The Qur'an in Baha'i Writings
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Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Todd Lawson, The Qur'an in Baha'i Writings, bahai-library.com.
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Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan
The Qurʾān in Bahai Writings
1 Introduction
The Bahai faith sees itself as having grown out of Islam but as no longer Islamic in the
usual sense of the word. Bahais, therefore, do not consider themselves to be Muslims.
The “individuation” of the Bahai faith as a free-standing, distinctive, and, so to speak,
“independent” world religion from within the matrix of nineteenth-century Iranian
Shiite Islamic socio-religious culture appears to have been fully accomplished. Para­
doxically, the Qurʾān is at the center of this process, one which developed over time
through two distinct but deeply related phases or movements. The first phase, from
1844/1260 to 1863/1280, can be thought of as the Babi period. The second phase, from
1863 to 1963 and later, can be regarded as the Bahai period. The Qurʾān is still an im­
portant, not to say indispensable, source and reference in Bahai religiosity, faith, and
practice. This perhaps raises the question of whether the Qur’ān is of significance in
non-Muslim religious life. To attempt to answer this question, it is necessary to pro­
vide a brief historical outline of the growth and expansion of the Bahai faith.
The Bahai faith is now a worldwide religious phenomenon with its center in Haifa,
Israel. The founder of the Bahai faith proper, Bahāʾullāh (d. 1892/1309), had been exiled,
through a series of incarcerations, from his home in Iran to Ottoman Palestine, where
he and his family, together with a small band of followers, arrived as prisoners in
the year 1868/1285. According to the latest figures, there are between 5 and 6 million
Bahais worldwide, with communities in hundreds (if not thousands) of localities around
the globe. Membership in the Bahai faith is drawn from the planet’s various religious,
ethnic, national, and linguistic communities. The majority of Bahais, it would seem,
come from non-Muslim backgrounds, even though the first Bahais were indeed mainly
Iranian and Muslim, while Jewish and Zoroastrian Iranians also identified as Bahais
from the earliest days. Bahai teachings about the Qurʾān are clear and indisputable. The
first and only holder of the Bahai title “Guardian of the Cause of God” (walī amr Allāh),
Shoghi Effendi Rabbani (Shawqī Afandī Rabbānī; 1897–1957/1314–1377), made it clear as
early as in 1939 that the Qurʾān “constitutes the only Book which can be regarded as an
absolutely authenticated Repository of the Word of God,” aside from the scriptures of
the Babi and Bahai revelation.1 At the same time, Bahai teaching insists that “religious
* Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice (Wilmette, IL: Baháʾí Publishing Trust, 1990), 49,
accessed March 10, 2025, https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/shoghi-effendi/advent-di
vine-justice/.

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111320052-018
326          Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan

truth is relative not absolute,”2 and that divine revelation will continue as long as God
continues – that is, forever. The distinctive Bahai theory of “progressive revelation”
states explicitly that religious truth is expressed according to the exigencies of the time
and place of a given revelation, and that such a revelation is composed of two types of
truth: 1) eternal “spiritual” teachings, such as the Golden Rule; and 2) social teachings
that can be expected to vary according to the historical, social, and cultural circumstan­
ces of the time. Both aspects of a given revelation or dispensation of truth are binding
during the period for which they have been revealed. For example, the laws and social
teachings of Moses were absolutely binding until the new revelation given through
Jesus, while the laws and social teachings of Jesus were binding until the revelation
brought by Muḥammad. These laws and social teachings were binding until the revela­
tion conveyed by the Bāb, and his laws were binding until the coming of Bahāʾullāh’s
revelation. From the time of Adam until “the end that hath no end,”3 the divine spiritual
teachings will continue, but the laws and regulations that reflect the conditions and exi­
gencies at the time of revelation must change in order to accommodate the changing
needs and aspirations of a living, human community, which is conceived of, in Bahai
terminology, as “an ever-advancing civilization.”4
Since one of the chief conditions and circumstances of the time and place of the
Bahai revelation was, indeed, a highly developed Islamicate culture, the language of
the Bahai writings is deeply conditioned by one of the more salient features of that
culture’s linguistic conceptual world, namely, the powerful Qurʾānic component in all
languages that may be thought of as having been “Islamic” at that time, with pride of
place going to Arabic and Persian. Thus, Bahai writings are full of Qurʾānic quotations,
references, and tropes, whether they were originally expressed in Arabic or Persian
(both languages are considered languages of revelation in Bahai teachings). However,
the Qurʾānic presence in the Bahai revelation should never be regarded as merely lin­
guistic or accidental. It is obvious that the Bahai doctrine of progressive revelation is
a continued development of the theory of revelation found in the Qurʾān itself, a the­
ory which states unequivocally that every community has had a divine messenger (Q
10:47), and that every divine messenger has spoken in the language of the community
addressed (Q 14:4). As argued in a recent publication, in some ways, the very soul of
* Shoghi Effendi, The Promised Day is Come (Wilmette, IL: Baháʾí Publishing Trust, 1961), v,
accessed March 10, 2025, https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/shoghi-effendi/promised-
day-come/.
� Bahāʾullāh, Gleanings from the Writings of Baháʾuʾlláh, trans. Shoghi Effendi (Wilmette, IL: Baháʾí
Publishing Trust, 1969), LXXXIII, 165/110, accessed March 10, 2025, https://www.bahai.org/library/au
thoritative-texts/bahaullah/gleanings-writings-bahaullah/; see “The process of His creation hath had
no beginning and can have no end.” The Bāb, Selections from the Writings of the Báb, trans. Habib
Taherzadeh et al. (Haifa: Baháʼí World Centre Publications, 1976), 125.
� “All men were created to carry forward an ever-advancing civilization / jamīʿ āz barāy-i iṣlāḥ ʿālam
khalq shudah-and.” Bahāʾullāh, Gleanings, CIX, 215/140.
The Qurʾān in Bahai Writings        327

the Bahai faith is deeply and even existentially islamicate. But due to its radical alter­
ation in social laws and teachings, it can no longer be considered Islamic.5

