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BAHAISM ii. Bahai Calendar and Festivals The notion of renewal of time, implicit in most religious dispensations, is made explicit in the writings of the Bāb and Bahāʾ-Allāh. To give this spiritual metaphor a concrete frame and to signalize the importance of the dispensation which he came to herald, the Bāb…

BAHAISM iii. Bahai and Babi Schisms Although it never developed much beyond the stage of a sectarian movement within Shiʿite Islam, Babism experienced a number of minor but interesting divisions, particularly in its early phase. The first of these involved the defection of three of the earliest converts of the…

BAHAISM iv. The Bahai Communities The development of the Bahai faith has been accompanied by a massive transformation of the religion’s social base. From being a religion predominantly composed of those of Iranian Shiʿite background, it has become a worldwide movement comprising people of a multitude of religious and national…

BAHAISM v. The Bahai Community of Iran Origins. With the Declaration of the Bāb in 1260/1844, followed by his being accepted as the promised Qāʾem (the Hidden Imam) by a handful of early believers, the first Babi community was born in the city of Shiraz. As his claims spread and…

BAHAISM vi. The Bahai Community of Ashkhabad (ʿEšqābād) Attracted by religious freedom and economic opportunities unavailable to them in Iran, Iranian Bahais began to settle in Ashkhabad around 1884; the community prospered and reached its peak during the period 1917-28. The first Bahai settlement in Ashkhabad dates back to 1300/1882…

BAHAISM vii. Bahai Persecutions Bahai persecutions were a pattern of continuing discriminatory measures against adherents and institutions of the Bahai religion, punctuated by outbreaks of both random and organized violence against individuals and property. Although Bahai accounts conflate earlier episodes involving Babis (see babi executions and uprisings) with those concerned…

BAHAISM viii. Bahai Shrines Of the Bahai sites of pilgrimage and visitation, the most important are the tombs of Bahāʾ-Allāh and the Bāb in Israel and the houses of the Bāb and Bahāʾ-Allāh in Shiraz and Baghdad. Shrines and holy places in Israel. Since Bahāʾ-Allāh’s exile to Palestine in 1868,…

BAHAISM xiv.    Nineteen Day Feast  The Nineteen Day Feast (żiāfat-e nuzdah-ruza) is a gathering of the Bahai community every nineteen days that has devotional, administrative, and social aspects and is the core of community life. The origins of the observance go back to the Bāb, who established what eventually…

BAHAISM i. The Faith History. Bahaism as a religion had as its background two earlier and much different movements in nineteenth-century Shiʿite Shaikhism (following Shaikh Aḥmad Aḥsāʾī) and Babism. Shaikhism centered on theosophical doctrines and believed that a perfect Shiʿite existed on earth at all times, and many Shaikhis (as…

BAHAISM ix. Bahai Temples The Bahai temple, designated in Bahāʾ-Allāh’s Ketāb al-aqdas (Most holy book) as Mašreq al-aḏkār (lit. Dawning place of the mention of [God]), is known usually in the West as “House of Worship.” Although the faith originated in Iran, no Bahai temple was ever built in that…

BAHAISM x. Bahai Schools The Bahai schools were a series of government recognized educational institutions established, owned, and controlled by the Bahai community in various centers of Iran and Ashkhabad and conducted on Bahai principles from 1897 until 1929 in Ashkhabad and until 1934 in Iran. Despite the significance of…

BAHAISM xi. Bahai Conventions Bahai conventions occur at the national and international level for the primary purpose of electing the national Spiritual Assemblies and the Universal House of Justice (See maḥfel-e rūḥānī and bayt al-ʿadl). The first Bahai convention in the world was probably the meeting convened by the Chicago…

BAHAISM xii. Bahai Literature Bahai literature is a large body of writing in Persian and Arabic produced by leaders and adherents of the Bahai religion in Iran from the 1860s to the present. This article is concerned primarily with poetry and belles lettres rather than apologetic, didactic, historiographical, liturgical, or…

BAHĀR, a Persian literary, scientific, political, and social-affairs monthly founded by Mīrzā Yūsof Khan Āštīānī, called Eʿteṣām-e Daftar and Eʿteṣām-al-Molk (q.v.; 1291-1356/1874-75-1937-38). Mīrzā Yūsof was the son of Mīrzā Ebrāhīm Khan and the father of the poetess Parvīn Eʿteṣāmī. He was a deputy in the second Majles, and later its…

BAHĀR, a newspaper founded by Shaikh Aḥmad Tehrāni, known as Aḥmad Bahār, in 1296 Š. /1917, in Mašhad. Aḥmad Bahār was a cousin to the famous poet and scholar Moḥammad-Taqi Bahār, whom he admired as a journalistic role model, and whose last name he later chose to adopt. (J. Bahār….