Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Baha'i Faith Routes gathers two pilgrimages, the one Baha'is undertake today and the one their scripture actually prescribes, which is no longer possible to walk.

The Kitab i Aqdas makes pilgrimage obligatory, for those able, to two houses: the house of Baha'u'llah in Baghdad and the house of the Bab in Shiraz. Neither can be visited today. The Baghdad house was seized by hostile parties in the 1920s and later destroyed; the Shiraz house was demolished in 1979. Shoghi Effendi clarified that visiting the accessible shrines around Haifa and Acre now fulfills the same obligation, and the Historic Baha'i Pilgrimage to Shiraz and Baghdad survives in the atlas as the earlier, now unwalkable, predecessor of the pilgrimage practiced today.

The Baha'i Pilgrimage to Haifa and Acre is the nine day pilgrimage that replaced it, taking in the Shrine of the Bab on the terraces of Mount Carmel, the Shrine of Baha'u'llah at Bahji outside Acre, which is the qiblih Baha'is face in obligatory prayer, the mansion at Bahji, the cell in the Acre citadel where Baha'u'llah was imprisoned, and the Ridvan Garden. It is arranged only through the Baha'i World Centre, by application, and is for Baha'is; the gardens themselves are open to anyone as free guided visits.

What the two routes share is the destination's underlying claim rather than its geography: an obligation the scripture states in one place, now answered in another because the place it names no longer exists to be visited.