The Baha'i Faith and Its Relationship to Islam, Christianity, And Judaism: A Brief History‪.‬

The origin of the Baha'i faith can be traced to the city of Shiraz in southwest Iran, where, in 1844, Sayyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi confided to a select group of Shaykhi Shi'a Muslims that he was the Bab, the gate to the Hidden Imam of the Shi'a. The Bab took eighteen Shaykhis as his disciples, whom he called the "Letters of the Living." (1) The Babi movement met with much official resistance, both from Qajar and clerical authorities, as it recruited new adherents and became a significant insurgency movement. In an effort to quash the insurrections erupting in parts of Iran, the Qajar government executed the Bab on July 9, 1850. (2) Following the Bab's death, the movement fragmented, with a group led by the Bab's apparent successor, Mirza Yahya Nuri, known as Sobh-e Azal, or Morning of Eternity, becoming the most significant faction. Conflicting claims of leadership forced many Babis back into mainstream Shi'ism, or into taqiyya, the practice of hiding one's faith under a veneer of orthodoxy for the purpose of survival. In 1866, Mirza Husayn Ali Nuri, the older half-brother of Sobh-e Azal, publicly proclaimed himself to be Man-yuzhiruhu'llah, or He Whom God Shall Make Manifest, the successor of the Bab. (3) Known as Baha'u'llah, the Glory of God, he emerged as the leader of the majority of Babis, and his followers adopted the label Baha'is. A small group of Sobh-e Azal's followers who remained loyal to Mirza Yahya Nuri became known as Azalis, a religious group that has since dwindled over time, and is for all purposes dying out. (4)