The Gate, and the Beginning of a New Era

The Declaration of the Bab commemorates the evening of 22 May 1844, in Shiraz, when a young merchant, Siyyid Ali-Muhammad, declared to his first disciple, Mulla Husayn, that he was the Bab, "the Gate", the bearer of a new revelation from God and the herald of one greater yet to come. Baha'is reckon this the beginning of their religious era and the start of the Baha'i calendar; the Babi movement it opened spread rapidly across Persia and provoked fierce persecution.

The Bab's teaching prepared the way for "Him whom God shall make manifest", whom Baha'is identify with Baha'u'llah, so that the declaration of the Bab is understood as the dawn that announced the coming day. The event is one of the nine Baha'i holy days on which work is suspended, and, following the Bab's own reckoning, its commemoration begins about two hours after sunset, the hour of the declaration itself, an unusual timing that Baha'i communities keep with a gathering, prayers and readings recalling the night. It celebrates a beginning: the opening of what Baha'is regard as a new cycle in the religious history of humanity.