The Bahai Pilgrimage to Haifa and Acre

The Bahai obligation of pilgrimage is written into scripture, and the places it names cannot be visited by anyone. What is performed instead is a different pilgrimage, to different places, and the community has been performing the substitute for so long that it is now simply what Bahai pilgrimage means.

What the text requires

The Kitab-i-Aqdas makes pilgrimage obligatory, on those able to undertake it, to two houses:

• The house of Bahaullah in Baghdad, where he lived in exile and where he made his declaration in 1863.
• The house of the Bab in Shiraz, where the Bab made his declaration to Mulla Husayn in 1844.

Neither building exists in a form that can be visited. The Baghdad house was taken from the community in the 1920s, the subject of a long and unsuccessful appeal that reached the League of Nations, and was destroyed later. The Shiraz house was demolished in 1979, after the revolution, and the site built over.

The obligation was not rescinded, because scripture is not amended. It simply cannot be discharged.

What is performed

The nine-day pilgrimage to the Bahai World Centre, arranged only by application through that body, and for Bahais:

• The Shrine of the Bab on the terraces of Mount Carmel in Haifa.
• The Shrine of Bahaullah at Bahji, outside Acre, which is the qiblih, the direction Bahais face when saying the obligatory prayers. This is the point in the world their prayer is oriented to.
• The mansion at Bahji, where Bahaullah died in 1892.
• The cell in the Acre citadel where he was imprisoned.
• The Ridvan Garden near Acre.

Two things commonly confused

Ridvan, the twelve-day festival, marks Bahaullah's declaration in the Najibiyyih garden outside Baghdad in 1863. The Ridvan Garden near Acre is a different, later place, named in memory of the first. They are not the same site and the festival does not commemorate the Israeli garden.

Why the centre is in Israel

Not by choice, and not by any doctrinal preference for the place. Bahaullah was exiled by the Ottoman authorities from Iran to Baghdad, then Istanbul, then Edirne, and in 1868 to Acre, which was then a penal colony chosen precisely because it was thought to be the worst destination available. He was confined in the citadel, later permitted to live outside the walls, and died at Bahji. The Bab had been executed by firing squad in Tabriz in 1850; his remains were hidden and moved for nearly sixty years before being interred on Mount Carmel in 1909.

The world centre of a religion sits where it does because of an Ottoman penal decision made in 1868. The terraced gardens completed in 2001, which are now the most photographed thing in Haifa, are built above a prison city.

Access

Pilgrimage is by application through the Bahai World Centre and is for Bahais. The gardens themselves are open to the general public as free guided visits: no admission charge, no gift shop of the usual kind, no commercial operation attached. That is a deliberate arrangement rather than an oversight, and it is why the commercial placement flag on this route is set to no: there is no channel, because the community has not built one.

The Bahai holy places in Haifa and Acre are administered from the Bahai World Centre, and pilgrimage to them is arranged only by application, allocated in turn, and lasts nine days.

The Shrine of the Bab stands on the northern slope of Mount Carmel with nineteen garden terraces running up the hillside through it, nine below and nine above, completed in 2001 and now the most photographed feature of Haifa. Around it on the Arc sit the administrative buildings of the faith, including the seat of the Universal House of Justice.

The Shrine of Bahaullah at Bahji outside Acre is the more significant of the two in practice, because it is the qiblih: Bahais face it during obligatory prayer, wherever they are. Beside it stands the mansion where Bahaullah spent his last years, after decades of imprisonment and confinement, and in Acre itself the cell in the citadel where he was held. The Ridvan Garden outside the city is where he stayed during periods of relative freedom, and the festival of Ridvan is named for a different garden, in Baghdad.

The whole ensemble was inscribed by UNESCO in 2008, the first modern religious tradition to have its holy places listed.

Two points of doctrine are worth recording. The Kitab i Aqdas prescribes pilgrimage to two houses, the House of the Bab in Shiraz and the House of Bahaullah in Baghdad, and states the obligation as resting on men, women being exempted. Neither house is accessible: the Shiraz house was demolished and the Baghdad house has also been lost. So the prescribed pilgrimage cannot be made, and what is made instead is a visitation to the shrines, which is a different act with a different status.

The gardens themselves are open free to anyone.