2 The Writings of the Bāb
According to Bahai doctrine, the Bahai faith began with a 24-year-old Iranian mer­
chant, Sayyid ʿAlī Muḥammad (the Bāb), who was an avid Twelver Shiite, born in Shi­
raz on October 20, 1819/Muḥarram 1, 1235. The revelation he received should be read
in the context of the intense messianism that pervaded his time and place. Shiite Iran
was then electric with expectations of the return of the Hidden Imam and the ensuing
concomitant events so minutely detailed in the distinctive body of Shiite Twelver exe­
getical hadith or akhbār: resurrection and judgment (qiyāma), including the long-
awaited battles and triumphs of the holy remnant of the helpers of the returned
Imam, who, together, would restore justice to the world.6 It was on May 22, 1844/Ju­
mādā l-Ūlā 4, 1260 that the Bāb proclaimed himself to be the center and wielder of all
authority by claiming to “bring forth” (akhraja) a book entrusted to him by none
other than the Hidden Imam. According to Twelver Shiism, the Imam was the embodi­
ment or manifestation of such divine attributes as authoritative guardianship
(walāya), dominion (mulk), sovereignty (salṭana), and “political” power (khilāfa).7 In
this book, the Bāb announced that the longed-for, and simultaneously feared, eschato­
logical denouement was now indeed at hand. By announcing the return through this
distinctive composition, he was also participating in and appropriating those same di­
vine attributes. Six years later, on July 9, 1850/Shaʿbān 28, 1266, he was executed by
firing squad in Tabriz on the orders of Nāṣir ad-Dīn Shāh (r. 1848/1264–1896/1313) and
at the urging of a coterie of ulama.
The role of the Qurʾān in Bahai writings begins with the above-mentioned book,
which the Bāb “received” from the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi and Qāʾim, Muḥammad
b. al-Ḥasan al-ʿAskarī, who disappeared into sacred occultation in the year 874/260
and who, according to Twelver belief, has been in hiding ever since. And it is here
that we encounter one of the first keys to understanding how Bahais might well be
“islamicate” but not Muslim. By claiming that the wait for the Hidden Imam’s return
was over, the Bāb and his followers, including those who would eventually explicitly
identify as Bahais, also, as Henry Corbin judiciously observes, “put themselves quite

� Todd Lawson, Being Human: Bahaʾi Perspectives on Islam, Modernity and Peace (Los Angeles: Kali­
mát Press, 2019), 1–9.
� Abdulaziz A. Sachedina, Islamic Messianism: The Idea of Mahdī in Twelver Shīʻism (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1981).
� Mohammad Ali Amir-Moezzi, The Divine Guide in Early Shiʻism: The Sources of Esotericism in Islam,
trans. David Streight (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 61–97.
328           Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan

beyond the pale of Shi’ism”8 and therefore the Islam that they had known and lived.
Corbin bases his conclusion upon a rigorous phenomenological analysis, which finds
that inasmuch as Shiite Islam was deeply conditioned by the eschatological tension of
its teachings, the resolution of that eschatological tension would spell the immediate
death of Shiism. A second key to understanding the paradox of Bahai identity has to
do with the nature of this first “Bahai” revelation, the Bāb’s Tafsīr sūrat Yūsuf, to
which we now turn.

2.1 The Qayyūm al-asmāʾ

The highly unusual Arabic work in which the Bāb announces the imminent return of
the Hidden Imam and the realization of the Shiite eschaton was the first step in the
eventual separation of the Bahai religion from its parent Islam.9 This step represented
nothing less than a radical rearrangement of the Qurʾān. The liberties that the Bāb
took with the Qurʾān in this work, we can safely say, were sufficient to put him, his
followers, and all future religious activity carried out in his name, outside the limits
of Islam. A detailed description of this work will illustrate the truth of this statement.
The work, which we will henceforth refer to as QA, goes by a number of titles,
three of the most frequent being 1) Tafsīr sūrat Yūsuf; 2) Qayyūm al-asmāʾ; and 3)
Aḥsan al-qaṣaṣ (perhaps a short form of Tafsīr aḥsan al-qaṣaṣ). As the first title indi­
cates, the book presents itself as a commentary, applying the classical islamicate ge­
neric category tafsīr to sura 12, Yūsuf (Joseph). The second title is a typically allusive
and veiled abjadī10 reference to the transcendence of God as the source and suste­
nance of (and therefore somehow also beyond) all names, while simultaneously em­
phasizing the importance of the Qurʾānic prophet and messenger, Yūsuf b. Yaʿqūb.
This is because both words (qayyūm and Yūsuf) have the same abjad value, namely
156. This number adds up to twelve, which is a symbol of completion or consumma­
tion in the context of Twelver Shiite Islam. The idea of consummation becomes in­
creasingly more compelling once we realize that this work actually claims to be not
only a commentary on the Qurʾān but, in a “spiritual” (maʿnawī) sense, the true

� Henry Corbin, En Islam iranien: Aspects Spirituels et Philosophiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1971), 4: 213.
� While many manuscripts of this work are readily available in various libraries and other collec­
tions, including online libraries, there has not yet been a scholarly edition. However, a relatively reli­
able edition of this work was published under the title al-Āyāt ash-Shīrāziyya: an-nuṣūṣ al-muqaddasa
li-muʾassis al-ḥaraka al-Bābiyya, ed. Qāsim Muḥammad ʿAbbās (Damascus: Dār al-Madā li-th-Thaqāfa
wa-n-Nashr, 2009), 54–370, hereafter QAD followed by page number. In quoting from this work, the
passages have been checked against an electronic collation of two early manuscripts kindly provided
by Dr. Moojan Momen. For information on the many existing manuscripts, see Denis MacEoin, The
Sources for Early Bābī Doctrine and History: A Survey (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992), 55–57, 195f. All transla­
tions of Tafsīr sūrat Yūsuf are by Todd Lawson.
�� Pertaining to the numerical values of letters and words, here according to the Arabic alphabet.
The Qurʾān in Bahai Writings         329

