A Brief Biography of Baha'u'llah

Juan R.I. Cole

Department of History
University of Michigan

Baha'u'llah (1817-1892) was the Prophet-Founder of the Baha'i Faith,

considered by adherents to be the Universal Manifestation of God who has
ushered in a new age of world unity. His given name was Husayn-`Ali Nuri,
and he wasborn in Tihran on 12 November 1817 into the household of a
prominent Iranian government dignitary, Mirza Abbas Nuri, known as Mirza
Buzurg. served at first as minister to one of the sons of Fath-`Ali Shah
(r. 1797-1834),and then, late in the same shah's reign, he was appointed governor
of Burujird and Luristan. Mirza Buzurg was in the circle of the then vizier, Mirza
Abu'l-Qasim, the Qa'im-Maqam. The old shah died in 1834 and his son,
Muhammad Shah (r. 1834-1848) came to power. The young monarch wished to
establish his independence, and he had the vizier, Qa'im-Maqam, disgraced and
killed. Baha'u'llah's father, Mirza Buzurg, was stripped of his governorship and
of
his government salary, though he retained the Nuri family's ancestral estates
around the village of Takur in the Nur district of Mazandaran (Bamdad, Rijal, VI,
pp. 126-129).
Baha'u'llah in his youth showed himself a sensitive and spiritual young man.
He was deeply affected, for instance, when he read about the execution of a group
of traitorous and rebellious tribesmen (the Banu Qurayza) by early Muslims. He
also related how, at the wedding of one of his brothers, he witnessed a
traditional
Middle Eastern puppet show. The show was set at a royal court, and when it
ended, the puppeteers packed all the finely clothed figures into a trunk. Young
Baha'u'llah was struck at how illusory and ephemeral were the trappings of
earthly glory (Q.V. Tablets to the Rulers).
Although Mirza Buzurg was out of favor at court, the new vizier, Hajji
Mirza Aqasi, offered the young Baha'u'llah a government post, which the latter
declined. Later, the vizier sought to acquire some of Nuri lands, and was furious
when Baha'u'llah refused to sell. Baha'u'llah, who had contemplative leanings,
came into contact with believers in the mystical, esoteric school of Shaykhis
(q.v.)
in Nur. In 1844, Mulla Husayn Bushru'i arrived in Tihran in his attempt to spread
the Babi faith among the Shaykhi communities, and he found a willing convert in
Mulla Muhammad Mu`allim of Nur. The latter in turn agreed to convey the Bab's
message to Baha'u'llah, then in the capital. The young noble accepted the new
religion eagerly (NN, 120-122).
Late in 1844 or in 1845, Baha'u'llah returned to Takur from Tihran, and
expended great efforts in spreading the Babi faith in Nur and Mazandaran.
Because of the prominence of his family, and his own charismatic personality,
Baha'u'llah's first teaching efforts yielded some new believers, including some
members of the Shi`ite clergy. Baha'u'llah also taught the faith to his brothers,
including Mirza Musa and Mirza Yahya (only 13 in 1844). Baha'u'llah also
attempted to employ his prominence as a noble to protect other Babis, and he
succoured Tahirih Qurratu'l-`Ayn and some other Babis when she was falsely
accused of complicity in the slaying of her uncle, Mulla Taqi Baraghani. As a
consequence of his coming out into the open, however, Baha'u'llah was briefly
imprisoned in Tihran (TN, pp. 72-78, tr. pp. 56-62).
