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Azali

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Bayani, meaning "of the Bayán", are also often known as Azalis. Bayanis believe that the Báb was a Manifestation of God, as he declared himself in 1848, after earlier claiming the titles of Remembrance dhikr, the promised Qa'im or Imam Mihdi, and the Báb in 1844. The primary book of the Báb is called the Bayán, but in his writings this appears to refer to the collective corpus of his works rather than just two works by that name.

The Báb's followers were originally called Bábís but the term Bayani more precisely reflects the prophet's own designation of the followers of his religion. In the 1850s a split in the leadership caused those that followed Bahá'u'lláh to be called Bahá'ís, and those that followed Subh-i Azal to be called Bábís, Bayanis, or popularly Azalis. The substance of this split was over the legitimacy of Mirza Husayn 'AliBahá'u'lláh's claim to being the Bábí messiah '''''He whom God shall make Manifest (man yuzhiruhu'Llah).

The Britannica Concise Encyclopedia states that "the Azalis probably number no more than a few thousand"[1], most likely in isolated pockets in Iran and Northern Cyprus.

Recent developments

While some dispute persists on the question Subh-i-Azal does not seem to have left a successor. After his death the Bayani faith simply devolved onto the rank and file membership. However in 2005 the Bayani community re-emerged in the public eye with the launching of their website Bayanic.com. Earlier in 2004 Australian based Iranian esotericst Wahid Azal had launched a yahoogroups list specifically dedicated to the religion of the Bayan. But Wahid Azal's Bayani gnostic universalism reflects a sort of radical antinomian, Akbarian Sufi and crypto-Isma'ili gnostic syncretistic reinterpretation of the Bayani faith than the Bayani faith in its current or conservative formulation. His book, Liber Decatriarchia Mystica, dedicates an entire chapter to the early history of the Bayani faith from an Azali perspective.

See also

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