Bahá'u'lláh spent forty years as a prisoner and exile — Tehran's Black Pit, then Baghdad, Constantinople, Adrianople, and finally the prison city of Akka — and wrote the bulk of his revelation in captivity. He was born to a noble Persian family, gave away his position to follow the Báb, and declared his own station in 1863. Bahá'ís do not depict him and rarely display photographs, and his shrine at Bahjí is the direction of daily prayer.