In the summer of 1848, eighty-one prominent Babis gathered at the village
of Badasht in northwestern Iran to discuss ways of freeing the Bab from his
imprisonment in Azerbaijan. Baha'u'llah attended with his brothers, and rented
gardens for some of the Babis, such as Tahirih, but largely stayed in the
background. He suggested divine names for some of the Babis, in accordance with
the Bab's instructions that his followers glorify God in this manner, and it was
at
this point that he adopted for himself the name Baha', or the divine glory. His
young brother and ward, Mirza Yahya, then 17, became Subh-i Azal or the Morn
of Eternity. A conflict broke out at Badasht among Babis who wished to proclaim
the abrogation of Islamic law and the inception of the Bab's independent
revelation, and those who saw the Babi religion as still compatible with retention
of Shi`ite legal codes. Baha'u'llah, like Tahirih, supported the adoption of the
new
revealed law of the Bab, and this position won out. Baha'u'llah later visited Fort
Shaykh Tabarsi and advised the Babis besieged there by government troops and
local Shi`ite clericalists. He left, and attempted to return, but he and his
brother
Mirza Yahya were arrested in Amul (NN, 278-300, 368-77, 459-62, 583-85).
Toward the end of his young life, the Bab had lost many of his major
disciples in the upheavals and persecutions of the late 1840s. He began
increasingly corresponding with and depending another cohort of followers,
including Baha'u'llah, and also Mulla `Ali "`Azim" Turshizi and Azal. In the
winter of 1850, Baha'u'llah was corresponding with the Bab, dictating his
letters to Mirza Yahya; for the purposes of secrecy, these letters were sent
in Mirza Yahya's name. Some of the letters the Bab wrote to Mirza Yahya in this
period actually appear therefore to have been addressed
through him to Baha'u'llah. Abdu'l-Baha has explained that
by the spring of 1850 the vizier, Amir Kabir, was putting great pressure on the
Babis, and the religion needed a secret head whose identity remained unknown to
the authorities. Baha'u'llah and Mulla `Abdu'l-Karim decided to give it out that
Mirza Yahya Azal was the chief of the new religion, in order to protect
Baha'u'llah, now the real mover and shaker among the underground Babis.
Azal was acknowledged by many prominent Babis as a "Mirror" and a first
among equals. There is no evidence that the Bab appointed him as a legatee
or vicar, and there were many Mirrors (a rank below that of the Letters of the
Living) among the Bab's major followers (NN 32, 587, 593-94).
In July of 1850 the Bab was executed by the Iranian government.
Thereafter a number of important Babis put forth extravagant claims, including, in
1851, Sayyid Basir-i Hindi of Multan. Baha'u'llah challenged Sayyid Basir, and
asserted his own divinity instead (many Babi leaders of the time represented
themselves as participating in a pleroma of divine manifestation, similar in some
ways to that claimed by Sufis or mystics). In June, 1851, the vizier put pressure
on
Baha'u'llah to leave the country, which suggests that the government had by that
time infiltrated the Babis and discovered who the community's real leader was.
Baha'u'llah went to the shrine city of Karbala in Iraq, the site of the tomb of
the
Imam Husayn, where a small but active Babi group existed. He found that it was
led by a Sayyid `Uluvv, who had made claims to being God incarnate. Baha'u'llah
faced the man down and convinced him to retract those claims. On the other hand,
during his stay in Karbala between August 1851 and March 1852, Baha'u'llah told
some of his close companions that he was himself the return of the Imam Husayn,
whose return Shi`ites expected after the advent of the Qa'im or Mahdi. During
Baha'u'llah's absence, the more radical leaders of the Babi community in Tihran,
such as Azim and Azal, plotted the assassination of Nasiru'd-Din Shah in
retaliation for his execution of the Bab. In the meantime, a new vizier had come
to
power, Mirza Aqa Khan of Nur, a cousin of Baha'u'llah, and he called Baha'u'llah
back to the capital. There was some expectation of better relations between the
government and the Babis.
On his arrival, however, Baha'u'llah discovered the assassination plot, and
denounced it. The plot was carried out on August 15, 1852, by some young
fanatics, but failed when the pistol misfired. Baha'u'llah was staying with his
brother-in-law, a secretary to the Russian ambassador. The shah demanded that
the Russian legation allow Baha'u'llah to be surrendered to the government, but
the Russians handed him over to the vizier, Aqa Khan Nuri, who was sympathetic
to him. The vizier found it impossible to protect Baha'u'llah when anti-Babi riots
broke out in Tihran, and Baha'u'llah was arrested and made to walk in chains to
the Siyah-Chal, the Black Pit dungeon. The vizier, furious, offered his
resignation
over Baha'u'llah's false arrest. During his imprisonment in the filthy,
disease-ridden dungeon Baha'u'llah saw several Babi friends executed and
suffered horribly. He underwent mystical experiences, feeling energy wash
over his body from the crown of his head, and saw a visions that encouraged
him to arise to reform the Babi community (NN, 595-650).
