Mírzá Muhammad `Alí

Mírzá Muhammad `Alí (Persian: میرزا محمد علی‎‎  1852–1937) was one of the sons of Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. He was the eldest son of his father's second wife, Fatimih Khanum, later known as Mahd-i-'Ulya, whom Bahá'u'lláh married in Tehran in 1849.

Muhammad `Alí received the title from his father of Ghusn-i-Akbar ("Greater Branch").

In the Kitáb-i-‘Ahd ("Book of the Covenant"), Bahá'u'lláh appointed `Abdu'l-Bahá as his successor, with Muhammad `Ali subordinate to `Abdu'l-Bahá. Both were noted explicitly by their titles. As time passed, Muhammad `Alí claimed that `Abdu'l-Bahá was not sharing power. According to some interpretations, Muhammad `Alí insisted that he should instead be regarded as the leader of the Bahá'ís. Many accusations were levelled against each other by both `Abdu'l-Bahá and Muhammad `Alí, culminating in Muhammad `Alí accusing his older brother of conspiring against the Ottoman government. This resulted in the imprisonment and near-death of `Abdu'l-Bahá and his family. Almost all Bahá'ís accepted `Abdu'l-Bahá as Bahá'u'lláh's successor.

At the time of `Abdu'l-Bahá's death, Shoghi Effendi was appointed as the Guardian of the Faith by `Abdu'l-Bahá in his Will and Testament, while Muhammad `Alí was reprimanded in the same document as "The Center of Sedition, the Prime Mover of mischief." Because Bahá'u'lláh's last will and testament named Muhammad `Alí as second in rank to `Abdu'l-Bahá and his successor, he took the opportunity of `Abdu'l-Bahá's death to try to revive his claim to leadership, but his attempt to occupy the Shrine of Bahá'u'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 Mirza Muhammad `Alí and Shoghi Effendi as their respective leaders was short-lived and Shoghi Effendi emerged as the leader of the worldwide Bahá'í community and labeled Muhammad `Alí the arch-breaker of the Covenant of Bahá'u'lláh. Mirza Muhammad `Alí would 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" Bahá'í magazine written in English and featuring the writings of Mirza Muhammad `Alí and various other Unitarian Bahais, including Ibrahim George Kheiralla. This schism had very little effect overall. In the `Akká area, the followers of Muhammad `Alí represented 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. Some of Mirza Muhammad `Alí's works that were preserved by his family have been published in A Lost History of the Baha'i Faith: The Progressive Tradition of Baha'u'llah's Forgotten Family.

Mirza Muhammad `Alí died in 1937.