The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (325 page)

'
New Year at the vernal equinox (usually 21 Mar.), and the Ridv
n festival (21 Apr.–2 May) marking the anniversary of Bah
'u'll
h's first declaration of his mission (1863). With no priesthood, administration rests with locally and nationally elected councils (‘Spiritual Assemblies’), supreme authority resting with the
Universal House of Justice
.

 
Back
  -  
 
New Search

(1817–92)
(Arab., ‘the Glory/Splendour of God’), Religious title adopted by M
rz
usayn ‘ali N
r
, the prophet-founder of the
Bah
'
Faith
. Born into a wealthy landowning family in N. Iran, he chose to follow a life of religious involvement rather than that of a courtier. In 1844 he became a
B
b
. Imprisoned in the Black Pit of Tehran in 1852, he experienced a number of revelatory visions, and after his exile to Ottoman Iraq withdrew to the mountains of Kurdistan where he lived as a pious ascetic. Returning to Baghd
d in 1856, he soon became the leading figure in a revival of Babism. Although he demanded that his followers should abandon militancy, the Iranian government was alarmed, and sought his removal from Iraq. Accordingly in 1863 he was summoned to Istanbul, and thence dispatched to Edirne (Adrianople) (1863–8) and then to the prison-city of Akka (Acre) in Ottoman Syria (1868–92). Immediately before his departure from Baghd
d he apparently made the first declaration of his claim to be a new messenger from God, the promised one foretold by the B
b. In Edirne this claim was made openly (1866), that he was ‘he whom God shall manifest’; and the B
b