Baha'u'llah was found innocent of complicity in the assassination plot, but it
was clear that he was not now welcome in Iran. The government gave him
permission to go to Baghdad, in neighboring Ottoman Iraq, where he arrived on 12
January 1853. Azal followed him there a few months later. Baha'u'llah was
according to sources close to him unhappy about Azal coming to Baghdad as a
recluse, apparently because Azal was not under any formal exile order and
therefore could have remained in Iran to organize and give heart to the Babi
community there. Factions of Babis formed in Baghdad who were loyal to either
Baha'u'llah or to Azal, and the ensuing jealousies and rancor so disgusted
Baha'u'llah that in 1854 he secretly departed from Baghdad, taking with him only
one companion, a merchant, and went to Kurdistan in the north where he lived the
life of a mystic. After some time, his friend was killed by thieves. The Kurds
practiced the mystical form of Islam known as Sufism, and a branch of the
Naqshbandi Sufis in Sulaymaniyyah heard of Baha'u'llah's piety, inviting him to
their center. They could tell from his superb calligraphy that he was no
illiterate
holy man. While in Kurdistan Baha'u'llah wrote his "Ode of the Nightingale," an
Arabic poem in classical Sufi style that mentions his "mission" for the first
time.
Baha'u'llah subsequently kept up good contacts with the Kurds, who most often
knew Persian, and may in fact have been attempting to widen the base of the Babi
movement away from Iranian Shi`ites by attracting the Sunni, Sufi, Kurds into the
faith. Baha'u'llah was on good terms with the influential Baban family of
Kurdistan
(Dahaji, p. 48; Qazvini, tr., pp. 7-9; Baha'u'llah, "Al-Qasidah al-Warqa'iyyah,"
in
Athar III, pp. 196-215).
Back in Baghdad, the Babi community lacked firm, public leadership, given
Azal's penchant for secluding himself, and it fell into disarray. Azal also
appears to
have alienated many in the Baghdad community by briefly taking a widow of the
Bab's as a temporary wife, in contradiction of the laws of the Bayan. The Babis
searched for and found Baha'u'llah and pleaded with him to return, which he did
in 1856. In the late 1850s Baha'u'llah wrote important works such as The Hidden
Words and Seven Valleys, which by their crisp Arabic and Persian style and their
mystical intensity encouraged some Babis back in Iran to become especially
attracted to his personality. The form of The Hidden Words, in which God speaks
directly but cryptically to the believer, much resembles that of the `Holy
Sayings'
(hadith qudsi) attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, and this literary form
provided a clue to his own claims. Still, Baha'u'llah publicly and in his
correspondence pointed to Azal as the leader of the community in this period.
Since Azal most often remained in hiding, however, Baha'u'llah had to take on
much of the daily administration of Babi affairs, including the management of
the funds donated by believers. Privately, to a handful of believers such as
Nabil-i
Akbar Qa'ini, Baha'u'llah in the late 1850s talked of himself as a Logos-figure,
brought into being before the creation. Increasingly, the Babis divided into those
who thought Azal was the sun and Baha'u'llah the mirror, and those who thought
Baha'u'llah the sun and Azal the mirror. The Babi community risked persecution
from the Shi`ite clerics throughout this period, and at one point an Iranian
consul
and some major clergymen attempted to begin a movement against Baha'u'llah.
This anti-Babi move failed because the leading Shi`ite cleric in Iraq, the just
and
cautious Shaykh Murtada al-Ansari, refused to go along with it (TN, pp. 107-18,
tr. pp. 82-88; Dahaji, 81-82; Salmani, tr., 15-20, Mirza Abu'l-Fadl, Letters and
Essays, pp. 65-76).
