Haifa - Bahai Shrine (Persian Gardens)

Below Yefe Nof Street, in Hazionut Street, are the beautiful Persian Gardens, with the Bahai Shrine, whose golden dome dominates Haifa. It contains the tomb of the founder of the Bahai faith, which has become its central shrine.

The founder of the faith was a Persian, Mirza Ali Mohammed, who in 1844 declared himself the Bab, the "Gateway" to God. After he was shot in Tabriz in 1850 his successor Mirza Hussein Ali, who took the name Baha-u-Illah, fled to the Ottoman Empire, where he proclaimed himself Imam in 1868. After being held in captivity in Akko for 24 years he died in 1892 and was buried near the present-day kibbutz of Shamerat, to the north of Akko. His followers secretly brought the remains of his predecessor Mirza Ali Mohammed from Persia to Palestine and in 1909 built his tomb in Haifa. The monumental dome over the tomb was completed in 1953.