The Bab was executed by firing squad in Tabriz in 1850, and his remains were hidden and moved from place to place for half a century by Babis and then Bahais who feared their destruction. They were finally brought to Palestine and interred on the slope of Mount Carmel in 1909, at a spot Bahaullah had pointed out during a visit from Acre. A stone superstructure and a golden dome were added in the 1950s.
Around that shrine the Bahai Faith built its administrative centre, which is unusual because the religion has no clergy at all. Authority rests in elected bodies: local and national assemblies chosen without nomination or campaigning, and above them the Universal House of Justice, first elected in 1963 and seated in a colonnaded building on the arc of terraced gardens above the shrine. The other institutions of the world centre, an archive, a research centre and a training institute, stand on the same arc.
Nineteen terraces of gardens, opened in 2001, run from the foot of the mountain to the summit, and they are the most visible thing in Haifa. Bahais come on a nine day pilgrimage by appointment, visiting the shrines here and at Bahji near Acre. By long standing policy the community does not teach its faith within Israel, out of respect for the country's religious communities, so the world centre is administrative and devotional rather than missionary. The properties were inscribed on the World Heritage list in 2008.