In the early 1860s Baha'u'llah gradually made explicit some of the claims
latent in his mystical works of the previous decade. Although his Book of
Certitude, revealed circa 1861-1862, makes no open assertion of his status as the
promised one of the Bab, at the end Baha'u'llah says it was "revealed"
(munzal). He appears to have been waiting for the year 1280 of the Islamic
calendar (1863-64) to make a more open declaration, since some Muslims
expected that a messiah would arise in that year. In the spring of
1863 Baha'u'llah was informed that Ottoman Sultan `Abdu'l-`Aziz wanted him
brought to the capital, Istanbul (Constantinople). Before he left, Baha'u'llah
set up tents in the garden of Najib Pasha at Baghdad, where, during the
period 21 April to 2 May, he informed a select handful of close followers and
relatives that he was the promised one of the Bab, "He whom God shall make
manifest." He also from this point urged a pacifist approach, condemning holy war
or jihad. He arrived in Istanbul in August, but refused to seek out prominent
statesmen or to play politics. The Iranian ambassador put considerable pressure
on the Ottoman government to have him exiled from the capital, from which he
could have gained influence. Sultan `Abdu'l-`Aziz bowed to the
Iranian entreaties, and ordered that Baha'u'llah be exiled to Edirne (Adrianople),
240 km from the Bosphorus on its European side. Baha'u'llah wished to contest
the sultan's decision, suggesting that the Babis in his household refuse to obey
it.
This refusal would result, he reasoned, either in a glorious martyrdom, or in the
order being rescinded. Azal, however, was unwilling to go along with the plan, and
since it required unanimity to succeed, it could not be carried through (Dahaji,
pp. 65-70, 153-54; Salmani, tr., pp. 22, 39-41; Qazvini, "Risalah," tr., pp. 16-
19).
Baha'u'llah dwelt in Edirne from 12 December 1863 to 12 August 1868,
along with a small number of other Babis, including Azal. They received a stipend
from the Ottoman government for their support. In the period 1865-1866 he
gradually began sending letters to close friends back in Iran in which he said he
was the spiritual return of the Bab. These claims vitally threatened the position
of
Azal, then widely recognized in Iran as the titular head of the religion, since it
would mean little to be vicar of the Babi religion were "He whom God shall make
manifest" to appear and initiate a new dispensation. In March, 1866, Baha'u'llah
moved to a separate house from that of Azal, who, he said, had plotted his death.
In September, 1867, Baha'u'llah sent a letter to Azal in which he delineated his
station and demanded obedience from his younger half-brother. Azal responded
by challenging Baha'u'llah to a test of the divine will in a local mosque, such
that
God would strike down the impostor. Baha'u'llah agreed, and went to the Sultan
Selim mosque at the appointed time, but Azal lost face when he neglected to show
up. In 1866-1868 Baha'u'llah began writing his Epistles to the Rulers, addressing
Sultan `Abdu'l-`Aziz, Nasiru'd-Din Shah of Iran, and Napoleon III of France
(Baha'u'llah, Lawh-i Nasir, Majmu`ih-yi Matbu`ih, pp. 166-202; Dahaji, pp. 35-38,
283-85; Salmani, tr., pp. 42-48, 93-105; Qazvini, tr., pp. 19-27).
The partisans of Azal, having lost ground locally and disturbed at the
eagerness with which Babis in Iran were embracing Baha'u'llah's message, began
approaching the Ottoman state with complaints. Additionally, the Iranian
ambassador in Istanbul, Mirza Husayn Khan, had continued to press for harsher
restrictions on the Babis in the Ottoman empire. In response, the Ottoman
government launched an investigation of the Babis at Edirne in the spring of 1868.
The commission concluded that Baha'u'llah had a right to complain about the
actions of Azal and his partisans, but that Baha'u'llah, in making a new claim and
promulgating it from Ottoman soil, posed a possible source of turmoil. The sultan
therefore ordered that Baha'u'llah and some of his companions be exiled to the
disease-ridden fortress-prison of Akka or St. Jean d'Acre on the Syrian coast.
