Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí

Mírzá Muhammad ʻAlí (Persian: میرزا محمد علی 16 December 1853 – 10 December 1937) was the second surviving son of Baháʼu'lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, and the first from Baháʼu'lláh's second wife Fatimih. He is well known for an attempted schism in which he claimed leadership over his half-brother ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, and was rejected by the overwhelming majority of Baháʼís, who regard him as a Covenant-breaker. The only result of his unsuccessful leadership attempt was to alienate most of the family of Baháʼu'lláh from ʻAbdu'l-Bahá. His schism was short lived and no longer exists; by the 1960s his descendants had largely melded into Muslim society and had no collective religious life.

Muhammad ʻAlí was born in Baghdad among the group of Iranians exiled from Iran for their adherence to the Bábí Faith. He would follow the family into further exiles into Istanbul, Edirne, and `Akka. As a teenager in Edirne, he began transcribing the writings of Baháʼu'lláh, and attempted his own claim to divine revelation, for which he was publicly chastised by his father. He gradually developed a jealousy of his half-brother ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, who was nine years his senior and widely respected.

Baháʼu'lláh's Kitáb-i-ʻAhd appointed ʻAbdu'l-Bahá to be his successor in leadership to the Baháʼí community, and named Muhammad ʻAlí as being "beneath" and "after" ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, which was widely interpreted as a line of succession. After Baháʼu'lláh's death in 1892, Muhammad ʻAlí accepted the appointment of ʻAbdu'l-Bahá but soon began to discredit and obstruct his brother.