The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (314 page)

in Baghd
d. Increasingly overshadowed by Bah
’u’ll
h, he maintained the leadership of a small radical faction of
B
b
s
. He was exiled to Ottoman Cyprus in 1868 and died in Famagusta on 29 Apr. 1912. Some of his younger disciples became free thinkers and were prominently involved in the political opposition to the Qajar regime which culminated in the Iranian constitutional movement of the early 1900s.

 
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Azazel
.

Place to which the
scapegoat
was consigned on the
Day of Atonement
. There is a dispute as to the exact meaning of Azazel; some rabbis identified it as a cliff or a place of rocks, while others saw it as a supernatural power, perhaps made up of two fallen
angels
, Uza and Azael. ‘Go to Azazel!’ is the equivalent in modern Hebrew of ‘Go to hell!’

 
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Azhar
(Cairo mosque)
:

see
AL-AZHAR
.

 
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(Heb., ‘exhortations’). Jewish didactic poems used in liturgy. Azharot as compositions summarize and celebrate halakot, and were recited initially at
Shavu‘ot
, itself the thanks-giving for the giving of
Torah
.

 
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