Azal and his followers were sent to Cyprus. The Ottomans also sent some Azalis
to Akka, and some Baha'is to Cyprus, presumably in hopes they would spy on
their enemies for the state (Dahaji, pp. 154-56; Qazvini, tr., pp. 27-52).
Baha'u'llah expressed fury at being sent arbitrarily into solitary confinement
at the fortress of the pestilential, remote little declining port city of Akka,
and he
predicted that political turmoil would consequently beset Istanbul and that God
would "take hold" of Sultan `Abdu'l-`Aziz. He continued his proclamation to the
rulers of the major powers, writing Queen Victoria, Tsar Alexander II, Kaiser
Wilhelm I, and Pope Pius IX. In these letters he proclaimed himself the promised
one of all religions, and therefore in a symbolic sense the return of Christ for
Christians. (For Jews, he was the messiah, for Shi`ite Muslims the return of Imam
Husayn, for Zoroastrians the Shah-Bahram Varjavand.) He denounced the
international arms race, saying that military budgets should instead be diverted
to
caring for the poor, and advocated collective security, wherein all nations would
bind themselves to join in a defense of any country attacked by an aggressor. One
of the great issues facing the autocratic governments of the Middle East in the
late 1860s and early 1870s was whether to allow governmental reforms such as
cabinet government, a written constitution, and parliamentary democracy. In 1866
the Ottoman viceroy of Egypt had set up a relatively powerless Chamber of
Deputies. Political groups such as the Young Ottomans began agitating for
parliamentary government in Istanbul itself in 1867, and they continued their
campaign for the subsequent decade. Indeed, in 1873 two prominent Young
Ottoman thinkers were exiled to Akka where they enjoyed cordial relations with
the Baha'is. Baha'u'llah had clearly, however, been in prior contact with some of
these Young Ottomans, and, indeed, sent a letter to Rhodes reporting to their
colleagues the arrival of the two at Akka. His eldest son, `Abdu'l-Baha, also
corresponded with the Young Ottoman constitutionalist, Namik Kemal.
Baha'u'llah, disappointed that he had been treated unjustly by the sultan and
his ministers, joined in the call for parliamentary government on his arrival in
Akka. In his Tablet to Queen Victoria (1868 or 1869) he praised the system of
British parliamentary democracy, the franchise in which had been widened when
she signed the Reform Act of 1867 only the year before. In 1873, in his Most Holy
Book (al-Kitab al-Aqdas), Baha'u'llah predicted that a democracy of the people
would rule one day in Iran itself. In later tablets he advocated that a world-wide
consultative body be convoked. In 1876, in a vindication for Baha'u'llah's
earlier predictions, Sultan `Abdu'l-`Aziz committed suicide in Istanbul
and political forces favoring elected government came to power, authoring a
constitution and holding empire-wide elections. The young Sultan `Abdu'l-Hamid,
however, eventually proved hostile to this budding democracy, and he prorogued
the Ottoman parliament in 1878 and instituted strict censorship. Baha'u'llah,
undeterred, continued to call from Ottoman soil for constitutional monarchy and
elective government in the Middle East, a call that was officially forbidden in
the
despotic regimes of the sultan and the Iranian shah It was not until the Young
Turk revolution of 1908 that the Ottoman ban on democracy was revoked. (Cole,
"Iranian Millenarianism," pp. 1-26 and sources cited therein).
