Báb's house

The Báb's house, also known as Seyyed Báb's house, in the Iranian city of Shiraz, was the home of Seyyed 'Alí Muhammad, the Báb, founder of the Bábí religion or Bábism, where he openly proclaimed his religion for the first time.

This house, which is a prescribed site of pilgrimage, became the most important Baháʼí pilgrimage destination in Iran,    was demolished on 1 September 1979, during the Iranian Revolution.

Destruction
In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas Baháʼu'lláh declared this house a place for Baháʼí pilgrimage. After major renovation in 1903, under the guidance of Abdu'l-Bahá, the house became Baháʼís' main holy place in Iran. During subsequent years this house was attacked by fanatics and demolished. In 1942 the house was the subject of arson. In 1955 in the midst of a series of persecutions of Baháʼís, which took place across Iran led by Mohammad Taghi Falsafi, the building was severely damaged. In September 1979, after Iran’s 1978 revolution, the house was razed by religious fanatics.

Reaction of Baháʼí community
Following the demolition, in a letter dated 1 October 1979, Iran’s Baháʼí National Spiritual Assembly expressed their grievance over the house’s destruction. Members of the National Spiritual Assembly who wrote this letter were kidnapped the following year and are presumed killed.

1979-
After 1979, the religion entered a new phase when a message of the Universal House of Justice dated 20 October 1983 was released. Baháʼís were urged to become involved in the social and economic development of their communities. In 1979, 129 officially recognized Baháʼí socioeconomic development projects were begun.

The 1979 Islamic Revolution refocused the persecutions against the Baháʼí Faith. Several other Baháʼí holy sites were destroyed in the revolution's aftermath, including the house of Bahá'u'lláh at Takur (in Mazandaran), and the resting place of Muhammad-Ali Barfurushi (Quddús) in Tehran.

Many Baháʼís were killed after the Islamic Revolution with many more imprisoned, expelled from schools and workplaces, denied various benefits or denied registration for their marriages.

Since 2005, more than 1006 Baha'is have been arrested. The list of prisoners includes six members of a former informal leadership group serving the community. In 2010, the seven community leaders were unjustly sentenced to 20 years in prison, the longest term then facing any prisoner of conscience in Iran. In late 2015, reports indicated that their sentences had been belatedly reduced from 20 years to 10 years. Since then, some of those leaders who finished their sentence have been rearrested.

Other types of persecution include educational and economic discrimination; limits on the right to assemble and worship; denial of burial and destruction of cemeteries; and the dissemination of anti-Baha’i propaganda led by government news media. Attacks on Bahá'ís or Bahá'í-owned properties go unprosecuted, creating a sense of impunity for attackers. Since 2005, for example, at least 52 incidents of arson were committed against Bahá'í properties, crimes for which no one was arrested.