Baháʼí Faith in Azerbaijan

[3] However under Soviet rule the Baháʼí community was almost ended[4] though it was quickly reactivated as more than 30 years later when perestroyka loosened controls on religions.

During the regional independence movements during the Russian Civil War, continuing Prometheism efforts and more recently since the Dissolution of the USSR, there were also developments and changes.

A group of members of the Bábí religion formed in Nakhichevan and spread before 1850[1] largely of Persian expatriates who were fleeing persecution in Persia.

[4] The Russian army, under the command of General Vasili Bebutov, attacked the new community which formed so quickly and is thought to have included more than ten thousand people.

[1] From 1850 on small communities established themselves in Ordubad, Baku, Balakhani, Ganja, Barda, Goychay, Salyan, Khilli (present Neftchala), Shaki, Shamakhy.

[9] Musa Naghiyev (1849–1919), one of Azerbaijan's richest citizens at the time,[1] is considered to have been a Baháʼí by some modern sources,[10][11][12] while others state that he was a Muslim.

The father of the family, Mirza ʻAli-Akbar Nakhjavani, translated communications to and from Leo Tolstoy c. 1890s[2] and assisted ʻAbdu'l-Bahá in his travels to the United States in 1911–12.

Jalal went to Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania and then years later in Hamburg West Germany and helping to found the assembly of Neumuenster and then finally in Selkirk Canada where he soon died, though he traveled and spoke to groups until his last days.

Ali helped spread of the religion across from Uganda through central Africa to Cameroon and in 1963 would be elected to the Universal House of Justice and was re-elected and served 40 years before retiring.

[5] In 1993 the Governing Board of the Ministry of Justice of the Azerbaijan Republic gave official permission for the functioning of the Baháʼí Community of Baku.

[7][23] The Baháʼí population of Azerbaijan, centered in Baku, may have regained its peak from the oppression of the Soviet period of about 2,000 people, with more than 80% converts.

[6] In 2005 the Association of Religion Data Archives (relying in part on the World Christian Encyclopedia) estimated somewhat fewer Baháʼís at about 1,500.