Bahai Faith

Home > History > Asia and Africa > Middle Eastern History

Bahā'ī Faith. A religion founded by Bahā'u'llāh in the 1860s. After his death in 1892, it was led successively by his eldest son, ʿAbdu'l-Bahā (from 1892 to 1921), his great grandson, Shoghi Effendi (from 1922 to 1957), and then (in 1963, after a brief ‘interregnum’) by an elected body, the Universal House of Justice.

Claiming to be the promised one of all religions, and preaching a message of global socio-religious reform, Bahā'u'llāh initially drew his followers from amongst the Bābīs, most of whom became Bahā'īs. Significant expansion in the non-Muslim Third World began in the 1950s and 1960s, Bahā'īs from these areas now constituting the majority of the world's five million Bahā'īs.

Bahā'ī is monotheistic, but as God is regarded as in essence completely transcendent and unknowable, religious doctrine centres on the belief in a series of ‘Manifestations of God’ (mazāḥir-i ilāhī). These individuals reflect and manifest the attributes of God and progressively reveal the divine purpose for humankind. The Manifestations include Abraham, Moses, Zoroaster, Gautama Buddha, Jesus, Muḥammad, the Bāb, and for the present age, Bahā'u'llāh. At a societal level, the present age is regarded as unique. The unity of all the peoples and religions of the earth is the destined hallmark of the age.

Religious life centres on various individual acts of devotion (daily obligatory prayer and moral self-accounting, an annual nineteen-day fast), and a communal ‘Feast’ held once every nineteen days at the beginning of each month in the Bahā'ī calendar. Bahā'ī communities come together to commemorate various Holy Days, including the Bahā'ī New Year at the vernal equinox (usually 21 Mar.), and the Ridvān festival (21 Apr.–2 May) marking the anniversary of Bahā'u'llāh'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.