Acre, Palestine in the context of "Shoghi Effendi"

Zahir al-Umar al-Zaydani, alternatively spelled Daher el-Omar or Dahir al-Umar (Arabic: ظاهر العمر الزيداني, romanized: Ẓāhir al-ʿUmar az-Zaydānī, 1689/90 – 21 or 22 August 1775), was an Arab ruler of northern Palestine in the mid-18th century, while the region was part of the Ottoman Empire. For much of his reign, starting in the 1730s, his domain mainly consisted of the Galilee, with successive headquarters in Tiberias, Deir Hanna and finally Acre, in 1750. He fortified Acre, and the city became the center of the cotton trade between Palestine and Europe. In the mid-1760s, he reestablished the port town of Haifa nearby.

Zahir withstood sieges and assaults by the Ottoman governors of Damascus, who attempted to limit or eliminate his influence. He was often supported in these confrontations by the Shia Muslim clans of Jabal Amil. In 1771, in alliance with Ali Bey al-Kabir of the Egypt Eyalet and with backing from Russia, Zahir captured Sidon, while Ali Bey's forces conquered Damascus, both acts in open defiance of the Ottoman sultan. At the peak of his power in 1774, Zahir's rule extended from Beirut to Gaza and included the Jabal Amil and Jabal Ajlun regions. By then, however, Ali Bey had been killed, the Ottomans entered into a truce with the Russians, and the Ottoman imperial government felt secure enough to check Zahir's power. The Ottoman Navy attacked his Acre stronghold in the summer of 1775 and he was killed outside of its walls shortly after.

ʻAbdu'l-Bahá KBE (/əbˈdʊl bəˈhɑː/; Persian: عبد البهاء, IPA: [ʔæbdolbæhɒːʔ];, 23 May 1844 – 28 November 1921), born ʻAbbás (Persian: عباس, IPA: [ʔæbːɒːs]), was the eldest son of Baháʼu'lláh, founder of the Bahá’í Faith, who designated him to be his successor and head of the Baháʼí Faith from 1892 until 1921. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá was later cited as the last of three "central figures" of the religion, along with Baháʼu'lláh and the Báb, and his writings and authenticated talks are regarded as sources of Baháʼí sacred literature.

He was born in Tehran to an aristocratic family. At the age of eight, his father was imprisoned during a government crackdown on the Bábí Faith and the family's possessions were looted, leaving them in virtual poverty. His father was exiled from their native Iran, and the family established their residence in Baghdad in Iraq, where they stayed for ten years. They were later called by the Ottoman state to Istanbul before entering another period of confinement in Edirne and finally the prison-city of ʻAkká (Acre). ʻAbdu'l-Bahá remained a prisoner there until the Young Turk Revolution freed him in 1908 at the age of 64. He then made several journeys to the West to spread the Baháʼí message beyond its middle-eastern roots, but the onset of World War I left him largely confined to Haifa from 1914 to 1918. Following the war, the openly hostile Ottoman authorities were replaced by the British Mandate over Palestine, during which time he was appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his help in averting famine following the war.

The Shrine of the Báb is a structure on the slopes of Mount Carmel in Haifa, Israel, where the remains of the Báb, founder of the Bábí Faith and forerunner of Baháʼu'lláh in the Baháʼí Faith, are buried; it is considered to be the second holiest place on Earth for Baháʼís, after the Shrine of Baháʼu'lláh in Acre. Its precise location on Mount Carmel was designated by Baháʼu'lláh himself to his eldest son, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, in 1891. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá planned the structure, which was designed and completed several years later by his grandson, Shoghi Effendi.

Crowning the design, as anticipated by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, is a dome, which is set on an 18-windowed drum. That, in turn, is mounted on an octagon, a feature suggested by Shoghi Effendi. An arcade surrounds the stone edifice. A restoration project of the exterior and interior of the shrine started in 2008 and was completed in April 2011.