Bahá'u'lláh

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Bahá'u'lláh

Iranian prophet Bahá'u'lláh (1817-1892) founded the Baha'i faith in nineteenth-century Iran. Bahá'u'lláh, whose name in Arabic translates as “the Glory of God,” claimed to have been anointed the “Promised One” for all the world's religions, the emissary who carried a message of world peace and unity for all of humankind.

Bahá'u'lláh was born Mírzá Husayn-'Ali' on November 12, 1817, in Tehran, Iran, into an aristocratic family. His father, Mírzá Buzurg, held an important post as vizier to Fath Ali Shah (1772–1834), the Persian emperor, and later served as governor of the Iranian provinces Burujird and Lorestan before being ousted when a new ruler, Muhammad Shah Qajar (1808–1848) came to power in Persia. After Mírzá Buzurg died in 1839, Bahá'u'lláh was offered a political appointment by a new vizier, but declined the post in order to tend to the sick and destitute.

Joined Bábist Sect

Around 1845, when Bahá'u'lláh was about 28 years old, he learned of a new sect known as Bábism. This had been founded a year or so earlier by Siyyid Mírzá 'Alí-Muhammad (1819–1850), a merchant from the Iranian city of Shiraz. Taking the name the Báb, (the Gate), 'Alí-Muhammad claimed to be the new mahdi, or “Guided One” that had been prophesied in Islam. Bábism, he asserted, would aid in the revival of Persia and its people, and from the Persians a new divine teacher would soon appear. Once that new prophet came, world peace would become possible.

Bahá'u'lláh joined the Bábi sect and began to preach its tenets in the province of Núr. Government officials, fearing the rise of this sect, began to target Bábi followers, and the Báb himself was executed in 1850. Two years later, Bahá'u'lláh learned of a plot to assassinate the Shah as vengeance for the death of the Báb, and advised against it. The plan went into motion anyway, was foiled by the Shah's agents, and brought a wave of reprisals against the sect. Bahá'u'lláh was jailed in the infamous Tehran dungeon jail known as Síyáh-Chál, or the Black Pit, where he experienced several religious visions. He was told, he claimed, that he was the Messenger of God of whom the Báb had spoken. Saying nothing of this revelation to anyone, Bahá'u'lláh was finally released thanks to an intercession from Russia's ambassador to Persia, and was sent into exile in Baghdad, Iraq.

Hid as a Dervish

In the ancient Iraqi city, Bahá'u'lláh joined other members of the now nearly defunct Bábi community. The Báb's appointed successor was Mírzá Yahya, but a power struggle erupted between the two, and not wishing to weaken the community any further, Bahá'u'lláh retreated to the mountains of Kurdistan in April of 1854. He spent the next two years living alone, dressed like a member of a Sufi Muslim sect called the dervishes, and began writing religious tracts. Soon, local leaders began to seek the advice of the wise man who called himself Darvish Muhammad, and word reached Baghdad of the visionary and his teachings. Both Bahá'u'lláh's family and the Bábi followers sent word to him requesting his return.

Bahá'u'lláh heeded the call to return to Baghdad, where the community was now bitterly divided because of Mírzá Yahya's marriage to the widow of the Báb. Still, Bahá'u'lláh was hesitant to reveal that he had been called by God for another seven years, but nevertheless attracted unwelcome interest from Islamic clerics, who worried that he might lead his Bábi followers in an uprising. He was exiled once again, this time to Constantinople, in April of 1863. Before he departed, however, he went to nearby Garden of Ridván and spent twelve days there. Finally, he told his companions of his revelation, an act that ended the 11-year period in the Baha'i faith known as ayyam-i butun (days of concealment).

Once Bahá'u'lláh proclaimed himself the Messenger of God, the Bábis accepted him as their leader, an event that is considered the formal beginning of the Baha'i religion. His exile in Constantinople was a short-lived one, lasting just four months, and he was banished again to Adrianople (present-day Edirne, Turkey) in December of 1863. He remained there with his followers for more than four years. During this period, he and Mírzá Yahya continued their ideological battles, and the Bábis split into two branches: the Baha'i who followed Bahá'u'lláh, and the Azalís who remained loyal to Mírzá Yahya. At one point, Bahá'u'lláh suffered a near-fatal poisoning that was believed to have been an assassination plot ordered by his rival.

Sent Missives to World Leaders

In Adrianople, Bahá'u'lláh began codifying the tenets of the Baha'i faith. Its key beliefs were global unity and justice, and he wrote the Súriy-i-Mulúk, or Tablet to the Kings, which was sent out to various world leaders. In it, he urged them to recognize him as a guide for world peace and to work together to achieve that goal. The recipients of these missives included England's Queen Victoria (1819–1901); leader of the Roman Catholic Church Pope Pius IX (1792–1878); France's Napoleon III (1808–1873); Tsar Alexander II of Russia (1818–1881); and Kaiser Wilhelm I (1797–1888), the ruler of imperial Germany. In his Súriy-i-Mulúk, Bahá'u'lláh reminded the world leaders that “God hath committed into your hands the reins of the government of the people, that ye may rule with justice over them, safeguard the rights of the down-trodden and punish the wrong-doers. If ye neglect the duty prescribed unto you by God in His Book, your names shall be numbered with those of the unjust in His sight.”

