On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first telegraph message: "What hath God wrought?" Twenty-four hours earlier, in the Iranian city of Shiraz, 25-year old Siyyid 'Ali-Muhammed had announced that he was the Bab (gateway) through which the universal Messenger of God would come.

As a child, 'Ali-Muhammed had been a prodigy; learning to read at an early age, he astonished his religious teachers by asking difficult questions … and then providing convincing answers for those same questions. Later, when he followed in his uncle's footsteps as a merchant, he became known for his piety and devotion to Islamic ideals. Like most Iranians, 'Ali Muhammed followed Shi'a Islam, a tradition which honored the Imans. The Shi'a sect believes that Muhammad intended that his descendants should inherit the spiritual and temporal leadership of the faithful. These chosen ones, called Imams, or "leaders," were believed to be endowed with unqualified infallibility in the discharge of their related responsibilities. The line of Imans had been broken when the 12th iman disappeared; Shi'ites believe he will someday return to usher in an era of peace and justice. 'Ali Muhammed did not believe he was that 12th Iman … rather, he considered himself the forerunner of the One to Come. (Perhaps he had been influenced by Christian stories of John the Baptist, the one who "prepared the way" for Christ's mission).

Some say that a prophet is without honor in his hometown: this was not the case with 'Ali Muhammed. With the aid of seventeen disciples who acknowledged his status and who spread word of this new teaching, 'Ali Muhammad's fame began to spread throughout Shiraz and the surrounding regions. On a December 1844 pilgrimage to Mecca, 'Ali Muhammed publicly declared himself to be the Promised One. Some agreed… but most considered this to be the worst sort of heresy. In the Q'uran, Muhammed is called "the seal of the Prophets." According to most orthodox interpretations of Islam, that means that no other Prophet is to come… and anyone who claims otherwise, particularly one who claims to be a prophet, is a liar who has strayed from the Path of Righteousness.

Not only did 'Ali Muhammed claim to be a new prophet: he advocated radical changes in Islamic tradition. He spoke out against polygamy and advocated greater rights for women. Islam advocated "tolerance" for those who practiced "religions of the Book" like Christianity and Judaism: the Bab made the radical claim that these religions were as true as Islam, and indeed that all religions preached the same truth. Perhaps most troubling of all, he spoke out against the vast divisions between the poor and the wealthy in Persian society. Bad enough that he was a heretic… the Bab was also a politically dangerous heretic, who each day was attracting more and more followers. The authorities arrested 'Ali Muhammed and, on July 9, 1850, executed him in the courthouse square in Tabriz, Iran.

But this was not the end of his movement: among the Bab's followers was a wealthy young man named Mírzá Husayn Alí Nuri. Arrested for his belief, he was taken to the notorious "Black Pit" of Teheran, a subterranean dungeon which had once served as a city sewer. Chained to the wall in the stinking darkness, Mirzá had a vision, and declared that he was the One of whom the Bab had spoken. Taking the name Bahá'u'lláh (Glory of God), he launched upon a forty-year ministry which resulted in countless books and letters. Thousands of his followers would be killed by Iranian authorities; the Bahá'u'lláh himself would spend years in prison and ultimately be exiled to Mt. Carmel (modern-day Haifa, Israel). Today the site of his imprisonment has become the holiest site in the Baha'i faith, and Bahai's come there in much the same spirit as Christians come to Jerusalem and Moslems to Mecca.

Today over 5 million people identify themselves as "Baha'is" - followers of Bahá'u'lláh and students of his message. Baha'i houses of worship can be found around the world; with representatives in 235 different countries and regions, the Baha'i faith rivals Christianity and Islam in the breadth of its distribution. Born in Iran, it remains one of the largest minority religions in the country, with an estimated 350,000 Iranian Baha'is. Alas, the persecutions which claimed the Bab and which sent the Bahá'u'lláh into exile have remained a constant fact of life. With the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Baha'is were targeted again as heretics and traitors to Islam. Today many Iranian Baha'is have been arrested, fired from their jobs, and, in hundreds of incidents, killed.