Qurʾān that has been in occultation with the Hidden Imam until now. Thus, it simulta­
neously claims to be a wondrously new (badīʿ) and an imponderably ancient book,
akin to the Umm al-kitāb (Q 3:7) itself.11
QA is a long work that, according to its author, was completed over a forty-day
period. It is, like the Qurʾān, organized by suras and āyas (verses) connected from be­
ginning to end by a truly mindboggling mastery of intertextual connections. The QA
consists of 111 suras, with each sura containing forty or forty-two verses, depending
upon how the āyas are counted. This number itself is also symbolic. The number 40 is
the abjad value of the Arabic prepositional ligature “lī” (to me) in Q 12:4: “When Jo­
seph said to his father, ‘Father, I saw eleven stars, and the sun and the moon; I saw
them bowing down before me (lī).”12 The number 42 is the abjad value of the Arabic
intensive affirmative adverbial in Q 7:172, namely humanity’s response to God’s ques­
tion, “Am I not your Lord?,” to which all those assembled in that mythical spiritual
time and place, namely all humans who will ever exist, reply “Yea verily!” (balā).
Thus, both numbers are symbolic of authority recognized and submitted to – in short,
they are each in their own way the symbolic number of the divine covenant between
God and humanity as mediated by a prophetic figure, in the first case Joseph and in
the second Adam.
Except for the first, each of the Bāb’s 111 suras is composed as an explanation or
commentary on a different verse from the twelfth sura of the Qurʾān. The first sura,
as something of an introduction to the work as a whole, is structured around two the­
matic elements. The first is the book itself, echoing the Qurʾānic theme of revelation
found at the beginning of many Qurʾānic suras. This is reflected in such language as,
“This is the Book in which there is no doubt,” and and in the many suras that start
with disconnected letters, such as sura 12: “These are the verses of the clear book.”
After the two-stage doxology wa-bihi nastaʿīn (In Him we hope for help”) and the Bas­
mala, bi-smi llāhi r-raḥmāni r-raḥīm (In the name of God the Merciful the Compassion­
ate), the opening words of the first sura of the Bāb’s composition are:

Praise be to God, He Who hath sent down, in truth, the Book upon His servant that it (or he)
might be a shining lamp unto all the worlds.13

The second thematic element around which this sura is structured is divine authority
or dominion, mulk. By virtue of the unassailable authority of the book given to the
Bāb by the long-awaited Hidden Imam, as stated in the tenth verse of QA, the Bāb,
supported by the strongest possible isnād of Shiite Islam, declares that God himself

�� In a prayer written by Bahāʾullāh during his incarceration in Edirne, he refers to the “book” of the
Bāb as the Umm al-kitāb. Bahāʾullāh, “Tablet of Ahmad,” in Bahai Prayers, trans. Shoghi Effendi (Wilm­
ette, IL: Baháʾí Publishing Trust, 1982), 210.
�� The Koran Interpreted, trans. Arthur J. Arberry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), https://cor
pus.quran.com/translation.jsp?chapter=12&verse=4 (accessed online March 10, 2025).
�� QAD, 55
330             Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan

has commanded him to disseminate this book, which he has received from the Hidden
Imam:

God has ordained that this book in explanation of the Most Beautiful Story be brought forth from
its safekeeping with Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Mūsā b. Jaʿfar
b. Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. al-Ḥusayn b. ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib to His servant that it/he might be an elo­
quent proof unto all the worlds from the Remembrance.14

In the course of this sura, the Bāb, in the “garment” of the Hidden Imam, says that all
kings and sons of kings should now recognize the authority of this book and the one
who propagates it, i.e., the Bāb.

O Assemblage of Kings and sons of kings! Gracefully abandon, all of you, your unlawful claim to
the dominion which rightly belongs to God in very truth!15

In the next chapter, the Sūrat al-ʿUlamāʾ, the pattern of placing a verse from sura 12 at
the head of each of the suras of the QA is established, as well as adding a combination
of disconnected letters following the Qurʾānic phenomenon. Many of these sets of dis­
connected letters are quite un-Qurʾānic, as can be seen in the provisional table of con­
tents reproduced below (Figure 1). Also, three of the Bāb’s suras (not including the first
sura) do not exhibit this feature of disconnected letters. We will now reproduce the
opening lines of the second sura of QA16 in order to illustrate this important feature:

The Chapter of the Learned Divines (al-ʿulamāʾ)
(Forty-two verses)

In the Name of God the Merciful the Compassionate 1
Alif Lām Rāʾ – These are the signs of the perspicuous Book [Q 12:1] 2
Alif Lām Mīm 3
This is the Book from God the Truth concerning the matter of the Remembrance, indeed sent
down in truth about the fire 4
And indeed we have made these verses in this Book perspicuous 5
Made as a reminder and glad tiding for the servants of the Merciful for one who is, in absolute
truth, trustworthy according to God and his verses. 6

The sura ends by returning to the opening disconnected letters of verse 3:17

Say “Our Lord is God, our Lord is the Truth, of Whom it is rightly said there is no god but He.
Therefore, forgive us through Thy mercy and be merciful to us. Verily, Thou art our Master.

