Bahíyyih Khánum was born in Tehran in 1846 and went into exile with her family as a small child, spending the rest of her life in Baghdad, Constantinople, Adrianople and finally the prison city of Akká. She never married, which was extraordinary in her setting, and devoted herself to the household through six decades of exile, imprisonment and poverty. Twice she was placed in charge of the affairs of the entire faith: during 'Abdu'l-Bahá's journeys to the West between 1910 and 1913, and again after his death in 1921 while Shoghi Effendi, newly appointed at twenty-four, withdrew to recover. During the second period she corresponded with the Bahá'í world in her own name and directed its affairs. Shoghi Effendi wrote of her in terms he used for almost no one else and had her remains reinterred in a monument on Mount Carmel that became the focal point of the Arc of administrative buildings. No woman has since held a comparable position, which the community notices.