An Introduction to the life of Bahá'u'lláh

The name Bahá'u'lláh is an Arabic word which means "The Glory of God". Another spelling is Baha'u'llah (without diacriticals). Other transliterations of this Name are Bahaullah and Baha Allah. The religion established by Bahá'u'lláh is referred to as the Bahá'i Faith and is sometimes spelled Bahai. It is also occassionally mis-labeled Bahaism.

 

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In the middle of the last century, one of the most notorious dungeons in the Near East was Tehran's "Black Pit." Once the underground reservoir for a public bath, its only outlet was a single passage down three steep flights of stone steps. Prisoners huddled in their own bodily wastes, languishing in the pit's inky gloom, subterranean cold and stench-ridden atmosphere.

In this grim setting, the rarest and most cherished of religious events was once again played out: mortal man, outwardly human in other respects, was summoned by God to bring to humanity a new religious revelation.

The year was 1852, and the man was a Persian nobleman, known today as Bahá'u'lláh. During His imprisonment, as He sat with his feet in stocks and a 100-pound iron chain around his neck, Bahá'u'lláh received a vision of God's will for humanity.

The event is comparable to those great moments of the ancient past when God revealed Himself to His earlier Messengers: when Moses stood before the Burning Bush; when the Buddha received enlightenment under the Bodhi tree; when the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, descended upon Jesus; or when the archangel Gabriel appeared to Muhammad.

Bahá'u'lláh's experience in the Black Pit set in motion a process of religious revelation which, over the next 40 years, led to the production of thousands of books, tablets and letters--which today form the core of the sacred scripture of Bahá'í Faith. In those writings, He outlined a framework for the reconstruction of human society at all levels: spiritual, moral, economic, political, and philosophical.

Source: www.bahaullah.com