�� Ibid., 55.
�� Ibid., 56.
�� Ibid., 58.
�� Ibid., 59.
The Qurʾān in Bahai Writings          331

Then write for us the Return to Thee, in reality the true place of refuge and Return.18 39
God, He of Whom it is rightly said there is no god but He, has ordained that the Alif, His servant,
according to the divine command be very strong. 40
God, of Whom it is rightly said there is no god but He, has indeed ordained the letter Lām to
stand for His divine wisdom according to the law of the Book through a clear and powerful
ordaining. 41
God, of Whom it is rightly said there is no god but He, has appointed the letter Rāʾ for the
spreading of His Cause according to what He willed in the Mother Book according to the Truth,
by means of the Truth from the precincts of the sacred Fire, irrevocably decreed. 42

Thus, the general pattern and structure of this proclamatory or annunciatory com­
mentary is established, which can be described as follows:
1) Introductory section: title of the sura with the number of verses. In some manu­
scripts, the place of revelation is also mentioned. When this occurs, the place is
invariably Shiraz. Then comes the standard Islamic Basmala; the Qurʾānic verse
of sura 12, Yūsuf (Joseph) – that is, the (at least ostensible) topic of the given sura
by the Bāb. This is followed by the Bāb’s own set of disconnected letters and
a second, or possibly third, verse, depending on whether the Basmala is counted
as a separate verse. A word should be said here about how to count the set of
disconnected letters. It is unclear whether they should be counted as a single
verse alone (as in Q 2:1) or counted as a verse together with the ensuing language
of the verse (as in Q 12:1). In either case, what occurs is a declamation or an­
nouncement of revelation, as seen throughout the Qurʾān, such as “That is the
Book” (Q 2:2), “It is He who sent down to thee, in truth, the Book” (Q 3:3), or simi­
lar verses. These likewise appear regularly in the twenty-nine suras of the Qurʾān
that open with a set of disconnected letters. Another question raised by any at­
tempt to count the verses of each sura is the status of the Qurʾānic verse that
serves as the lemma of the particular “exegetical” sura at hand. There is reason to
think that it should also be accounted for as a distinct verse in this composition.
To do so would highlight one of the more scandalous features of this text: its
claim to reveal anew that which has already been revealed. So, taking all this into
consideration, the first section of a sura typically consists of four verses.
2) The middle sections of the chapters are quite varied among the 111 suras. Space
constraints do not permit us to explore this further; it must therefore suffice to

�� Ar-Rujūʿ also has a special technical meaning in Shiism, “to return to the authority (walāya) of
ʿAlī,” the first Imam, presumably after having abandoned his cause and breaking the covenant estab­
lished at the Oasis of al-Ghadīr by the prophet Muḥammad on his way back to Medina from the Fare­
well Pilgrimage in 632/10. Abū l-Ḥasan al-ʿĀmilī l-Iṣfahānī, Muqaddimat-i tafsīr-i mirʾāt al-anwār wa-
mishkāt al-asrār bā tarjamah wa-sharḥ-i ḥāl-i muʾallif wa-fihrist-i kitāb (Tehran: Maṭbaʿah-yi Aftāb,
1374 [1955]), 161.
332          Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan

say that it continues in the Bāb’s sajʿ Qurʾānic Arabic as in the examples above,
bringing together previously quite separate Qurʾānic segments that are now
joined together in a “wondrously new” (badīʿ) revelational prose.19 This prose con­
sists almost entirely of Qurʾānic words or verse segments, artistically rearranged
by the Bāb to speak about the Hidden Imam’s impending return. So intense is this
language that the return seems to occur as one is reading the text. This was
clearly no accident. Thus, the Bāb emerges from such “literary activity” as the
one who warns of the return and is also the embodiment of the eschatological
return itself.
3)    The final section of a sura usually repeats and paraphrases the lemma, the Qurʾānic
verse for which the sura itself is written. This repetition may encompass the entire
verse or just part of it, as is the case here in our example of the second sura in QA,
the Sūrat al-ʿUlamāʾ. Here, as shown in the translation above, the Qurʾān’s discon­
nected letters are repeated and blended into the final verses of the Bāb’s sura.

This, then, is the way in which the Qurʾān figures in the Bāb’s proclamatory and initia­
tory composition, which the Bahais consider to be a divine revelation. Furthermore,
the status of this unusual work in Bahai sacred literature could not be higher. Bahāʾul­
lāh, in his first important doctrinal work, which also happens also to be a commen­
tary on the Qurʾān, as will be seen below, unequivocally sealed its uniquely high sta­
tus by calling this revelation from the Bāb “the first, greatest and mightiest of all
books.”20 While it is also a book that might easily be thought change to naive in
Qurʾān scholarship, it is important to recognize that this work had a great impact on
the earliest followers of the Bāb, the majority of whom were not merchants or “laity”
but young seminarians who were deeply schooled in the traditional Qurʾānic sciences.
It is important to try to imagine what it was about this composition that caused them
to view the Bāb as the promised one of the Shiite eschaton and the new divine mani­
festation (maẓhar ilāhī). A number of features can be singled out:
– In contrast to his first followers, almost all of whom were devoted students of
Sayyid Kāẓim Rashtī (1259/1843 or 1844), the second “Shaykhī” leader,21 the Bāb
was virtually unschooled in the formal curriculum of Shiite religious sciences.

