Ali Nakhjavani

Who is Ali Nakhjavani?

Alí-Yulláh Nakhjavání served as a member of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing body of the Bahá'í Faith, between 1963 and 2003.

Ali Nakhjavani was born in 1919 in Baku, Azerbaijan to Ali-Akbar Nakhjavani and Fatimih Khanum, both Bahá'ís. After his father's death circa 1921, when he was two, his family was advised by `Abdu'l-Bahá to move to Haifa, where he grew up. In 1939 he received the Bachelor of Arts degree with distinction from the American University of Beirut, and then in the early 1940s he returned to Iran, residing first in Tehran, then Tabriz and finally in Shiraz. In 1950 he was elected to the Bahá'í National Spiritual Assembly of Iran, the governing body of the Bahá'ís in that country, where he served until the following year.

In 1951, Ali Nakhjavání and his family moved to Uganda to assist with the development of the Bahá'í community in that country; while he was there he worked as a teacher and lecturer. During his early years there, Enoch Olinga joined the religion, and in 1953 Nakhjavání, and his wife along with Olinga and two other Bahá'ís travelled from Uganda to Cameroon to help spread the Bahá'í Faith in Cameroon.