In the mid-1840s, Sayyid ‘Ali Muhammad Shirazi (known to history as the Bab), claimed to be the promised Mahdi whose return Iranian Shi‘i Muslims have been awaiting for over a millennium. The overwhelming majority of the Bab’s believers eventually followed Baha’u’llah (founder of the Baha’i religion), who claimed to be the return of Imam Husayn. I argue that the respective messianic visions of Islam and the Baha’i faith account for a fundamental difference between the two religions. Whereas Muslims remain in a state of messianic expectation (intizar), Baha’is have entered a post-messianic era of fulfillment. Whereas Muslims, especially of the Shi‘i persuasion, place the burden of establishing justice and peace on the Mahdi, who will appear at a future date, Baha’is place the burden to establish a just society on themselves in the here and now. Based on a close study of foundational Babi and Baha’i primary sources such as the Bab’s Arabic Qayyum al-Asma’ and Baha’u’llah’s Persian Kitab-i Iqan, my paper will consider how the Baha’i faith views its relation to Islamic messianism in its uniquely Iranian mode.
Additionally, this paper argues that the messianic claims of the Bab and Baha’u’llah are closely related to persecution of Babis and Baha’is in Iran. This link between messianism and persecution is established on the basis of a survey of Iranian and Western primary reports dating from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.
