Bowing, Prostration and the Body in Baha'i Prayer

The Long Obligatory Prayer carries the most extensive physical requirements of the three Baha'i obligatory prayers, its recitation accompanied by specified postures, standing, bowing and prostration, at set points in the text, preceded by ablutions performed in a prescribed manner. This combination of prescribed movement bound tightly to prescribed text sets Baha'i obligatory prayer apart from the freer, unstructured personal prayer that also has a large place in Baha'i devotional life, where a worshipper may pray in their own words without any fixed posture at all. The obligatory prayers occupy a more formally regulated category, closer in shape to ritual prayer traditions elsewhere than to spontaneous petition.

The Baha'i Faith emerged in nineteenth century Persia from a religious environment shaped by Twelver Shia Islam, and several scholars of Baha'i history and practice have noted structural resemblances between the physical choreography of Baha'i obligatory prayer, ablution before prayer, standing, bowing, prostration performed at specified points, and the physical structure of Islamic salat. The Baha'i Faith's own scripture presents the obligatory prayers as newly revealed ordinances given by Baha'u'llah rather than as an adaptation of any prior practice, and the resemblance is best read as a shared regional grammar of embodied prayer, ablution and prostration as devotional postures common across the Islamicate world, rather than as continuity of doctrine between the two religions.