Kitab-i-Iqan

The book was occasioned by four questions. Haji Mirza Sayyid Muhammad, a maternal uncle of the Bab still undecided about his nephew's claim, visited Baghdad in early 1861 and was encouraged to put his difficulties in writing: how could the Bab be the promised Qaim when the traditions' signs, the sun rising in the west, the appearance of the Beast, had not literally occurred. Baha'u'llah's reply, filling a substantial book, answers by reframing what prophecy is. The first part surveys the history of the Manifestations, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, showing that each was rejected by the learned of the prior religion on precisely such literalist grounds, and reads the gospel prophecy of the darkened sun and falling stars as the eclipse of former religious authority and the descent of its clergy.

Terms such as resurrection, judgment, life and death are expounded as spiritual conditions: the dead are those who refuse the new revelation, the clouds that obscure the promised one are human perceptions of his ordinary humanity. The second part unfolds the station of the Manifestation, unity in essence between the messengers, distinction in mission, and describes the true seeker's path of detachment from imitation and hearsay. Though the Bab is its immediate subject, the argument prepared the ground for Baha'u'llah's own declaration two years later, and the book's categories became the lens through which Bahais read all scripture.

Baha'u'llah revealed the Kitab-i-Iqan near the end of his Baghdad exile, in the period before the declaration in the garden of Ridvan in 1863, and the tradition that the whole work was revealed within two days and nights is itself part of Bahai teaching on the mode of revelation, writing at speed without revision being counted among its signs. The original is in Persian, seeded throughout with Arabic verses of the Quran and Islamic traditions that the argument expounds; the uncle who received it was won over and remained a believer. The autograph in the hand of Abdu'l-Baha, with marginal corrections by Baha'u'llah, is preserved in the Bahai archives.

Within the community's literature the book holds a defined station: Shoghi Effendi, who translated it into English in 1931, described it as the most important book written on the spiritual significance of the Bahai Faith and as occupying a position unequalled by any work except the Kitab-i-Aqdas, the book of laws, the two forming a pair often characterised as the book of certitude and the book of commandments. Its interpretive method, prophecy fulfilled spiritually, unity of the Manifestations, revelation as progressive and unending, supplies the doctrinal basis for the faith's engagement with every other religion, and passages from it are read in Bahai devotional gatherings worldwide. Printed editions and translations now exist in the major languages of the Bahai world community.