Founding of the Baha'i Faith

Date

April 21 - May 2, 1863 (Declaration of Ridvan)

Category

Religion & ideology

Region

Baghdad, Ottoman Empire (modern Iraq)

Era

Modern

Significance

The Baha'i Faith emerged as a distinct world religion in 1863 when Baha'u'llah (Mirza Husayn-Ali Nuri, 1817-1892) declared in the Garden of Ridvan near Baghdad that he was the messianic 'He whom God shall make manifest' foretold by the Bab.

Baha'u'llah had been a leading figure in the earlier Babi movement, founded by the Bab (Siyyid Ali-Muhammad), who proclaimed his own mission in Shiraz in 1844 and was executed in 1850. The twelve-day Declaration of Ridvan (21 April to 2 May 1863), made on the eve of Baha'u'llah's exile from Ottoman Baghdad toward Constantinople, marked the transformation of the persecuted Babi community into the Baha'i movement. Centred on teachings of the oneness of God, the unity of religions, and the unity of humankind, the faith spread under Baha'u'llah's son Abdu'l-Baha and later the Universal House of Justice into a worldwide community of roughly 7-8 million adherents. Its annual Festival of Ridvan commemorates these founding days as the holiest of Baha'i festivals.

Empires active in April 21 - May 2, 1863 (Declaration of Ridvan)

• French Colonial Empire (Second)
  1830 CE – 1962 CE
• Russian Empire
  1721 CE – 1917 CE
• British Empire
  1583 CE – 1997 CE
• Qing Dynasty
  1636 CE – 1912 CE
• Spanish Empire
  1492 CE – 1976 CE
• Portuguese Empire
  1415 CE – 1999 CE

Related religion & ideology events

• Marx and Engels publish The Communist Manifesto
  21 February 1848
• The Azusa Street Revival and the Birth of Pentecostalism
  1906–1909
• Abolition of the Kapu System in Hawaii (ʻAi Noa)
  October 1819
• Founding of the Tablighi Jamaat
  c. 1926
• Founding of the Muslim Brotherhood
  March 1928
• Wahhab–Saud Pact Founds the Wahhabi Movement and First Saudi State
  1744

Further reading

A Little History of Religion

The wider story

A Little History of Religion

Richard Holloway

Accessible sweep of humanity's faiths and belief systems from prehistory to the present.

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