Bahá'u'lláh, the prophet-founder of the Bahá'í Faith, was born Husayn-`Alí in Persia on 12 November 1817--about 52 years before Gandhi. His aristocratic family could trace its ancestry back to the great dynasties of Persia's imperial past, as well as claim descent from the biblical Abraham. Declining the ministerial career open to him in government, he chose instead to devote his energies to a range of philanthropies which had, by the early 1840's, earned him widespread renown as ``Father of the Poor.'' This privileged existence swiftly eroded after 1844, when Bahá'u'lláh became one of the leading advocates of a movement that was destined to change the course of his country's history.
In 1844 a young merchant from the city of Shiraz, known to history as the Báb, announced that the Day of God was at hand, and that he was the One promised in Islamic scripture. Although himself the bearer of an independent revelation from God, the Báb declared that his mission was to prepare mankind for the advent of that universal Messenger of God, ``He Whom God will make manifest,'' awaited by the followers of all religions. The claim evoked violent hostility from the Muslim clergy, who taught that the process of Divine Revelation had ended with Muhammad and that any assertion to the contrary represented apostasy, punishable by death. Some 20000 followers of the new faith were massacred throughout the country, and the Báb was publicly executed in 1850. Bahá'u'lláh was arrested for his prominence in defending the message of the Báb. He was then made to endure forty years of exile, imprisonment, and bitter persecution. Confiscating his wealth and properties, the Persian authorities banished Bahá'u'lláh to Baghdad.
The Bahá'í Faith was born in Baghdad in 1863, when Bahá'u'lláh declared to a number of his companions that he was the One promised by the Báb. Bahá'u'lláh in Arabic means the ``Glory of God.'' He preached that the ``earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.'' He claimed to be a Manifestation of the attributes of God, and repeatedly identified himself with being the Promised One of all ages: Christ returned ``in the glory of the Father'' to Christendom, the Lord of Hosts to the Jews, Mihdí to the Muslims, Kalki Avatar to the Hindus, the Fifth Buddha to the Buddhists, and Sháh-Bahrám to the Zoroastrians. After being banished to Constantinople and Adrianople, Bahá'u'lláh was finally exiled to `Akká in the Holy Land, where he died of natural causes in 1892. Bahá'u'lláh was succeeded by his son `Abdu'l-Bahá (1844-1921) as the Head of the Faith, and subsequently by Shoghi Effendi (1897-1957), Bahá'u'lláh's great-grandson and Guardian of the Bahá'í Faith.