The Bahá'í Faith was founded by a prisoner who wrote to Queen Victoria
Bahá'u'lláh spent four decades being exiled from Iran to Baghdad, Constantinople, Adrianople and finally the Ottoman penal colony of Akka. From captivity he wrote letters announcing his mission to Pope Pius IX, Napoleon III and Queen Victoria. The religion he founded now counts roughly 7 to 8 million followers across most of the world.
Its roots lie with a merchant from Shiraz, Siyyid Ali-Muhammad, who on the evening of 22 May 1844 gained his first follower and took the title the Báb, meaning the Gate. He claimed a new revelation and foretold a coming messenger, whom he called He whom God shall make manifest. Iran's Islamic clergy condemned him, his followers were persecuted, and he was publicly executed for heresy in 1850. His remains were later smuggled to Mount Carmel in Haifa, where his shrine is now a major pilgrimage site.
Mirza Husayn Ali Nuri, an early Bábí who took the name Bahá'u'lláh, was jailed in Tehran's Siyah-Chal dungeon after other Bábís tried to assassinate the shah in 1852, though he had no part in it. Russian diplomatic pressure won his release after four months. In 1863, as he was being moved on from Baghdad, he told followers that the prophetic call had reached him in that dungeon. Most Bábís accepted him. He produced more than 18,000 works in Arabic and Persian, only about 8 percent translated into English, and died near Akka in 1892; his resting place at Bahji is the point Bahá'ís face in daily prayer.
The core teaching is unity. God is said to reveal religion progressively through messengers including the Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad, so the major faiths share a purpose while differing in practice. From that follows an explicit rejection of racism, sexism and nationalism and a vision of a unified world order.
Leadership passed to his son Abdu'l-Bahá, freed by the Young Turk Revolution in 1908, who carried the faith to Europe and America, and then to his grandson Shoghi Effendi, who led for 36 years and died in London in 1957. Since 1963 the faith has been governed by the Universal House of Justice, a nine-member body elected every five years and based in Haifa. Followers prefer the name Bahá'í Faith and regard the old academic label Bahaism as derogatory.
Source: Baháʼí Faith