�� See now: Todd Lawson, “The Role of Wonder in Creating Identity,” Religions 14, no. 6 (2023): 6.
https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14060762.
�� Va avval va aʿẓam va akbar jamīʿ kutub ast. Bahāʾullāh, Kitāb-i Īqān. The Book of Certitude, trans.
Shoghi Effendi (Wilmette, IL: Baháʾí Publishing, 1989), 231/180, accessed March 10, 2025, https://www.
bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/kitab-i-iqan/.
�� On the intellectual link between the Bābi religion and the Shaykhī school, see Armin Eschraghi,
Frühe Šaiẖi- und Bābī-Theologie: Die Darlegung der Beweise für Muḥammads besonderes Prophetentum
(Ar-Risāla fī Iṯbāt an-Nubūwa al-Ḫāṣṣa) (Leiden: Brill, 2004). For a more purely sociological and histor­
ical analysis, see Abbas Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran,
1844–1850 (Los Angeles: Kalimát Press, 2005), 109–207, 260–94.
The Qurʾān in Bahai Writings      333

–   This work demonstrates truly impressive mastery of the Qurʾān, for example, in
the manner in which its author combines various Qurʾānic words, verses, and
verse segments in a remarkably fluent, somewhat hypnotic and musical recital.
–   Just one example among hundreds is how he combines existing Qurʾānic elements
with the concerns about the expectations of the return of the Hidden Imam with
his equally long-awaited retinue, the establishment of justice, and the dramatic
theological performance of demonstrating the truth of key Qurʾānic verses, such
as “On that day the kingdom will in truth belong only to (God) the most merciful.
And it will be a day of dire difficulty for the unbelievers (Q 25:26: al-mulk yaw­
maʾidhin al-ḥaqq li-r-Raḥmān wa-kāna yawman ʿalā l-kāfirīn ʿasīran).”
–   Clearly, its form and contents, stretching over 4,662 verses composed, according
to witnesses, with astonishing speed, present something extraordinary. The mix­
ture of genres and the blurring of the lines between text and commentary may
also have been received as something akin to what in the European cultural tradi­
tion might have been seen as an avant-garde modernist gesture and critique of
the status quo. The scandalous outrage and uncompromising claim to artistic lib­
eration presented with the publication of James Joyce’s Ulysses nearly eighty
years later, in a time and place quite different from the Bāb’s, offers clues as to
the vision of spiritual liberation that inspired his first followers. Both of these his­
torical and cultural contexts were being shaped by a process of new identity for­
mation, in conversation with and in rebellion against tradition.22

2.2 Other Qurʾān Commentaries by the Bāb

QA is not the only work by the Bāb in which the Qurʾān figures prominently, whether
as the subject of commentary and explanation or as a source and reference for the
credentials of the author. Indeed, the first major work by the Bāb was a tafsīr written
shortly before he made his public claim to special status in the QA. This is the much
more traditional Tafsīr sūrat al-Baqara, which proceeds along the lines of classical taf­
sīr and in which there is no possibility of confusing the words of the exegete with the
words of the Qurʾān. A recent book has described this work in depth, identifying the
four main themes with which it is concerned: 1) walāya, “spiritual authority”; 2) ta­
jallī, “divine self-manifestation”; 3) ontic, sacerdotal, and social hierarchy; and finally,
4) the awaited Qāʾim and attendant qiyāma or resurrection.23 A examination of this
first major work by the Bāb demonstrates the central role played by the Qurʾān and
hadith in his thought, including its structure, form, and contents, in which the distinc

�� See the chapter “Joycean Modernism in Quran and Tafsir” in Todd Lawson, Quran, Epic and Apoca­
lypse (London: Oneworld, 2018), 132–68.
�� Todd Lawson, Tafsīr as Mystical Experience: Intimacy and Ecstasy in Quran Commentary; The Taf­
sīr Sūrat al-Baqara by Sayyid ʿAlī Muḥammad, The Báb (1819–1850) (Leiden: Brill, 2018).
334          Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan

tively Shiite spiritual office, principle, and institution of walāya is both center and cir­
cumference – an institution that is, in turn, illuminated by the distinctive Akbarian-
cum-Safavid Shiite cosmogonic process of divine self-manifestation, tajallī.
In addition to this tafsīr, the Bāb composed several other works in exegesis of the
Qurʾān. Unfortunately, there is no space here to examine these, even cursorily, be­
yond saying that, in several of them, the Bāb returns to a slightly more traditional
style in which his words and the words of scripture are easily distinguished. Two ex­
amples of these are his later Tafsīr sūrat al-Kawthar and the Tafsīr sūrat al-ʿAṣr. Both
works have been studied in some detail.24 All in all, there are over thirty titles by the
Bāb that contain the word tafsīr or sharḥ.25
The Bāb produced a remarkably large body of work in Persian and Arabic. It is
safe to say that the Qurʾān never ceased being important in his writing. Even in his
last and, according to some metrics, most doctrinally important work, the two Bayāns
(one in Arabic and one in Persian), the Qurʾān radiates through the discourse like the
sun. In his daʿwā (“mission,” “summons”), there was never a desire to disassociate his
truth from the truth of the Prophet, the Qurʾān, and the twelve Imams of Shiism. His
love for these three central, interrelated essentials of his religion seemed to grow,
even as his own vision veered or swerved away from traditional Islam.

3 The Writings of Bahāʾullāh and ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ
As in the writings of the Bāb, references to Islam, the Qurʾān, and the hadith abound
in the writings of Bahāʾullāh (1817/1233–1892/1309), the prophet-founder of the Bahai
religion, and ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ (1844/1260–1921/1340), his eldest son, and designated succes­
sor and interpreter (mubayyin).26 Bahais regard their statements as crucial to under­
standing the meanings of obscure verses, not only in the Qurʾān and hadith but also
in other religious scriptures, especially the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament.