From Baha'u'llah's more open proclamation of his station in 1866/67, his
message met with widespread acceptance among the Babis back in Iran, the vast
majority of whom now became Baha'is. Only a few thousand continued to follow
Azal. As noted, in 1873 Baha'u'llah authored his most important work, the Most
Holy Book, the book of laws for the Baha'i religion, intended to abrogate for
Baha'is the canon law of both the Babi faith and of Islam. In subsequent works he
urged the adoption of a world language, and of a globally uniform set of weights
and measures. He taught the underlying unity of the major world religions,
including Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam (his son and
vicar, `Abdu'l-Baha', later recognized Buddha and Krishna as true prophets,
as well). Baha'u'llah advocated compulsory schooling for children, including
girls,
and said that in his religion "women are as men." He enjoined his followers
against holding any religious or national prejudice, and, in a time when Middle
Easterners were discovering nationalism, he insisted that love of all humankind
was superior to mere love of one's own country. He advocated the adoption of
modern Western technology, and pointed out that Middle Easterners had already
accepted much of the philosophical and scientific heritage of the ancient Greeks,
upon which modern scientists were only building (these points in Tablets of
Baha'u'llah revealed after the Kitab-i-Aqdas).
Baha'u'llah had by 1873 already been permitted to move out of the Akka
prison, and to rent a dwelling in the town. When they arrived in Syria, the
Baha'is
had been suspected by local authorities of being nothing but anarchists and
criminals. Gradually, Baha'u'llah's uprightness and high ideals changed the minds
of officials, and only once, when some of the rougher Baha'is murdered three
Azalis who were spying on the Baha'is for the Ottoman state, was this
rapprochement interrupted. Baha'u'llah had attempted to instill a
pacifist ethos in the Babi community, and deeply regretted the incident. In 1877,
the local Ottoman governor gave him permission to live in a mansion outside
Akka, at Mazra`a. In 1879 he moved to another mansion, at Bahji (literally the
"small garden," Bagce, in Turkish), where he lived until his passing in 1892.
Baha'u'llah married three times, first Asiyih "Nuvvab" Khanum in his youth, then
his cousin, Mahd-i `Ulya, whose family had been martyred; he had a number of
children with each of these co-wives, in accordance with Middle Eastern customs
of the time. In Baghdad he married Gawhar Khanum (the latter appears to have
been a pro forma temporary marriage [mut`ah] of a sort required of Shi`ite law
where a man had a live-in maid, and Gawhar Khanum had been brought into the
household in the Shi`ite Karkh district in order to serve Asiyih Khanum). He had
only one child, a daughter, with Gawhar Khanum). Baha'u'llah's eldest son and
vicar, `Abdu'l-Baha, later interpreted the Most Holy Book to require monogamy.
Baha'u'llah had altogether fourteen children from his three wives, including four
daughters. Five of his sons predeceased him. As noted, he appointed his
eldest son, `Abdu'l-Baha, ashis successor and the official interpreter of his
religion after his death, and he also provided for the election of local houses
of justice and a world-wide Universal Houseof Justice to govern community
affairs. Baha'u'llah died of a fever in `Akka on 29 May 1892, at the age of
74 (Qazvini, tr., pp. 45-65; Dahaji, pp. 285-91; furtherbiographical details in
Balyuzi, Baha'u'llah King of Glory, passim).

Bibliography: Muhammad "Nabil-i A`zam" Zarandi, The Dawnbreakers: Nabil's

Narrative (Wilmette, Ill.: Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1970); `Abdu'l-Baha', A
Traveller's Narrative, ed. and tr. E.G. Browne, 2 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1891); Muhammad `Ali Salmani, My Memories of Baha'u'llah, trans.
Marzieh Gail (Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 1982); Mirza Jawad Qazvini, "Historical
Epitome," trans. in E.G. Browne, ed., Materials for the Study of the Babi Religion
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1919); Sayyid Mihdi Dahaji, "Risalih,"
University Library Cambridge, Browne Collection, Or. F. 57; Shoghi Effendi
Rabbani, God Passes By (Wilmette, Ill.: Baha'i Publishing Trust, 1970; H.M.
Balyuzi, Baha'u'llah, King of Glory (Oxford: George Ronald, 1980); J. Cole, "Baha'
Allah," Encyclopedia Iranica (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988), vol. III,
pp. 422-29; J. Cole, "Iranian Millenarianism and Democratic Thought in the
Nineteenth Century," International Journal of Middle East Studies
24 (1992): 1-26.
[NN above = Nabil's Narrative; TN = A Traveller's Narrative]