ABSTRACT
Babism was the precursor of Bahaism, but unlike its now very widespread successor it began as a highly chiliastic and militant affair during Iran's Qajar dynastic period, even bent on waging holy war to secure the abrogation of the Islamic order and bring in a new messianic dispensation. The Bab is concerned to uncover the meaning behind eschatological concepts, such key ones as resurrection, the grave, the questioning of the dead, death itself, the hour, the bridge, the book, and so forth, which he reinterprets in an original allegorical manner within the framework of an elaborate metaphysical system. According to the system elaborated by the Bab in the Persian Bayan, the Primal Point from which all things originate is the Universal Will, which first manifests itself in the form of nineteen letters, the numerical equivalent of the divine name al-wahid.
