Tradition

Bábism

Nancystodd · Public domain · source

Overview

Bábism (Persian: بابیه, romanized: Bâbiyye) is a messianic movement founded in 1844 by the Báb. The Báb, an Iranian merchant-turned-prophet, professed that there is one incorporeal, unknown, and incomprehensible God who manifests his will in an unending series of theophanies, called Point (Arabic: نقطة, romanized: nuqta) in Bábí terminology. The Báb's revelation, throughout which there was much evolution as he progressively outlined his teachings, was turbulent and short-lived and ended with his public execution in Tabriz in 1850. A campaign of extermination followed, in which thousands of followers were killed in what has been described as potentially one of the bloodiest actions of the Qajar Iranian military in the 19th century.

According to current estimates, Bábism has no more than a few thousand adherents, most of whom are concentrated in Iran, but it has persisted into the modern era in the form of the Bahá'í Faith, to which the majority of Bábís eventually converted.

Bábism flourished in Iran until 1852, then lingered on in exile in the Ottoman Empire, especially Cyprus, as well as underground in Iran. An anomaly amongst Islamic messianic movements, the Bábí movement signaled a break with Shia Islam, beginning a new religious system with its own unique laws, teachings, and practices. While Bábism was violently opposed by both clerical and government establishments, it led to the founding of the Bahá'í Faith, whose followers consider the religion founded by the Báb as a predecessor to their own.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

73.] _Thirdly_ and lastly, the immediate consciousness of God goes no further than to tell us _that_ He is: to tell us _what_ He is, would be an act of cognition, involving mediation. So that God as an object of religion is expressly narrowed down to the indeterminate supersensible, God in general: and the significance of religion is reduced to a minimum. If it were really needful to win back and secure the bare…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
States what Bábism is; the author is tied to Bábism in the knowledge graph.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
Other methods of deliverance from evil are in the excessive acts of penance performed by the Indians, to which a retreat within themselves is added. Now when the Indian thus internally collects himself, and retreats within his own thoughts, the moment of such pure concentration is called Brahma, the one and the clearly supersensuous state, which the understanding calls the highest possible existence. When this is so…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Bábism is; the author is tied to Bábism in the knowledge graph.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
Now, the perfect accordance of the will with the moral law is holiness, a perfection of which no rational being of the sensible world is capable at any moment of his existence. Since, nevertheless, it is required as practically necessary, it can only be found in a progress in infinitum towards that perfect accordance, and on the principles of pure practical reason it is necessary to assume such a practical progress…
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason
States what Bábism is; the author is tied to Bábism in the knowledge graph.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Philosophers who discussed Bábism

Islam

Related ideas

Place in the tradition

Part of Monotheism.

Explore Bábism in the interactive graph →