He Who is your Lord, the All-Merciful, cherisheth in His heart the desire of beholding the entire human race as one soul and one body.
The Bab began life as Sayyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi (1819 - 1850), a merchant from Shiraz. The title 'Sayyid' at the beginning of his name denotes that he was a descendent of the Prophet Muhammad, and in his early life he followed Twelver Shiism, the branch of Islam that is prevalent in Iran. In 1844 he experienced a series of revelatory visions after which he pronounced himself to be the bab (the gate) to the Mahdi, the Hidden Imam of Twelver Shi'sm. The first book that the Bab wrote after he put forward his claim is