Bahá'u'lláh's activities resulted in his forcible deportation once more in August of 1868, this time to Akká, Palestine, which was a penal colony administered by British colonial authorities at the time. It later became the city of Acre, Israel. Here Bahá'u'lláh wrote the famous Kitáb-iAqdas, the book of laws of the Baha'i faith and its most important holy text. It was likely finished by 1873. “In the Aqdas, Bahá'u'lláh recognizes and honors the institution of human government, in the forms of monarchy, democracy, and republican government, and enjoins all people to obey ‘those who wield authority,’ ” noted Sen McGlinn in the Journal of Church and State. The Kitáb-i-Aqdas also contained Bahá'u'lláh's reminder to world leaders that he had no ambitions to hold political power himself. “It is not Our wish to lay hands on your kingdoms. Our mission is to seize and possess the hearts of men …. To this testifieth the Kingdom of Names, could ye but comprehend it …. Forsake your palaces and haste ye to gain admittance into His Kingdom. This, indeed, will profit you both in this world and in the next.”

In another of the many religious texts Bahá'u'lláh authored, he cites Britain as a model of the ideal relationship between church and state. The Lawh-I-Dunyá (Tablet of the World) states that “the system of government which the British people have adopted in London peareth to be good, for it is adorned with the light of both kingship and of the consultation of the people.” He also refers to his own persecution, asserting that “every man of insight will, in this day, readily admit that the counsels which the Pen of this Wronged One hath revealed constitute the supreme animating power for the advancement of the world and the exaltation of its peoples. Arise, O people, and, by the power of God's might, resolve to gain the victory over your own selves, that haply the whole earth may be freed and sanctified from its servitude to the gods of its idle fancies—gods that have inflicted such loss upon, and are responsible for the misery of their wretched worshippers.”

Died in Akká

In the 1870s there was a lessening of restrictions on Bahá'u'lláh's movements, and after 1879 he resided in the Mansion of Bahjí in Akká, though he remained closely watched by authorities. In 1890, Bahá'u'lláh met with a respected British scholar of Middle Eastern religions, Edward Granville Browne, whose writings about the Baha'i faith roused interest in the religion elsewhere in the world. Bahá'u'lláh told Browne, according to the Web site Uplifting Words, “We desire but the good of the world and happiness of the nations; yet they deem us a stirrer up of strife …. [T]hese ruinous wars shall pass away, and the ‘Most Great Peace’ shall come …. Do not you in Europe need this also? Is not this that which Christ foretold? … Yet do we see your kings and rulers lavishing their treasures more freely on means for the destruction of the human race than on that which would conduce to the happiness of mankind …. These strifes … must cease, and all men be as one kindred and one family.”

Bahá'u'lláh died in Akká on May 29, 1892. Survivors include the three wives he took, Navváb, Fatimih, and Gawhar, by whom he had fourteen children. The eldest of his ten sons was Abbas Effendi (1844–1921), known as Abdu'l-Baha, or “servant of the Glory.” He had followed his father into exile and then assumed the leadership of the faith after Bahá'u'lláh's death. Abdu'l-Baha's missionary work served to spread the Baha'i faith in both Europe and North America. Adherents to the Baha'i faith recognize several significant principles set forth by Bahá'u'lláh. World unity is of paramount importance, and the creed also bans prejudice against others. Equality between the sexes is enshrined in its teachings, as are an eradication of the extremes of poverty and wealth. Universal compulsory education is another principle, as are good works in the forms of schools and clinics where the need is greatest.

More than a century after the death of Bahá'u'lláh, the Baha'i faith claims five million adherents in 235 nations. There are no clergy, and each community is a selfgoverning one that elects its own to members of a council. The administrative center of the faith is the Baha'i World Centre in Acre, Israel, near the burial shrines of both the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh. There are Baha'i houses of worship on several continents, with a particularly splendid one in Evanston, Illinois, reflecting the blending of classical and Islamic elements that is a hallmark of Baha'i architecture. The religion uses its own calendar that begins with the date of March 19, 1844, a date set by the Báb in his original formulation of the Bábist faith. The main holy holiday of the Baha'i faith is the twelve-day Festival of Ridván, which begins on April 21 and commemorates the public declaration of Bahá'u'lláh as the Messenger of God. The Baha'i creed is notable for its recognition of other religions, believing that the founders of all the world's faiths that preceded it—Abraham, Moses, Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Zoroaster, Krishna, and Buddha—are the divine teachers in the pantheon that includes the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh.

Baha'i followers are still persecuted in Iran, a Muslim theocracy, where in the 1980s scores were arrested and 200 put to death. The recognition of Bahá'u'lláh as “a messenger of God,” explained Laurie Goodstein of the New York Times, “violates the Islamic teaching that God sent many prophets before Muhammad, but none afterward.”