Origin from 1844
In 1844 Siyyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi first presented himself to his earliest followers as the Bab, the Gate, a title within Twelver Shia expectation for the channel of communication with the hidden Twelfth Imam, whose return the tradition awaited. Over the following years his own writings raised the claim further, from intermediary to an independent Manifestation of God in his own right, bearing new revealed law in the Bayan rather than merely announcing another's return. That escalation is what separates Babism from the Shaykhi school it grew out of: a Shaykhi could accept a gate to the Imam without abandoning Twelver Islam, but an independent Manifestation with superseding law could not be absorbed back into it. The claim culminated in the doctrine, carried into the Bayan itself, that the Bab's own dispensation would in turn be superseded by a still greater Manifestation, He Whom God Shall Make Manifest, whose coming Babis were taught to expect imminently.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Held ByBabism, and after it the Baha'i Faith 1 Defining MomentIn 1844 Siyyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi first presented himself to his earliest followers as the Bab, the Gate, a title within Twelver Shia expectation for the channel of communication with the hidden Twelfth Imam. 1 Structure
StructureThe claim rose over the following years from intermediary to an independent Manifestation of God bearing new revealed law in the Bayan, and culminated in the teaching that this dispensation would in turn be superseded by a still greater Manifestation, He Whom God Shall Make Manifest. 1 Belief
SubjectRevelation and scripture 1 Status
Status Within the TraditionDefined and binding within this tradition 1 Doctrinal CategoryRevelation, Covenant and Prophecy 1 Learn More
From Gate to Manifestation in Six Years
Twelver Shia Islam had, since the ninth century, held that its Twelfth Imam did not die but went into occultation, and that during a period called the Minor Occultation he communicated with the faithful through a series of deputies, each called a Bab, a Gate. When Siyyid Ali Muhammad, a young merchant from Shiraz, first announced his mission to Mulla Husayn on the night of 22 May 1844, the title he took, the Bab, placed him inside that established expectation rather than outside it: a channel to the hidden Imam, not a replacement for the Islamic revelation itself.
Over the six years between that declaration and his execution in 1850, his own writings pressed the claim further, moving from gate to imam, to imam himself, and eventually to an independent Manifestation of God comparable in kind to Muhammad, bearing his own revealed book, the Bayan, and his own law. Each stage of the escalation is documented in his surviving writings and correspondence, which is part of why Denis MacEoin's manuscript-based reconstruction of Babi history treats the movement's theology as something that developed in real time under the pressure of persecution, rather than as a fixed system announced complete on day one.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Belongs to Tradition
Related To
The Bab's own claim to be a Manifestation is what the Baha'i doctrine of successive Manifestations of God later generalised into a principle.
Sources
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