�� Todd Lawson, “The Dangers of Reading: Inlibration, Communion and Transference in the Qurʾán
Commentary of the Bab,” in Scripture and Revelation: Papers Presented at the First Irfan Colloquium
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, December 1993 and the Second Irfan Colloquium Wilmette, USA,
March 1994, ed. Moojan Momen (Oxford: George Ronald, 1997), 171–215; and Todd Lawson, “Qur’ān
Commentary as Sacred Performance: The Bāb’s Tafsīrs of Qurʾān 103 and 108, the Declining Day and
the Abundance,” in Iran im 19. Jahrhundert und die Entstehung der Bahāʾī-Religion, ed. Christoph Bür­
gel and Isabel Schayani (Hildesheim: G. Olms Verlag, 1998), 145–58.
�� See the index in MacEoin, Sources.
�� Bahāʾullāh, Kitāb-i Aqdas (Haifa: Bahá’í World Centre, 1992), n. 130, 192/221. https://www.bahai.org/
library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/kitab-i-aqdas/ (English translation, accessed March 10, 2025),
https://www.bahai.org/fa/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/kitab-i-aqdas/ (the original Arabic,
accessed March 10, 2025).
The Qurʾān in Bahai Writings         335

Shoghi Effendi, ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s grandson, chosen successor, interpreter (mubayyin),
and “Guardian of the Cause of God” (walī amr Allāh),27 urged Western Bahais “to make
a thorough study of the Qurʾān, as the knowledge of this sacred Scripture is absolutely
indispensable for every believer who wishes to adequately understand and intelligently
read, the writings of Bahá’u’lláh.”28 Despite the few competent Bahais at that time (1935/
1354) who would have been “capable of handling such a study in a scholarly way,”
Shoghi Effendi encouraged the Bahais “to get better acquainted with the Sacred Scrip­
tures of Islám” so that “there will gradually appear some distinguished Bahá’ís who will
be so well versed in the teachings of Islám as to be able to guide the believers in their
study of that religion.”29 These words, in fact, suffice to emphasize the importance of
Islam and the Qurʾān for the Bahais.
Furthermore, Shoghi Effendi highlighted that “[i]t is certainly most difficult to
thoroughly grasp” the Qurʾān since “it requires a detailed knowledge of the social, re­
ligious and historical background of Arabia at the time of the appearance of the
Prophet.”30 He suggested studying it with the help of commentaries and explanatory
notes as found, e.g., in the translation produced by George Sale.31 As this would re­
quire much thorough study and would be a slow process, he told the Bahais to study
the Qurʾān according to subjects “and also in the light of the Bab, Bahá’u’lláh and Ab­
dulbaha’s interpretation, which throw such floods of light on the whole of the
Qur’án.”32 It is this last statement that we will elaborate upon here, discussing exam­
ples of Bahai commentaries on suras and verses from the Qurʾān and hadith.
At the center of Bahai tafsīr is Bahāʾullāh’s book Kitāb-i Īqān (KI, “The Book of
Certitude”),33 his preeminent doctrinal work. KI has been characterized by Christo

�� ‘Abd al-Baha, The Will and Testament of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (Wilmette: US Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1990
reprint), 11; Alváḥ-i Vaṣáyá-yi Mubárakah (Mona Vale: Australian Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1992), 11.
�� Shoghi Effendi, Directives from the Guardian. (New Delhi: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1973), ##.
�� Shoghi Effendi, Directives from the Guardian (India/Hawaii: n.p., 1973), 63, accessed March 10, 2025,
https://reference.bahai.org/en/t/se/DG/dg-171.html (at the old official Bahá’í Reference Library of the
Bahá’í World Centre).
�� From a letter written on behalf of the Guardian to an individual believer dated August 22, 1939
published in Lights of Guidance #1666. Hornby, Helen, ed. Lights of Guidance: A Bahá’í Reference File.
(New Delhi, India: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1983).
�� Sale, George. The Koran, Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed. Trans. by George Sale.. 9th
ed. (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1923), ##.
�� Shoghi Effendi, Directives from the Guardian (India/Hawaii: n.p., 1973), 64, accessed March 10, 2025,
https://reference.bahai.org/en/t/se/DG/dg-171.html (at the old official Bahá’í Reference Library of the
Bahá’í World Centre).
�� The English translation by Shoghi Effendi is available online at the new official Bahá’í Reference
Library of the Bahá’í World Centre, accessed March 10, 2025, https://www.bahai.org/library/authorita
tive-texts/bahaullah/kitab-i-iqan/. Major studies on the KI include Christopher Buck, Symbol and Se­
cret: Qurʾān Commentary in Bahá’u’lláh’s Kitáb-i-Íqán (Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2004); and Sholeh
A. Quinn and Stephen Lambden, “Ketāb-e Iqān,” in EIr, ed. Ehsan Yarshater, last updated March 15,
2010, accessed March 10, 2025, https://iranicaonline.org/articles/ketab-iqan.
­
336           Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan

pher Buck as “arguably the world’s most widely-read non-Muslim Qurʾānic commen­
tary,” in which Bahāʾullāh “advanced an extended Qurʾānic and biblical argument to
authenticate the Bāb’s prophetic credentials.”34 According to Buck, Bahāʾullāh uses ex­
egetical techniques that include most of the twelve “procedural devices” that are at­
tested in the classical commentaries as well as various others. Like Abū Ḥāmid al-
Ghazālī (1111/505) before him,35 Bahāʾullāh also stresses the need to harmonize literal
and figurative interpretations and “states that eschatological verses should be under­
stood through esoteric interpretation (taʾwīl), whereas Qurʾānic laws are to be under­
stood by their apparent (ẓāhir) sense.”36 Buck describes KI as “a work of symbolic exe­
gesis of the Qurʾān and, to a lesser extent, of the New Testament.”37
In KI, Bahāʾullāh, who composed it in Baghdad in 1862/1278, advances his pro­
phetic claim in a subtle way, foreshadowing the imminent declaration of his mission
(which occurred in 1863/1280) in a fashion that Bahai scholars have referred to as
“messianic secrecy.”38 In a pivotal passage of his book, Bahāʾullāh, in a “most signifi­
cant exegetical move,” relativizes the Muslim claim about the final prophethood of
Muḥammad as “Seal of the Prophets” expressed in Q 33:40.39 He does so by turning
the reader’s attention to the “attainment of the presence of God” (liqāʾ Allāh) on the
Day of Resurrection – which, from the Bahai viewpoint, occurs spiritually, not physi­
cally – at Q 33:44, which he deals with earlier by quoting and discussing Q 29:23, 2:46,
2:249, 18:111, and 13:2. In his seminal work on the Kitāb-i Īqan, Buck proposes that Ba­
hāʾullāh intended the verses Q 33:40 and Q 33:44 to be read together:

