Bahá'u'lláh: Life, Exile and Writings of the Bahá'í Founder

Bahá'u'lláh ("the Glory of God") was the title of Mírzá Husayn-ʻAlí Núrí (1817–1892), a Persian nobleman who became a leading follower of the Báb, spent forty years as a prisoner and exile of the Persian and Ottoman states, and declared himself the messenger of God whom the Báb had foretold. Bahá'ís regard him as the founder of their faith and the most recent Manifestation of God, and his extensive writings in Persian and Arabic form the core of Bahá'í scripture. He died near ʻAkká, in present-day Israel, in 1892, and his shrine at Bahjí is the holiest place on earth for Bahá'ís.

Mírzá Husayn-ʻAlí Núrí: Family and Early Life§

Mírzá Husayn-ʻAlí was born in Tehran on 12 November 1817. His family came from Núr in the province of Mazandaran, and his father, Mírzá ʻAbbás, known as Mírzá Buzurg, was a senior official and a celebrated calligrapher in the service of the Qajar court. Bahá'í tradition emphasises that he had no formal clerical training, which in their view makes his later writings a sign of revelation.

After his father's death in 1839 he declined a position in government and devoted himself to managing the family estates and to charity, earning, according to Bahá'í accounts, the name "Father of the Poor". In 1835 he married Ásíyih Khánum, who was to share his exiles; their children included ʻAbbás, later known as ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, his eventual successor.

The Bábí Years and the Black Pit of Tehran§

In 1844 Mullá Husayn, the first disciple of the Báb, sent a message to Mírzá Husayn-ʻAlí in Tehran, and he accepted the new faith at once. He became an energetic teacher of the Bábí cause in his home region and a protector of its followers. At the gathering of leading Bábís at Badasht in the summer of 1848, where the break with Islamic law was publicly proclaimed and the poet Táhirih appeared unveiled, he hosted the participants and took the name Bahá, by which he was afterwards known.

The Báb's execution in 1850 left the movement leaderless and persecuted. In August 1852 a small group of Bábís attempted to assassinate Násiri'd-Dín Sháh, and a wave of executions followed. Although he had condemned the attack, Bahá'u'lláh was arrested and chained for about four months in the Síyáh-Chál ("Black Pit"), an underground dungeon in Tehran. In later writings he described how, in the darkness and weight of the chains, he became aware of his mission; among the images he used was that of a heavenly maiden announcing it to him. Bahá'ís regard this experience of 1852–1853 as the beginning of his revelation. The intervention of the Russian legation, among others, helped secure his release, but his property was confiscated and he was banished from Iran.

Baghdad: Kurdistan, the Hidden Words and the Kitáb-i-Íqán§

Bahá'u'lláh reached Baghdad, then in the Ottoman Empire, with his family in April 1853. The exiled Bábí community was divided and demoralised, and its nominal head was his younger half-brother, Mírzá Yahyá, known as Subh-i-Azal, whom the Báb had named to a position of leadership. Tensions between the brothers led Bahá'u'lláh in 1854 to withdraw alone to the mountains of Sulaymániyyih in Kurdistan, where he lived for about two years as a dervish, conversed with Sufi scholars of the Naqshbandí and Qádirí orders and wrote poetry. He returned in 1856 at his family's urging.

The following years in Baghdad were among his most productive. He revived the morale of the Bábí community and wrote works that remain among the most widely read Bahá'í texts. The Hidden Words is a collection of short ethical and mystical aphorisms in Arabic and Persian, addressed by God to humanity. The Seven Valleys describes the journey of the soul through stages such as search, love, knowledge and unity, using the vocabulary of Persian Sufism and especially of Farídu'd-Dín ʻAttár's Conference of the Birds; on that tradition see Sufism. The Kitáb-i-Íqán ("Book of Certitude"), written around 1861–1862 in answer to questions from an uncle of the Báb, sets out a theory of prophecy: God is unknowable in essence and is revealed through successive Manifestations, whose scriptures speak in symbols that past believers misread, which is why each new messenger is rejected.

Ridván, Constantinople and Adrianople§

Bahá'u'lláh's growing influence alarmed the Persian government, which pressed the Ottomans to move him farther from the border. Before leaving Baghdad he spent twelve days, from 21 April to 2 May 1863, in a garden on the banks of the Tigris that his followers named Ridván ("Paradise"). There, according to Bahá'í accounts, he made known to his companions that he was "Him whom God shall make manifest", the figure promised by the Báb. Bahá'ís observe these twelve days as the Festival of Ridván, their most important holy days.

After a brief stay in Constantinople (Istanbul) in 1863 he was sent to Adrianople (Edirne) in European Turkey, where he lived from December 1863 to 1868. There he openly proclaimed his claim to the Bábís, most of whom accepted it and became known as Bahá'ís. Subh-i-Azal rejected it, and the community split around 1866 into Bahá'ís and a much smaller group of Azalís; each side accused the other of grave wrongdoing, and the Bahá'í accounts include an attempt by Azal to poison Bahá'u'lláh. In Adrianople Bahá'u'lláh also began to address the rulers of the world collectively, summoning them to justice, disarmament and recognition of his message, a proclamation he continued in letters to Napoleon III, Queen Victoria, Pope Pius IX, Tsar Alexander II and Násiri'd-Dín Sháh.

