The Baha’i Faith (by the Interfaith Youth team)
It is the goal of this project to share notes on all faiths.
It is a fact that the origins of the Bahá’í Faith cannot be explained by a single event or revelation but by a slow stirring in the soul of 19th-century Persia. The century was restless, filled with broken empires and questions of faith. In the city of Shiraz, in 1844, a young merchant known as the Báb began to speak of renewal. His words, soft yet unwavering, carried a sense of urgency, as though time itself had thinned. He wrote by candlelight, his hand moving swiftly across the page, declaring that a greater messenger was soon to come. Those who heard him felt the air change, as if something ancient had returned.
But revelation, in Persia, did not come without suffering. The Báb’s writings spread quickly through cities and villages, angering the clerics and alarming the crown. He was imprisoned in the northern fortresses of Mákú and Chihríq, his letters smuggled out by loyal followers. In 1850, he was brought to a courtyard in Tabriz and executed by firing squad. It is said that his body, struck by hundreds of bullets, disappeared in smoke and was later found unmarked among the ruins, a story of faith, and perhaps of divine protection.
Among his followers was Mírzá Husayn-‘Alí Núrí, later known as Bahá’u’lláh. Born into wealth in Tehran, he gave up privilege for belief. He was arrested, chained in a dark underground cell, and banished from his homeland. In exile—from Baghdad to Constantinople, then to the prison city of ‘Akká, he continued to write, calling on kings and rulers to abandon tyranny and embrace unity. His message was simple: that all religions come from one God, that humanity is one family, and that peace is both a divine and human duty.
By the time Bahá’u’lláh died in 1892, the faith that had begun in a dim courtyard of Shiraz had traveled far beyond the boundaries of Persia. In the villages, believers still met at night behind shuttered windows, murmuring prayers of unity under the flicker of oil lamps. In the great cities, Cairo, Bombay, Paris, his name was spoken in quiet curiosity, often mispronounced, often misunderstood. There were no temples yet, no banners or processions, only handwritten tablets, passed from one believer to another, their edges worn by the touch of many hands. The world, immense and fractured, seemed not to notice. Yet beneath the silence, something was gathering. The message had survived exile, prison, and chains. It moved, unseen, across deserts and seas, carried by traders, scholars, and dreamers. And though the age was not ready to believe in the unity of mankind, one could sense that the idea had already taken root, that somewhere, in the heart of the century, a new dawn had begun to rise.
