Bahá'u'lláh (ba-haa-ol-laa, Arabic: بهاء الله‎ "Glory of God") (12 November 1817 – 29 May 1892), born Mírzá Ḥusayn-`Alí Nuri (Persian: میرزا حسینعلی نوری), was the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. He claimed to be the prophetic fulfilment of Bábism, a 19th-century outgrowth of Shí‘ism, but in a broader sense claimed to be a messenger from God referring to the fulfilment of the eschatological expectations of Islam, Christianity, and other major religions.[1] Bahá'u'lláh taught that humanity is one single race and that the age has come for its unification in a global society. His claim to divine revelation resulted in persecution and imprisonment by the Persian and Ottoman authorities, and his eventual 24-year confinement in the prison city of `Akka, Palestine, where he died. In his lifetime he authored many religious works, most notably the Kitáb-i-Aqdas and the Kitáb-i-Íqán. There are two known photographs of Bahá'u'lláh. Outside of pilgrimage, Bahá'ís prefer not to view his photo in public, or even to display it in their private homes. Bahá'u'lláh was born on 12 November 1817, in Tehran, the capital of Persia, in present-day Iran. His ancestry can allegedly be traced back to Abraham through Abraham's wife Keturah, to Zoroaster and to Yazdigird III, the last king of the Sassanid Empire, and also to Jesse.[2][3] His mother was Khadíjih Khánum and his father was Mírzá Buzurg. Bahá'u'lláh's father, Mírzá Buzurg, served as vizier to Imám-Virdi Mírzá, the twelfth son of Fat′h Ali Shah Qajar. Mírzá Buzurg was later appointed governor of Burujird and Lorestan,[4] a position that he was stripped of during a government purge when Muhammad Shah came to power. After the death of his father, Bahá'u'lláh was asked to take a government post by the new vizier Haji Mirza Aqasi, but declined.[5] Bahá'u'lláh was married three times. He married his first wife Ásíyih Khánum, the daughter of a nobleman, in Tehran in 1835, when he was 18 and she was 15.[6] She was given the title of The Most Exalted Leaf and Navváb.[7] His second marriage was to his widowed cousin Fátimih Khánum, in Tehran in 1849 when she was 21 and he was 32.[6] She was known as Madh-i-`Ulyá. His third marriage to Gawhar Khánum occurred in Baghdad sometime before 1863.[6] Bahá'u'lláh declared Ásíyih Khánum his "perpetual consort in all the worlds of God", and her son `Abdu'l-Bahá as his vicar.[8] He had 14 children, ten sons and four daughters, of which five sons predeceased him.[9] Bahá'ís regard Ásíyih Khánum and her children Mírzá Mihdí, Bahiyyih Khánum and 'Abdu'l-Bahá to be the Bahá'í holy family.[10] In 1844, a 25 year-old man from Shiraz, Siyyid Mírzá `Alí-Muhammad, who took the title of the Báb, claimed to be the promised Mahdi of Islam.[11] The movement quickly spread across the Persian Empire and received widespread opposition from the Islamic clergy.[11] The Báb himself was executed in 1850 by a firing squad in the public square of Tabriz at the age of 30 and the community was almost entirely exterminated in 1852–3.[11] While the Báb claimed a station of revelation, he also claimed no finality for his revelation.[12] In most of his prominent writings, the Báb alluded to a Promised One, most commonly referred to as "Him whom God shall make manifest." The Bayán, one of the Báb's works, is essentially a discourse on Him whom God shall make manifest, and the Báb always discussed his own writings in the context of the coming of Him whom God shall make manifest.[13] According to the Báb, this personage, promised in the sacred writings of previous religions would establish the kingdom of God on the Earth;[11][14] several of the Báb's writings state the coming of Him Whom God shall make manifest would be imminent.[13] In the books written by the Báb he constantly entreats his believers to follow Him whom God shall make manifest when he arrives.[12] The Báb also eliminated the institution of successorship or vicegerency to his movement, and stated that no other person's writings would be binding after his death until Him whom God shall make manifest would appear.[13] Bahá'u'lláh first heard of the Báb when he was 27, and received a messenger, Mullá Husayn, telling him of the Báb. Bahá'u'lláh accepted the Báb's claims, becoming a Bábí and helping to spread the new movement, especially in his native province of Núr, becoming recognized as one of its most influential believers.[9][15] His notability as a local gave him many openings, and his trips to teach the religion were met with success, even among some of the religious class. He also helped to protect his co-religionists, such as Táhirih, but did so at some risk, since the aid he was giving led to his being temporarily imprisoned in Tehran and enduring bastinado.[9] Bahá'u'lláh, in the summer of 1848, also attended the conference of Badasht in the province of Khorasan, where 81 prominent Bábís met for 22 days; at that conference where there was a discussion between those Bábís who wanted to maintain Islamic law and those who believed that the Báb's message began a new dispensation, Bahá'u'lláh took the pro-change side, which eventually won out. It is at this conference that Bahá'u'lláh took on the name Bahá.