Encyclopedia of Islam

Further reading: Jacob Lassner, The Shaping of Abba-

sid Rule (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 

K  84  

Baghdad

---

1980); Kanan Makiya [Samir al-Khalil], The Monument: 

Art, Vulgarity and Responsibility in Iraq (Berkeley: Uni-

versity of California Press, 1991); Paul Wheatley, The 

Places Where Men Pray Together: Cities in Islamic Lands, 

Seventh through the Tenth Centuries (Chicago: University 

of Chicago Press, 2001).

Bahai Faith

The Bahai Faith is a new religion that grew out 

of the Shii environment in i

ran

 in the mid-19th 

century. It presents itself as a new universal 

Faith

that believes in world peace, religious tolerance, 

and unity and equality among all people. It has its 

own scriptures in Persian and Arabic, but it also 

recognizes the fundamental truths expressed in 

the sacred writings of other religions. There are 

currently about 6.8 million Bahais, or followers 

of this religion, of whom about 300,000 still live 

in Iran. In that country, they have been treated 

as apostates and subjected to persecution, espe-

cially since the creation of the Islamic Republic 

in 1979.

The founder and prophet of the Bahai Faith 

was Mirza Husayn Ali Nuri (1817–93), who took 

the surname Baha Allah, “splendor of God,” from 

which the religion gets its name. Baha Allah (or 

Baha Ullah) was born to an influential family in 

Tehran, the capital of Iran, and joined the Babi 

movement with his half-brother Mirza Yahya in 

the 1840s. b

abism

 was a radical Shii sect that chal-

lenged religious and political authorities in Iran 

and i

raq

 and preached the coming of the Hidden 

i

mam

, who would initiate a golden age with a new 

universal religious law that was to surpass the 

sharia

. The Babis were violently suppressed as 

heretical by the Iranian government with the back-

ing of the Shii 

Ulama

, and Baha Allah and other 

surviving Babis were forced into exile in Baghdad, 

Iraq, in 1853. In 1863, he announced to associates 

that he, Baha Allah, was the awaited imam of the 

Babis. The majority of Babis who followed him 

became the Bahais; those who did not but con-

tinued to follow his brother Mirza Yahya (known 

as Subh-i Azal) became the Azalis. In 1867, after 

being forced to move to Ottoman t

Urkey

, Baha 

Allah publicly proclaimed his divine mission by 

sending letters to many of the world’s leaders, 

thus formally renouncing Islam and launching 

the Bahai Faith. Ottoman authorities, concerned 

by the trouble he might cause with such claims, 

imprisoned him near Akka, Palestine (now in 

Israel), where he died in 1892. He was succeeded 

by his son Abd al-Baha (d. 1921), a gifted leader 

who helped both organize and internationalize the 

religion after Baha Alla’s death. He won new con-

verts from Christianity in Europe and America, 

where the Bahai Faith soon established branches. 

The Bahais now have nearly 20,000 local spiritual 

assemblies in some 233 countries. 

Baha Allah’s writings are the most important 

sacred scriptures for the religion. They are believed 

to be divine revelations, replacing the q

Uran

 and 

Islamic law. The most important of his books 

are  The Book of Certainty (Kitab-i iqan) and The 

Most Holy Book (al-Kitab al-aqdas). Both uphold 

the idea of God’s oneness as well as the values of 

equality, social justice, learning, and the unity of 

all people. Like Islam, there is no clergy in the 

Bahai Faith, and all adherents are expected to per-

form specific ritual obligations, which include an 

annual fast, abstention from alcohol and nonmed-

icinal drugs, and daily prayers. Women hold equal 

status with men, and, unlike Islam, marriage is 

monogamous. Not unexpectedly, the Bahai Faith 

has flourished in modern secular societies. On the 

other hand, the persecution and discrimination 

Bahais are experiencing in Iran and other Muslim 

countries is due partly to the fact that their reli-

gion is seen as 

apostasy

 by Muslim authorities and 

also because it is thought to be too much under 

the influence of Western countries and Israel, 

where its main religious center is now located.

See also s

hiism

.