June 14. On this date in 1929, a letter written for Shoghi Effendi by Soheil Afnan thanked Australian Bahá'ís for aid given to earthquake victims. Shoghi Effendi would later declare Soheil Afnan a Covenant-breaker, as he would all of his siblings and first cousins.

 

June 14. On this date in 1929, a letter written for Shoghi Effendi by Soheil Afnan thanked Australian Bahá'ís for aid given to earthquake victims. Shoghi Effendi would later declare Soheil Afnan a Covenant-breaker, as he would all of his siblings and first cousins.

Soheil Afnan was born in Palestine to a prominent Bahá'í lineage. His parents were Mírzá Muḥsin Afnán, a cousin of the Báb, and Túbá Khánum. His maternal grandparents were `Abdu'l-Bahá, the successor to the Bahá'í founder-prophet Bahá'u'lláh, and Munirih Khánum. Soheil Afnan received his initial education at the LaSallian Collège des Frères in Haifa and later at the American University of Beirut, where he would graduate in 1923.  He would continue to the Sorbonne and Oxford University but financial constraints imposed due the death of his father as well as the onset of World War II curtailed his studies at those institutions. Despite having been declared a Covenant-breaker by his first cousin Shoghi Effendi, the Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith, in 1971 Soheil Afnan established a scholarship, the Fuad Muhsin Afnan Memorial Fund, for "Bahai students in need" at the American University of Beirut in honor of his younger brother who died in 1941 during an aerial bombardment in London where he was volunteering as an Air Raid Warden. Soheil Afnan never married and did not have any children.

In 1947, Soheil Afnan produced the first direct translation of Aristotle’s Poetics from the Greek into Persian. Upon seeing this work, the Iranian poet Mehdi Akhavan-Sales serialized this translation in the literary magazine Iran-e Ma (Our Iran), of which he was the editor. He praised Soheil Afnan with a poem published at the end of the series which was also published in his 1951 collection Arghanoon (ارغنون), which literally translates as Organon.

Soheil Afnan obtained his PhD from Pembroke College, Cambridge in 1956, and was a lecturer in Persian at the University of Cambridge from 1958 to 1961, where he collaborated with Arthur John Arberry. He continued to produce academic works, including translations and lexicons of philosophical terminology. As late as 2006, Seyyed Hossein Nasr noted in his work Islamic Philosophy from Its Origin to the Present, that "There is not in fact even one satisfactory philosophical dictionary of Arabic and Persian terms with English equivalents. The only work of this kind available is that of Suhail Afnan, A Philosophical Lexicon in Persian and Arabic (Dar al Mashreq, Beirut, 1969). This work is, however, far from being adequate, especially as far as technical vocabulary of later schools of Islamic philosophy is concerned."

Soheil Afnan passed away in 1990 in Istanbul where he was conducting research at the Topkapı Palace library.

14 June 1929 [Perth]
My Dear Friends,
I am directed by the Guardian to thank you for your letter of May 19th written on your behalf by your secretary.
Shoghi Effendi has been deeply touched by the generous and unsolicited help which his friends across the oceans have offered for the victims of the earthquake in Khurásán.
Whether the sum is large or small, Shoghi Effendi accepts your contribution with a deep realisation of the all-transforming spirit of Bahá'u'lláh, and of that true sense of love & fellowship which it has instilled in your hearts. At a time when the world seems to be drifting so far apart, is it not a ray of infinite hope, a message of glad tidings, that the Bahá'í Faith does succeed to carry and uphold the sacred principles of a united humanity?
I am sure you would be glad to know that according to reports so far received although the damages caused by the earthquake were large, the loss of human life has not been so large and the Bahá'ís have especially been spared.
Shoghi Effendi wishes me to inform you that he will send you later the receipt from the Persian National Assembly for your deeply appreciated contribution.
With warm regards & greetings, yours in His service, Soheil Afnan
With the assurance of my keen appreciation of your unsparing efforts for the spread of our beloved Cause, & of my continued prayers for your spiritual advancement, your true brother, Shoghi