The Claims, the Bayan, and the Break with Islam

The Bab's teaching developed swiftly and radically. He came to declare himself not only the Gate to the Hidden Imam but the Qa'im himself, and then a Messenger bringing a new revelation that abrogated the law of Islam, a decisive and, to the Shia religious establishment, blasphemous break.

His principal work is the Bayan (the Exposition), an unfinished scripture setting out laws and doctrine for the new dispensation. Its most striking feature is its own provisionality: much of the Bab's writing points forward to a coming figure he called He whom God shall make manifest, for whose sake the whole Babi dispensation existed and to whom his followers were to give their allegiance when he appeared. This built into the movement, from the start, an orientation toward a future fulfilment, the role that Baha'u'llah would claim in 1863.

The Babi teaching combined a mystical and numerological vision, an intense preoccupation with the letters and hidden meanings of scripture, with reformist social impulses. Its abrogation of Islamic law, its new calendar, and its claim of ongoing revelation after the Prophet Muhammad, whom Islam holds to be the seal of the prophets, set it in direct and irreconcilable conflict with the religious authorities of Persia.