From Shiraz to Haifa: Eight Holy Places of the Babi and Bahai Story

The Shiraz home of the merchant Siyyid Ali-Muhammad, where on the evening of 22 to 23 May 1844 he declared himself the Bab to Mulla Husayn. Bahais count it among their Most Holy Houses and as one of the three points of obligatory pilgrimage, yet Iranian authorities demolished it in September 1979 and the site was paved into a public square.

A rural shrine tomb in Mazandaran that several hundred Babis fortified in October 1848 under Mulla Husayn and later Quddus. The siege lasted about seven months and ended in May 1849 with a sworn promise of safe passage that was broken as the defenders came out.

The largest Babi upheaval began here on 5 May 1850, when several thousand followers led by the cleric Mulla Muhammad Ali Zanjani, called Hujjat, fortified part of the city. The nine month siege ended in a surrender in December, after which fewer than a hundred survivors were executed, the bloodiest single episode of the persecutions.

The Black Pit, a disused underground reservoir in Tehran used as a dungeon, held Baha'u'llah for four months in 1852 after an attempt on the Shah's life by two Babis. Bahai teaching says he first received his revelation here, chained in the dark; the building no longer stands.

A garden on the Tigris outside Baghdad where Baha'u'llah spent twelve days in April 1863 before his banishment to Constantinople. Bahais know it as the Garden of Ridvan, and he is held to have first openly declared his claim here to those closest to him.

A modest stone house at Bahji near Akko where Baha'u'llah died on 29 May 1892 and was buried that evening. Bahais regard it as the holiest site of their religion and face it in daily obligatory prayer, and its grounds are open to visitors of every faith.

The coastal ridge at Haifa is sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims through Elijah and holds the Carmelite order's origin. On its Haifa slope stand the golden-domed Shrine of the Bab and the terraced gardens of the Bahai World Centre, so the story reaches a hill that carries several living claims at once.

The faith's spiritual and administrative heart is two places: the Shrine of the Bab on Mount Carmel with the Seat of the Universal House of Justice, and Bahji at Acre. The properties were inscribed together on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2008, which gathers the whole path into one registered landscape.