ʻAkká and Bahjí: The Kitáb-i-Aqdas and the Final Years§

In 1868 the Ottoman government exiled the two brothers and their followers to opposite ends of the empire: Subh-i-Azal to Famagusta in Cyprus, and Bahá'u'lláh to the prison city of ʻAkká (Acre) in Palestine, which he reached on 31 August 1868. Conditions in the citadel were harsh, several exiles died, and in 1870 his son Mírzá Mihdí was killed in a fall through a skylight. Bahá'ís speak of the "Most Great Prison".

Restrictions gradually eased. Moved from the citadel to houses in the town, Bahá'u'lláh wrote around 1873 the Kitáb-i-Aqdas ("Most Holy Book"), the charter of the Bahá'í religion. It establishes obligatory prayer and an annual nineteen-day fast, laws of marriage, inheritance and personal conduct, prohibitions of alcohol, gambling and slavery, the abolition of a professional clergy, and institutions including the Houses of Justice that later became the basis of Bahá'í administration. In 1877 he was able to live outside the walls, and from 1879 he lived in the mansion of Bahjí near ʻAkká, receiving pilgrims and continuing to write.

In April 1890 the Cambridge orientalist E. G. Browne met him there and left a famous description: "The face of him on whom I gazed I can never forget, though I cannot describe it." Bahá'u'lláh died at Bahjí on 29 May 1892. In his will, the Kitáb-i-ʻAhdí ("Book of My Covenant"), he appointed ʻAbdu'l-Bahá as the centre of his faith and the authorised interpreter of his writings. His tomb at Bahjí is the Qiblih, the point towards which Bahá'ís turn in daily prayer.

The Writings and Teachings of Bahá'u'lláh§

Bahá'u'lláh's writings, which Bahá'ís call "revelation", are vast, comprising thousands of letters known as tablets as well as books, prayers and meditations, in Arabic and Persian. Among his later works are the Tablets written after the Aqdas and the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf (1891), addressed to a hostile cleric of Isfahan and serving as a summary of his teaching.

His central teachings are summarised in The Bahá'í Faith: the unity of God, the essential unity of the religions as successive chapters of one divine revelation, and the oneness of humanity. He called for the reduction of armaments, collective security among nations, a universal auxiliary language, consultation as the basis of decision-making, and the abolition of religious warfare. Historians such as Juan Cole have read him as a religious thinker engaging with Middle Eastern modernity, constitutional government and the rights of minorities.

His relationship to Islam is understood differently by different parties. Bahá'ís see him as fulfilling the expectations of Shiʻi Islam, which awaited the return of the Imam Husayn after the Qá'im (see Sunni and Shia Islam), as well as the promises of Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism and other religions. Many Muslim authorities, by contrast, regard any claim to a revelation after the Prophet Muhammad as heresy, a view that underlies the long persecution of Bahá'ís in Iran. Modern scholarship, including the work of Juan Cole, Moojan Momen and Peter Smith, has placed Bahá'u'lláh within the history of nineteenth-century messianic and reform movements described in What Is a New Religious Movement?.

Frequently asked questions§

What does the name Bahá'u'lláh mean?§

Bahá'u'lláh is Arabic for "the Glory of God". The name Bahá was given to him at the Bábí gathering at Badasht in 1848, and he used the full title for the rest of his life.

Where is Bahá'u'lláh buried?§

He is buried at Bahjí, just north of ʻAkká (Acre) in present-day Israel. His shrine is the holiest place for Bahá'ís and the direction they face in their obligatory prayers.

What is the Kitáb-i-Aqdas?§

The Kitáb-i-Aqdas, or "Most Holy Book", is Bahá'u'lláh's book of laws, written in Arabic around 1873. It sets out Bahá'í prayer, fasting, personal and family law and the institutions of the faith; an authorised English translation was published in 1992.

Did Bahá'u'lláh claim to be a prophet?§

He claimed to be a Manifestation of God, the latest in a series that Bahá'ís believe includes Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad and the Báb. Bahá'ís believe that he fulfilled the promises of the earlier religions.

Sources and further reading§

• The Kitáb-i-Íqán: The Book of Certitude — Bahá'u'lláh, 1931
• Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh — Bahá'u'lláh, 1935
• Epistle to the Son of the Wolf — Bahá'u'lláh, 1941
• The Kitáb-i-Aqdas: The Most Holy Book — Bahá'u'lláh, 1992
• God Passes By — Shoghi Effendi, 1944
• The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh — Adib Taherzadeh, 1974
• Bahá'u'lláh: The King of Glory — H. M. Balyuzi, 1980
• Modernity and the Millennium: The Genesis of the Baha'i Faith in the Nineteenth-Century Middle East — Juan R. I. Cole, 1998
• An Introduction to the Baha'i Faith — Peter Smith, 2008