This juxtaposition – indeed, pairing – not only of two concepts, but of two pivotal verses – Q
33:40 and Q 33:44 – has a dramatic effect. Among Muslims worldwide the importance of Q 33:40
is universally acknowledged. In the Īqān, Bahā’u’llāh places Q 33:44 on a par with Q 33:40. Indeed,
as paramount in prophetic history as the advent of Muḥammad as the “Seal of the Prophets”
surely is, according to Bahā’u’llāh’s interpretation/argument, of even greater significance is the
eschatological encounter with God.40

�� Christopher Buck, “Bahāʾīs [Supplement 2016],” in EQ, ed. Jane Dammen McAuliffe,
accessed August 24, 2020, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1875-3922_q3_EQCOM_050505.
�� See the recent comprehensive study on this aspect of al-Ghazālī’s hermeneutics in Georges Tamer,
“Revelation, Sciences and Symbolism: Al-Ghazālī’s Jawāhir al-Qurʾān,” in Islam and Rationality: The
Impact of al-Ghazali; Papers Collected on His 900th Anniversary, vol. 1, ed. Georges Tamer (Leiden/Bos­
ton: Brill, 2015), 49–88, esp., 49–56.
�� Buck, “Bahāʾīs.”
�� Christopher Buck, “The Kitab-i Iqan: An Introduction to Bahaullah’s Book of Certitude with Two
Digital Reprints of Early Lithographs,” in Occasional Papers in Shaykhi, Babi and Bahai Studies 2, no. 5
(June 1998), accessed March 10, 2025, https://www.h-net.org/~bahai/bhpapers/vol2/iqan&sn.htm.
�� Armin Eschraghi, “Promised one (mawʿūd) or imaginary one (mawhūm)? Some notes on Twelver
Shīʿī Mahdī doctrine and its discussion in writings of Bahāʾ Allāh,” in Unity in Diversity: Mysticism,
Messianism, and the Construction of Religious Authority in Islam, ed. Orkhan Mir-Kasimov (Leiden:
Brill, 2014), 112.
�� Buck, “Bahāʾīs.”
�� Ibid.
The Qurʾān in Bahai Writings          337

Bahāʾullāh argues that, since a direct encounter with God is impossible, there needs to
be a future theophany with a new messenger of God as his representative. This, he
states, has been manifested through the revelation of the Bāb, but he also implies that
the “messianic secret” of his own mission will be declared soon.
There are other Qurʾān commentaries by Bahāʾullāh from the early years of his
mission; however, after he publicly declared his divine mission, Islamic topics, espe­
cially tafsīrs, seem to have become less frequent in his writings as Bahāʾullāh started
laying the scriptural foundations of his new religion by introducing specific Bahai
doctrines and praxis.41
One of Bahāʾullāh’s other major tafsīrs is “The Commentary on the Sura of the
Sun” (tafsīr sūrat ash-Shams, Q 91), which was composed late in his ministry in
Akka.42 Its importance lies in the fact that this is where he says how religious scrip­
ture should be interpreted. Bahāʾullāh advocates a balanced interpretation, neither
stressing the “outer” (ẓāhir, exoteric) nor the “inner” (bāṭin, esoteric) meaning:

Those who wrote commentaries on the Qurʾān fell into two sorts. The first neglected the literal
sense in favor of an esoteric exegesis. The other interpreted literally and ignored its metaphorical
dimension. [. . .] Blessed are they that cling both to the literal and to the esoteric, for those are
His servants that have believed in the universal Word. Know that whoso clingeth to the outward
sense of the words, leaving aside their esoteric significance, is simply ignorant. And whoso con­
centrateth on the metaphorical sense to the exclusion of the prosaic meaning is heedless. Only
the one who interpreteth the verses esoterically while harmonizing this reading with the literal
meaning can be said to be a complete scholar.43

It can be said that Bahāʾullāh opposed literalism or, in modern terms, fundamental­
ism. At the same time, he disapproved of mystics and Sufis who disregarded the plain
or common-sense meaning of the Qurʾān in favor of wild speculation. This is best ex­
pressed in his “Most Holy Book,” the Kitāb-i Aqdas (KA), where he states,

Amongst the people is he who seateth himself amid the sandals by the door whilst coveting in his
heart the seat of honor. Say: What manner of man art thou, O vain and heedless one, who
wouldst appear as other than thou art? And among the people is he who layeth claim to inner
knowledge (al-bāṭin), and still deeper knowledge concealed within this knowledge (bāṭin al-bāṭin).
Say: Thou who speakest false! By God! What thou dost possess is naught but husks (al-qushūr)
which We have left to thee as bones are left to dogs.44

Bahāʾullāh regards the KA – the “book of laws” of the Bahais – and in fact all of his
revelation, as the “choice wine” (raḥīq makhtūm) that the Qurʾān promises the righ

