What is the Báb?
The Báb (Arabic: bāb, 'Gate') is the title taken by Siyyid 'Alí Muḥammad Shírází (1819–1850), a Persian merchant from Shiraz who in 1844 declared himself the Gate to the hidden Imam of Shia Islam and the bearer of a new divine revelation. He founded the Bábí Faith and authored the Bayán, a new scripture he considered authoritative over the Quran. He was executed by firing squad in Tabriz in 1850 at the age of thirty. In the Bahá'í Faith, which emerged from the Bábí movement, he is revered as a Manifestation of God and the herald of Baháʼu'lláh.
The Báb vs adjacent figures
The Báb is sometimes compared to al-Hallaj, the Sufi mystic who was also executed in the Islamic world for claims his contemporaries found heretical. The parallel is structural rather than doctrinal. Al-Hallaj spoke from within Sufism and its framework of mystical union. The Báb founded a new religious dispensation and claimed authority to abrogate existing religious law. He is also distinct from the figure of the Mahdí as awaited in mainstream Shia theology. The Mahdí is the Twelfth Imam, expected to return at the end of time. The Báb claimed initially to be the Gate to that figure, then later to be a Manifestation of God in his own right. The precise evolution of these claims, and how they relate to one another, is a subject of ongoing scholarly debate.
The 1844 declaration
On the evening of May 22–23, 1844, in Shiraz, the Báb received Mullá Ḥusayn, a young cleric who had been searching for the figure foretold by his recently deceased teacher Sayyid Kázim Rashtí. Over the course of the evening, the Báb revealed a commentary on the Súrih of Joseph, later known as the Qayyúmu'l-Asmá', which Mullá Ḥusayn accepted as proof of divine authority. In the months that followed, seventeen more disciples accepted the Báb's claim. These eighteen, together with the Báb himself, are known in the Bahá'í tradition as the Letters of the Living.
The Bayán
The Báb's central scripture is the Bayán (Arabic: 'Exposition'), written in two versions: one in Arabic, one in Persian. The Persian Bayán is more extensive and lays out the laws and ordinances of a new religious dispensation. It reorganises the calendar around the number nineteen: nineteen months of nineteen days each. It also declares itself incomplete, anticipating a figure it calls Man Yuẓhiruhu'lláh ('He Whom God shall make manifest'). The Bahá'í Faith identifies this promised figure as Baháʼu'lláh. Scholars have noted that the Bayán draws on the Shaykhí school of Shia Islam, the theological tradition in which the Báb was educated, while departing sharply from orthodox Shia doctrine.
Persecution and martyrdom
The Bábí movement spread rapidly across Persia and attracted intense opposition from both the Qajar state and the Shia clerical establishment. The Báb was arrested shortly after his declaration and spent most of his ministry imprisoned, first in Máh-Kú and then in Chihríq, two remote fortresses in northwestern Persia. Bábí communities in several cities faced armed suppression. Thousands of followers died in a series of conflicts between 1848 and 1850. On July 9, 1850, the Báb was brought to the barracks square in Tabriz and suspended before a firing squad. The first volley left him unharmed. He was found back in his cell completing a document he had been writing. A second volley killed him. His remains were preserved by followers and eventually interred at the Shrine of the Báb on Mount Carmel in Haifa, now the world centre of the Bahá'í Faith.
In the index
The Bahá'í and Bábí traditions have no dedicated items in this index yet. The Báb's teaching emerged from the same Islamic world as Sufism and engages directly with the Quran and the office of the imam. The messianic dimension connects him to comparative cases under messiah. His martyrdom and his claim to divine speech in an Islamic context place him beside al-Hallaj as a recurring reference in scholarship on Islamic religious history. When items covering the Bahá'í or Bábí tradition are added to the index, this entry will serve as the natural cross-link point.