Ninety-five times.
Alláh-u-Abhá — God is Most Glorious — repeated ninety-five times a day after washing. It is also how Bahá'ís greet each other, and its calligraphic form, drawn by a nineteenth-century Persian calligrapher, is the closest thing the faith has to an icon and hangs in a great many Bahá'í homes.
After ablutions, the phrase Alláh-u-Abhá — God is Most Glorious — is repeated ninety-five times daily. Ninety-five is the numerical value of the word Abhá in the abjad system. The same phrase functions as the standard greeting between Bahá'ís worldwide, so a devotional formula doubles as a social one. Its calligraphic rendering, executed in the nineteenth century by Mishkín-Qalam, one of the Báb's and Bahá'u'lláh's calligrapher-followers, is the closest thing the faith has to a visual symbol and hangs in homes, on Assembly walls and on gravestones. The ringstone symbol, a related design of two stars and a stylised representation of the worlds of God, the Manifestation and humanity, is used on the burial ring and on jewellery. Neither is an image of anything, which keeps the aniconic principle intact — the faith's entire visual vocabulary is writing and geometry.
The same ground, other faiths
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