Abstract
Present text deals with application of Rodney Stark's model "Why religious groups succeed or fail" on Babism (babi faith). Babism is a post-islamic religion which has roots in 19th century Iran and whose charismatic founder Bab proclaimed radical break from Islam.
Although Babism has rapidly spread across Iran and Iraq and quickly gained almost one hundred thousands adherents, today it has roughly three thousand adherents. In current study I am using Stark's model to explain it's fast success in gaining adherents and arguing it can be regarded as a succeesful movement, eventhough it does not meet Stark's basic criterion of success which is attracting at least one hundred thousand believers and lasting for as long as a century.
I am arguing that this is the result of anachronic view of separation of baha'ism (which has it's origin in babism) from babism which artificially leads to a decrease in the number of babi believers in 19th century but which does not correspond with historical reality.