| The mountain spoken of by Isaiah as the 'mountain of the Lord'.
Site of the Bahá'í World Centre including several Bahá'í Holy Places, the most important of which are the Shrine of the Báb and the Monument Gardens. Mount Carmel is also the location of the Bahá'í world administrative institutions: the Seat
of the Universal House of Justice, the International Archives building, the other
present and future institutions of the World Bahá'í
Administrative Order, including the International Teaching Centre, the Centre for
the Study of the Sacred Texts and the International Bahá'í Library as
well as the Mashriqu'l-Adhkár of Haifa which will one day stand on Mount Carmel on a site already designated. |
| [BD 50] |
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| One of the sacred spots in Bahá'í history, where are the shrines of the Báb and of 'Abdu'l-Bahá and memorials to other members of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's
family. |
| [GWB 348] |
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| Paleolithic history |
| As part of a 1929-1934 campaign, between 1930 and 1932, Dorothy Garrod excavated four caves, and a number of rock shelters, in the Carmel mountain range at el-Wad, el-Tabun, and Es Skhul. Garrod discovered Neanderthal and early modern human remains, including the skeleton of a Neanderthal female, named Tabun I, which is regarded as one of the most important human fossils ever found. The excavation at el-Tabun produced the longest stratigraphic record in the region, spanning 600,000 or more years of human activity. The four caves and rock-shelters (Tabun, Jamal, el-Wad, and Skhul) together yield results from the Lower Paleolithic to the present day, representing roughly a million years of human evolution. There are also several well-preserved burials of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens and passage from nomadic hunter-gatherer groups to complex, sedentary agricultural societies is extensively documented at the site. Taken together, these emphasize the paramount significance of the Mount Carmel caves for the study of human cultural and biological evolution within the framework of palaeo-ecological changes." |
| In 2012, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee added sites of human evolution at Mount Carmel to the List of World Heritage Sites. The World Heritage Site includes four caves (Tabun, Jamal, el-Wad, and Skhul) on the southern side of the Nahal Me'arot/Wadi El-Mughara Valley. The site fulfils criteria in two separate categories, "natural" and "cultural". |
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| As a sacred location |
| In ancient Canaanite culture, high places were frequently considered to be sacred, and Mount Carmel appears to have been no exception; Thutmose III lists a holy headland among his Canaanite territories, and if this equates to Carmel, as Egyptologists such as Maspero believe, then it would indicate that the mountain headland was considered sacred from at least the 15th century BC. According to the Books of Kings, there was an altar to Yahweh on the mountain, which had fallen into ruin by the time of Ahab, but Elijah built a new one. Iamblichus describes Pythagoras visiting the mountain on account of its reputation for sacredness, stating that it was the most holy of all mountains, and access was forbidden to many, while Tacitus states that there was an oracle situated there, which Vespasian visited for a consultation; Tacitus states that there was an altar there, but without any image upon it, and without a temple around it. |
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| Bahá'í Faith |
| Mount Carmel is considered a sacred place for Bahá'ís around the world, and is the location of the Bahá'í World Centre and the Shrine of the Báb. The location of the Bahá'í holy places has its roots in the imprisonment of the religion's founder, Bahá'u'lláh, near Haifa by the Ottoman Empire during the Ottoman Empire's rule over Palestine. |
| The Shrine of the Báb is a structure where the remains of the Báb, the founder of Bábism [Bábí Faith] and forerunner of Bahá'u'lláh in the Bahá'í Faith, have been laid to rest. The shrine's precise location on Mount Carmel was designated by Bahá'u'lláh himself and the Báb's remains were laid to rest on March 21, 1909 in a six-room mausoleum made of local stone. The construction of the shrine with a golden dome was completed over the mausoleum in 1953, and a series of decorative terraces around the shrine were completed in 2001. The white marbles used were from the same ancient source that most Athenian masterpieces were using, the Penteliko Mountain. |
| Bahá'u'lláh, the founder of the Bahá'í Faith, writing in the Tablet of Carmel, designated the area around the shrine as the location for the administrative headquarters of the religion; the Bahá'í administrative buildings were constructed adjacent to the decorative terraces, and are referred to as the Arc, on account of their physical arrangement. |
| [ Wikipedia - Mount Carmel ] |
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