Abraham: One God Three Wives Five Religions

On May 23, 1844, in Shiraz, Persia (Iran), a young man, just twenty-four years old, announced that He was the bearer of a long-promised divine Revelation destined to transform the spiritual life of the human race. The very next day, on the other side of the earth, Samuel F. B. Morse sent the first telegraph message in history. The message, which originated in Washington, D.C., and was received in Baltimore, said, “What hath God wrought.” ²

For both Christians and Muslims, it was an exciting time. Many Christian sects expected (on the basis of mathematical calculations from the Book of Daniel) that Jesus was due to return any minute. Some Christians camped on hillsides to await Him. Others, notably the German Templars, sold their possessions, left their homes, and moved to the foot of Mt. Carmel in Haifa, Israel, because they believed it would be the site of His appearance. In Islam, and especially in Shia Islam, several spiritual leaders thought that the time of the appearance of the Qá’im or Mahdi was near.

To Christians, who did not see Jesus descend from clouds in the sky, it seemed that their millennial expectations must have been mistaken (although Bahá’ís would say that they were spiritually correct). In the world of Islam, however, the announcement by a young man that He was the promised Qá’im produced an enormous shock wave. Those who accepted His Message did so because they believed that He was the Mahdi, the return of the twelfth imam, the promised redeemer of Islam.

The name of the young man was ‘Alí-Muḥammad, but He took the mystical title of Báb, which means Gate or Door. His mission was unique in religious history because He was both a herald (like John the Baptist) and a Manifestation (like Jesus or Moses), and He brought a distinctly different Revelation with new sacred writings and several new laws.³ The Báb founded a new religion—the Bábí Faith—whose primary purpose was, He explained, to open a portal of spiritual understanding through which an even greater Messenger would soon come. This new Messenger would usher in the age of peace and justice promised by previous Abrahamic faiths and other world religions as well.

The events surrounding the Declaration of the Báb and its effect on Islam were so profound that they were reported in the newspapers and magazines of other countries. One of the first articles appeared in the London Times in 1845. Under the title “Mahometan Schism,” it reported the arrest of four of the Báb’s earliest followers, who were punished for abandoning Islam. The authorities set the beards of the Bábís on fire, laced string through their noses, and yanked on the string to force them to march through the streets.⁴

The number of followers of the Báb increased rapidly, but so did the level of opposition by the clergy and by the ruler of Persia, Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh. Within the span of six short years, hundreds of Bábis were tortured and / or killed. The writings of the Báb were condemned through a fatwa issued jointly by several religious scholars, and the Báb Himself was put to death by a firing squad in 1850.⁵

The Báb traced His ancestry to Muḥammad through Muḥammad’s grandson, Ḥusayn, who was the third Imam of Shia Islam. This was the same Ḥusayn who sacrificed his life in an attempt to turn Islam from following what he thought was an incorrect and overly violent interpretation of Muḥammad’s teachings (see Chapter 15). Thus the Báb was a descendant of Muḥammad and, farther back, a descendant of Abraham and Hagar.

Just as each previous Messenger of God mentioned the Revelators who had preceded Him, the Báb referred to His spiritual predecessors, too. He explained their common purpose as that of reflecting God’s word to man: “In the time of the First Manifestation the Primal Will appeared in Adam; in the day of Noah It became known in Noah; in the day of Abraham in Him; and so in the day of Moses; the day of Jesus; the day of Muḥammad, the Apostle of God …”⁶

The Báb delineated His position as being the current link in a coherent and continuous chain of Revelations. Believing in Him was synonymous with believing in the Messengers of the past: “He Who is the Eternal Truth beareth me witness, whoso followeth this Book [i.e., the Báb’s Revelation] hath indeed followed all the past scriptures which have been sent down from heaven by God, the Sovereign Truth.”⁷

One of the many sad events of the Báb’s life was the death of His only child, a son, shortly after his birth. According to the journalistic narrative written by Nabíl-i-A‘ẓam, a follower of the Báb, the baby’s death was understood by the Báb as being a sacrifice akin to the one Abraham had been willing to make. Although he did not provide an exact quotation, Nabíl reported the way the Báb spoke of it in these words:

O God, my God! Would that a thousand Ishmaels were given Me, this Abraham of Thine, that I might have offered them, each and all, as a loving sacrifice unto Thee … O my God, my only Desire! Grant that the sacrifice of My son, My only son, may be acceptable unto Thee. Grant that it be a prelude to the sacrifice of My own, My entire self, in the path of Thy good pleasure. Endue with Thy grace My life-blood which I yearn to shed in Thy path. Cause it to water and nourish the seed of Thy Faith. Endow it with Thy celestial potency, that this infant seed of God may soon germinate in the hearts of men, that it may thrive and prosper, that it may grow to become a mighty tree, beneath the shadow of which all the peoples and kindreds of the earth may gather …⁸

After the Báb had been executed by a firing squad in 1850, the remains of His body were surreptitiously gathered by some of His followers and hidden. The box containing the remains was taken from Shiraz to Tehran, where it remained for almost fifty years. In the meantime, most of those who had been Bábís recognized Bahá’u’lláh as the Messenger promised by the Báb, and they became Bahá’ís. These converts regarded the extraordinary appearance of two Messengers of God within the same century as a fulfillment of Qur’ánic verses describing the sounding of two trumpet blasts that would shake the earth and cause men’s hearts to quake.⁹

In 1899, the box containing the remains of the Báb was laboriously moved from Tehran to Palestine / Israel by Bahá’ís who carried it overland to Beirut and then by sea to Acre. A few years later, the remains of the Báb were entombed in a stone mausoleum built on the side of Mt. Carmel in Haifa. Following that, a shrine was erected atop the mausoleum, and in 2008, the Shrine of the Báb was designated as a World Heritage Site.