Maid of Heaven (Bahá'í)

Maid of Heaven (Arabic: حورية‎‎, ḥúrí) refers to a vision that Bahá’u’lláh, founder of the Bahá'í Faith was said to have had of a maiden from God, through whom he received his mission as a Manifestation of God.

In August 1852, during the height of the persecutions of the followers of the Báb, Bahá’u’lláh was arrested in Tehran with about 30 or more other Bábís. He was cast into the underground dungeon, nearby the court of the Sháh, known as the Síyáh-Chál. In October 1852, after two months had passed in the gloom and stench of the dungeon, Bahá’u’lláh had a vision of a heavenly Maiden. In his Súriy-i-Haykal (Tablet of the Temple) Bahá’u’lláh describes his vision as follows:

The Maid of Heaven also appears in several tablets of Bahá’u’lláh’s, which include the following: Tablet of the Maiden (Lawh-i-Húrí), Tablet of the Deathless Youth (Lawh-i-Ghulámu’l-Khuld), Tablet of the Holy Mariner (Lawh-i-Malláhu’l-Quds),Húr-i-'Ujáb (Tablet of the Wondrous Maiden), the Súriy-i-Qalam (Súrih of the Pen; 1864–68) and the Tablet of the Vision (Lawh-i- Ru’yá; 1873). The first four of these were written in the Baghdad period (1856–63).

Shoghi Effendi compares the Maid of Heaven with the Holy Spirit as manifested in the Burning Bush of Moses, the Dove to Jesus, the angel Gabriel to Muhammad. Further, Farshid Kazemi discusses links with the Zoroastrian Daena.

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