’i while living there there granted him a twenty day visa. As a result he was able to settle in Salisbury, now Harare, and sent a message to Shoghi Effendi who named him a Knight of Bahá’u’lláh as he was the first pioneer to the territory. He secured a job at a law firm but was unable to teach the Faith due to government restrictions but regularly prayed in a park for the people of Salisbury to discover the Bahá’í Faith.

In July, 1953, Zahra’i moved to Elizabethville, now Lubumbashi, in the Belgian Congo as his visa had expired, and in August he was informed his application for residency in Southern Rhodesia had been rejected so he moved to Kenya settling in Mombasa. He remained in Mombasa until May, 1957, when he went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land and met with Shoghi Effendi who suggested he make a trip across Egypt where the Bahá’í community had been prevented from communicating with the Holy Land. He went to Istanbul, Turkey, from the Holy Land where he secured a passport allowing him to enter Egypt. He spent two weeks in the country during which he informed local communities of the progress of the Ten Year Crusade and collated statistics which he later forwarded to the Holy Land. '

From Egypt Zahra’i went to Europe where he traveled across the continent visiting Bahá’í communities before settling in Paris, France. He married Annette Riis in Paris in 1961. He retired from his professional career in 1984 and wrote to the Universal House of Justice to ask where he could pioneer and received a reply advising that the Institution felt he should remain in France. In 2003 he returned to Zimbabwe to attend a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Bahá’í Faith in the country.

In 2012 Knight with a Briefcase by Judith Kaye Logsdon-Dubois, a biography of Zahra’i, was published.