Obligatory Bahá'í prayers

Obligatory Bahá'í prayers are prayers which are to be said daily by Bahá'ís according to a fixed form decreed by Bahá'u'lláh. Prayers in the Bahá'í Faith are reverent words which are addressed to God, and refers to two distinct concepts: obligatory prayer and devotional prayer (general prayer). The act of prayer is one of the most important Bahá'í laws for individual discipline. Along with fasting, obligatory prayer is one of the greatest obligations of a Bahá'í, and the purpose of the obligatory prayer is to foster the development of humility and devotion. The obligation of daily obligatory prayer was prescribed by Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, in his book of laws, the Kitáb-i-Aqdas.

It is forbidden to perform the obligatory prayers in congregation, so the daily obligatory prayers are offered individually, though it is not required that they be said in private.

The obligatory prayer is a primary religious obligation starting at the age of fifteen and it is the most important kind of prayer. The purpose of the obligatory prayer is to foster the development of humility and devotion, and the Bahá'í writings strongly warn against neglecting the prayers or minimizing their importance. The obligatory prayers are a personal spiritual obligation, and failure to observe the law is seen to have a spiritual penalty.

In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, Bahá'u'lláh prescribed the Bahá'í law of a daily obligatory prayer which is to be said individually (though not necessarily in private)[1]; he wrote that the specific obligatory prayer was recorded in a separate tablet or writing. Bahá'u'lláh wrote the text mentioned, but never released it in order to avoid provoking conflict with the surrounding Muslims. Instead, sometime before the writing of the supplement to the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Questions and Answers, Bahá'u'lláh wrote a set of three obligatory prayers which are the ones used by Bahá'ís today. The original obligatory prayer involved nine cycles of movement (rak'ah) and was to be said in the morning, noon and in the afternoon, probably three cycles at a time. After Bahá'u'lláh's death a strongbox holding the text of the original obligatory prayer was stolen by Mírzá Muhammad `Alí.

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