AZALI

any member of the Babi movement (followers of a 19th-century Iranian prophet, the Bab) who chose to remain faithful to the Bab's teachings and to his chosen successor, Mirza Yahya, given the religious title Sobh-e Azal, after a split in the movement occurred in 1863. For about 13 years after the Bab's execution (1850), his followers acknowledged Sobh-e Azal as their lawful leader. In 1863, when Sobh-e Azal's half-brother Baha' Ullah privately declared himself him whom God shall manifesta new prophet foretold by the Babthe Babi community polarized. The Azalis rejected the divine claims of Baha' Ullah as premature, arguing that the world must first accept Babi laws in order to be ready for him whom God shall manifest. Most Babis, however, favoured Baha' Ullah and, after the public manifestation of his mission in 1867, began the development of a new religion, the Baha'i faith. The Azalis have retained the original teachings of the Bab's Bayan (Revelation) and supplemented them with the instructions of Sobh-e Azal. Numerically they have remained considerably outnumbered by the Baha'is. See also Bab, the.