[9] When violence started between the Bábís and the Qajar government in the later part of 1848, Bahá'u'lláh tried to reach the besieged Bábís at the Shaykh Tabarsi in Mazandaran, but was arrested and imprisoned before he could get there.[9] The following years until 1850 saw the Bábís being massacred in various provinces after the Báb made his claim of being Manifestation of God more public.[9] After the Báb was executed in 1850, a group of Tehran Bábís, headed by a Bábí known as Azim, who was previously a Shaykhi cleric, plotted an assassination plan against the Shah Nasser-al-Din Shah, in retaliation for the Báb's execution.[16] The policy was opposed by Bahá'u'lláh, and he condemned the plan, however, any moderating influence that he may have had was diminished since in June 1851 he went into exile to Baghdad at the chief minister's request, only returning after Amir Kabir's fall from power.[9][16] On 15 August 1852, the radical group of Bábís attempted the assassination of the Shah and failed.[9] The group of Bábís linked with the plan, were rounded up and killed, and, notwithstanding the assassins' claim that they were working alone, the entire Bábí community was blamed and a general pogrom of the Bábí community was started by the Shah.[16] During this time many Bábís were killed, and many of the Bábís who were not killed, including Bahá'u'lláh, were imprisoned in the Síyáh-Chál (black pit), an underground dungeon of Tehran.[17] According to Bahá'u'lláh, it was during his imprisonment in the Síyáh-Chál that he had several mystical experiences, and that he received a vision of a maiden from God, through whom he received his mission as a messenger of God and as the one whose coming the Báb had prophesied.[9][17] After four months in the Síyáh-Chál, owing to the insistent demands of the ambassador of Russia, and after the person who tried to kill the Shah confessed and exonerated the Bábí leaders, the authorities released him from prison, but the government exiled him from Iran. Bahá'u'lláh, instead of accepting the offer of refuge from Russia, chose to go to Iraq in the Ottoman Empire; in 1853 Bahá'u'lláh and his family through the cold of winter travelled from Persia and arrived in Baghdad in early April 1853.[9][18] While the Báb eliminated the institution of successorship or vicegerency to his movement, and stated that no other person's writings would be binding after his death until Him Whom God shall make manifest would appear,[13] he did, however, appoint Mírzá Yahyá (later known as Subh-i-Azal) as a nominal leader after himself. Mírzá Yahyá had gone into hiding after the assassination attempt on the Shah, and after Bahá'u'lláh's exile to Baghdad, he chose to join his brother there.[18] At the same time, an increasing number of Bábís considered Baghdad the new centre for leadership of the Bábí religion, and a flow of pilgrims started coming there from Persia. Mírzá Yahyá's leadership was controversial. He generally absented himself from the Bábí community spending his time in Baghdad in hiding and disguise; and even went so far as to publicly disavow allegiance to the Báb on several occasions.[5][19][20] Mírzá Yahyá gradually alienated himself from a large proportion of the Bábís who started to give their alliance to other claimants.[19] During the time that Mírzá Yahyá remained in hiding, Bahá'u'lláh performed much of the daily administration of the Bábí affairs.[5] In contrast to Mírzá Yahyá, Bahá'u'lláh was outgoing and accessible and he was seen by an increasing number of Bábís as a religious leader, rather than just an organizer, and became their centre of devotion.[21] The development of Bahá'u'lláh being seen as the leader of the Bábís was increasingly resented by Mírzá Yahyá, and he started to try to discredit Bahá'u'lláh.[21] These actions of Mírzá Yahyá drove many people away from the religion and allowed its enemies to continue their persecution.[5] Tensions in the community mounted, and thus in 1854 Bahá'u'lláh decided to leave the city to pursue a solitary life.[21] On 10 April 1854, Bahá'u'lláh, leaving his family to the care of his brother Mirza Musa, left with one companion to the mountains of Kurdistan, northeast of Baghdad, near the city of Sulaymaniyah.[5][21] He later wrote that he left so as to avoid becoming the source of disagreement within the Bábí community, and that his "withdrawal contemplated no return".[21][22] For two years, Bahá'u'lláh lived alone in the mountains of Kurdistan.[17] He originally lived as a hermit, dressed like a dervish and using the name Darvish Muhammad-i-Irani.[21][23] At one point someone noticed his penmanship, which brought the curiosity of the instructors of the local Sufi orders.[5] As he began to take guests, he became noted for his learning and wisdom. Shaykh `Uthmán, Shaykh `Abdu'r-Rahmán, and Shaykh Ismá'íl, leaders of the Naqshbandíyyih, Qádiríyyih, and Khálidíyyih Orders respectively, began to seek his advice.[24] It was to the second of these that the Four Valleys was written. Several other notable books were also written during this time.[17]