Baha'u'llah died on 29 May 1892 at Bahji, a house near Akka in present day Israel where he had spent his final years under a relaxed form of the confinement Ottoman authorities had imposed on him decades earlier following his exile from Iran and successive banishments through Baghdad, Constantinople and Adrianople. By the time of his death, Baha'u'llah had spent roughly forty years in exile and, for much of that time, in various forms of imprisonment, following his initial arrest in Tehran in 1852.
Baha'i tradition refers to his death not simply as a passing but as his ascension, and it is observed as one of the nine annual Baha'i holy days. In his will and testament, a document known as the Kitab-i-Ahd, Baha'u'llah appointed his eldest son, Abbas Effendi, later known as Abdu'l-Baha, as his successor and the authorized interpreter of his writings, a clear line of succession that helped the Baha'i community avoid the kind of major leadership fracture that had affected the earlier Babi movement after the Bab's own death.
Baha'u'llah was buried at Bahji, and the house and surrounding shrine where he spent his final years and was laid to rest became, and remains, the location Baha'is regard as the holiest site of their faith.