What is the significance of 19 days in the Bahai faith?

Question

I have a friend who wants to know why the months are 19 days long, but I haven't been able to find an answer anywhere. I assume there is some significance of the number, and was wondering if anyone could help :)

Answer 1

The Baha'i calendar is made up of 19 months of 19 days, with 4 or 5 intercalary days. The names of the months and of the days of the months are the same and are attributes of God -- Glory, Beauty, Mercy, etc.

"There is a beautiful prayer in Shí'ah Islam, usually said during the period of fasting in the month of Ramadan, which invokes God through His names. There are nineteen invocations in this prayer and each revolves around one of His names, the first being Baha (Glory). The Báb has taken these names in the same order and given them to the nineteen months of His calendar, each month having nineteen days."

(Adib Taherzadeh, The Revelation of Baha'u'llah v 1, p. 116)

"The Báb made use of the numerical value of words to symbolize spiritual concepts. The Persian for 'The Letters of the Living' is Huruf-i-Hay'; there were 18 of the first disciples of the Báb and the numerical value of the word 'Hay' is 18. These 18 letters together, with the Báb Himself, constitute the first 'Vahid' of the Revelation. The word 'Vahid' has a numerical value of 19, and means 'Unity', It symbolizes the unity of God, and thus the number 19 itself symbolizes the unity of God, and it was used by the Báb as the basis for His Calendar." (From a letter written on behalf of the Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, November 13, 1980)

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

Google 19 and Quran also.
1. In both script systems: Indo-European based scripts, as well as Semitic based scripts, two of the ten digits (0,1,2,3,..9) namely "1" and "9"are written in exactly the same way.
2. These two digits imply 1 for first and 9 for last, therefore, Alpha and Omega, first and last, all and everything, God.
3. God signs His writings with this number in many ways. For example, if you count the repetition of every single word, or every single letter in a book, and all these numbers end up to be a multiple of 19 then you know that it could not be a coincident. The chances that it would be a coincident for the letters is 1 in 19^26 provided that there are 26 letters in the language. Assuming that there are 5000 unique words in the book the chances that the repetitions of all these words in the book is a multiple of 19 is 19X19X19....X19 that is 5,000 multiples of 19 which is much more than the number of atoms in the universe.

Answer 3

Hi there, Bahai faith became interesting to me because of the part in the bible which says "by thier fruit you will know them" that being kindness goodness love ect, so Bahai,s definatly seem wonderfull in this way, peace acceptance oneness of all people equality ect, (and they have a different view on the afterlife too). They believe God revealed himself through different prophets in stages through time eg Moses,Jesus,Muhammad, Buddha ect then the Bab (which means the gate) and Bahá’u’lláh,(which means the glory of God) .So I read more and really thought I was onto something and loved the beutifull writtings!. But then I learned that Bahais believe Jesus returned as Bahá’u’lláh, (who is now dead), and that didnt make sense to me, and I found other things didnt add up. But who knows? Search and search untill ye find :-)

Answer 4

Wow - the months are 19 days long?