MÃÂrzá Muhammad ûAlà( 16 December 1853 â 10 December 1937) was the second surviving son of Baháüu'lláh, the founder of the BaháüàFaith, and the first from Baháüu'lláh's second wife Fatimih. He is well known for an attempted schism in which he claimed leadership over his half-brother ûAbdu'l-Bahá, and was rejected by the overwhelming majority of BaháüÃÂs, who regard him as a Covenant-breaker. The only result of his unsuccessful leadership attempt was to alienate most of the family of Baháüu'lláh from ûAbdu'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 ûAlàwas born in Baghdad among the group of Iranians exiled from Iran for their adherence to the BábàFaith. He would follow the family into further exiles into Istanbul, Edirne, and `Akka. As a teenager in Edirne, he began transcribing the writings of Baháüu'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 ûAbdu'l-Bahá, who was nine years his senior and widely respected.
Baháüu'lláh's Kitáb-i-ûAhd appointed ûAbdu'l-Bahá to be his successor in leadership to the Baháüàcommunity, and named Muhammad ûAlàas being "beneath" and "after" ûAbdu'l-Bahá, which was widely interpreted as a line of succession. After Baháüu'lláh's death in 1892, Muhammad ûAlàaccepted the appointment of ûAbdu'l-Bahá but soon began to discredit and obstruct his brother. After four years, the covert opposition became a campaign of open hostility, including forged documents and spurious complaints to the Turkish authorities that put ûAbdu'l-Bahá back into confinement. Muhammad ûAlàwas cast out of the Baháüàcommunity, and shunned.
ûAbdu'l-Bahá's own Will and Testament labeled him as, "The Center of Sedition, the Prime Mover of mischief", and instead of following the line of succession in the Kitáb-i-ûAhd, ûAbdu'l-Bahá appointed Shoghi Effendi as the first "Guardian" of the religion. Muhammad ûAlàtook the opportunity of ûAbdu'l-Bahá's death in 1921 to revive his claim to leadership and tried to seize the Baha'i properties in the Haifa/Akka area, but was ultimately unsuccessful. He died in 1937 with very few supporters.
MÃÂrzá Muhammad ûAlàwas born on December 16, 1853, in Baghdad during Baháüu'lláh's first year of exile in that city. In 1863, at the age of nine, he accompanied his family in their exile to Constantinople and Adrianople. During the final days in Adrianople, MÃÂrzá Muhammad ûAlàwrote about eighty letters to the believers of the BaháüàFaith, such as those in Baghdad and its surrounding towns. He also asked permission of his father to travel abroad and spread the BaháüàFaith.
Baháüu'lláh gave Muhammad ûAlàthe title of GÃÂhusn-i-Akbar ("Greatest Branch" or "Greater Branch").
In the Kitáb-i-ûAhd ("Book of the Covenant"), Baháüu'lláh appointed ûAbdu'l-Bahá as his successor, with Muhammad ûAli given a station "beneath" that of ûAbdu'l-Bahá. Both were noted explicitly by their titles, with Muhammad Ali being called GÃÂhusn-i-Akbar and ûAbdu'l-Bahá being called GÃÂhusn-i-Aûzam. As time passed, Muhammad ûAlàclaimed that ûAbdu'l-Bahá was not sharing power. According to some interpretations, Muhammad ûAlàinsisted that he should instead be regarded as the leader of the BaháüÃÂs. Many accusations were leveled against each other by both ûAbdu'l-Bahá and Muhammad ûAlÃÂ, culminating in Muhammad ûAlÃÂ's accusing his older brother of conspiring against the Ottoman government. This resulted in the imprisonment and near-death of ûAbdu'l-Bahá and his family. Almost all BaháüÃÂs accepted ûAbdu'l-Bahá as Baháüu'lláh's successor.
At the time of ûAbdu'l-Bahá's death, Shoghi Effendi was appointed the Guardian of the Faith by ûAbdu'l-Bahá in his Will and Testament, while Muhammad ûAlàwas reprimanded in the same document as "The Center of Sedition, the Prime Mover of mischief." Muhammad ûAlàtook the opportunity of ûAbdu'l-Bahá's death to try to revive his claim to leadership, based on Baháüu'lláh's will Kitáb-i-ûAhd as well as an earlier private letter of Baháüu'lláh to Mirza 'Ali-Muhammad Varqa. The documents named Muhammad ûAlàas being second to ûAbdu'l-Bahá in rank as well as to succeed him as leader of the Bahá'àcommunity. However, his attempt to occupy the Shrine of Baháüu'lláh by force left him on the losing end of a legal battle that removed any rights he had to the property.
The division between rival sects with MÃÂrzá Muhammad ûAlàand Shoghi Effendi as their respective leaders was short-lived and Shoghi Effendi emerged as the leader of the global Baháüàcommunity, labeling Muhammad ûAlàthe arch-breaker of the Covenant of Baháüu'lláh. MÃÂrzá Muhammad ûAlàwould lead the small Unitarian Baha'i denomination. In 1904, he sent his oldest son, Shua Ullah Behai, to the United States where he led the Unitarian Baha'i community. From 1934 to 1937, Behai published Behai Quarterly, a Unitarian Baháüàmagazine written in English and featuring the writings of Mirza Muhammad ûAlàand various other Unitarian Bahais, including Ibrahim George Kheiralla. This schism had very little effect overall. In the ûAkká area, the followers of Muhammad ûAlàrepresented six families at most, they had no common religious activities, and were almost wholly assimilated into Muslim society. This group essentially disappeared. A modern academic observer has reported an ineffectual attempt to revive the claims of Muhammad Ali.
Mirza Muhammad ûAlàdied on 10 December 1937, in the city of Haifa in the Mandate of Palestine. Memorial services were held at Haifa on 18 January 1938.