ABSTRACT
The Bahai faith had its origin in a millenarian movement of the Shic'ite Muslims of mid-nineteenth century Iran, the Babi movement. Its founder, Sayyid Ali Muhammad of Shiraz (d. 1850), first proclaimed himself as the Gate (bab) to the Hidden Twelfth Imam, w h o m the Shicites believed to be the mahdi, the rightly guided leader of the end of time. At the close of 1844 the twenty-five-year-old Bab, as he became generally known, declared himself to be the Hidden Imam, returning after a thousand years of concealment.