�� Eschraghi, “Promised one (mawʿūd) or imaginary one (mawhūm)?” 112.
�� Juan Cole, “‘The Commentary on the Surah of the Sun,’ Introduction and Translation,” Bahai Stud­
ies Bulletin 4, no. 4:3–4 (April 1990): 4–22, accessed March 8, 2024, https://bahai-library.com/bahai_stud
ies_bulletin_archive/.
�� Cole, “The Commentary on the Surah of the Sun,” 18.
�� Bahāʾullāh, Kitāb-i Aqdas #36.
338          Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan

teous believers (Q 83:25), disclosing spiritual truths that were previously unknown.
Those who drink it will “discern the splendors of the light of divine unity” and “grasp
the essential purpose underlying the Scriptures of God.”45 Bahāʾullāh’s statement
“Think not that we have revealed unto you a mere code of laws (al-aḥkām). Nay,
rather, we have unsealed the choice Wine with the fingers of might and power”46 is a
rejection of both a purely legalistic and an antinomian approach to sharia, because
both see law as a “mere code.” Nader Saiedi states that “unsealing” the “choice wine”
affirms the centrality and significance of Bahāʾullāh’s laws, and because the symbol of
“wine” means emancipation from limits, he “is arguing that his laws should be under­
stood not as repressive or constraining limits, the way some Sufis understood law, but
as the essence of liberation.”47 In other words, Bahāʾullāh criticizes those who devalue
the importance of divine laws and interpret them away esoterically. He observes
some “who call themselves dervishes” claiming that they do not need to perform the
Islamic obligatory prayer, having been “born into a state of prayer,” meaning that
they have “already performed the ‘true’ obligatory prayer.”48 On the other hand, as
we have seen, Bahāʾullāh also criticizes a purely legalistic approach to divine laws,
whereby said laws gain importance to the detriment of spiritual principles.
In many of his writings, Bahāʾullāh makes clear references to the well-known Qu­
rʾānic distinction at Q 3:7 between metaphorical verses (mutashābihāt) that can be in­
terpreted individually through taʾwīl on the one hand and, on the other, commands,
ordinances, or religious observances that are clear, binding, and to be followed by be­
lievers (muḥkamāt). At first glance, it would seem that he prohibited the flagrantly
antinomian interpretation of normative verses as expressed in the following: “Whoso
interpreteth (yuʾawwilu) what hath been sent down from the heaven of Revelation,
and altereth its evident meaning (yukhrijuhu mina ẓ-ẓāhir), he, verily, is of them that
have perverted (ḥarrafa) the Sublime Word of God, and is of the lost ones in the Lucid
Book.”49 However, he does not categorically forbid interpretation. Obviously, Bahais
are free to engage in the study of their religion and thereby arrive at their own per­
sonal understanding or interpretation. In the introduction to the official translation of
the Kitāb-i Aqdas, the Universal House of Justice (the highest governing Bahai institu­
tion) states that interpretations of the Bahai teachings of ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ and Shoghi Ef­
fendi are considered divinely guided and binding on the Bahais, giving the following
explanation of individual interpretation:

�� Bahāʾullāh, Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh Revealed After the Kitáb-i-Aqdas (Wilmette, IL: Baháʾí Publishing
Trust, 1988), 105, accessed March 10, 2025, https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/
tablets-bahaullah/.
�� Bahāʾullāh, KA, 5.
�� Nader Saiedi, Logos and Civilization: Spirit, History, and Order in the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh (Be­
thesda: University of Maryland Press, 2000), 217. For Saiedi’s argument here, see 216–20.
�� Bahāʾullāh, trans. and cited in Saiedi, Logos, 218.
�� Bahāʾullāh, KA, 105.
The Qurʾān in Bahai Writings           339

A clear distinction is [. . .] drawn in the Bahá’í Writings between authoritative interpretation
and the understanding that each individual arrives at from a study of its Teachings. Individual
interpretations based on a person’s understanding of the Teachings constitute the fruit of man’s
rational power and may well contribute to a greater comprehension of the Faith. Such views,
nevertheless, lack authority. In presenting their personal ideas, individuals are cautioned not to
discard the authority of the revealed words, not to deny or contend with the authoritative inter­
pretation, and not to engage in controversy; rather they should offer their thoughts as a contribu­
tion to knowledge, making it clear that their views are merely their own.50

Bahāʾullāh’s intention in KA 105, quoted above, is to forbid the allegorical or figurative
interpretation of revealed laws insofar as this excuses believers from obeying divine
ordinances such as prayer, fasting, and abstention from the social and recreational
use of alcohol and drugs. In one of his writings, in which he explains the meaning of
taʾwīl,51 Bahāʾullāh gives the following example:

The purpose of figurative interpretation (taʾwīl) is not that one be deprived of the outward sense
of the verse, nor that its intent be veiled. For instance, let us say that from the heaven of the
divine will the command is revealed, “Wash your faces” [fa-ʾighsilū wujūhakum, Q 5:6]. Do not
interpret it figuratively (taʾwīl), saying that the intent is that one should wash the countenance of
one’s inner self (wajh-i bāṭin), cleansing it with the water of mystical insight (āb-i ʿirfān), and so
forth. For in this manner a person might, by reason of such a figurative interpretation, continue
to have a malodorous face soiled with dirt, yet be convinced in his own mind that he had carried
out the very essence of God’s decree. For in this station it is clear and obvious that the intent is
that the face be washed with physical water (āb-i ẓāhir).52

On another level, in the same text, Bahāʾullāh states that some of the words of God
can be interpreted figuratively, but this should not result in illusions or misconcep­
tions (ẓunūn wa-awhām) nor miss the divine intent. Here, he gives the example of Q
2:269, “and whoso is given wisdom (al-ḥikma), has been given much good.”53 More­
over, Bahāʾullāh provides examples of how people have understood “wisdom,” saying
that “some of the figurative interpretations of ‘wisdom’ that were referred to above
are each, in their own right, correct. For they are not contradictory to the principles
underlying the divine commands (bā uṣūl-i aḥkām-i ilāhī mukhālif nīst).”54 Again, dif

�� Ibid., n. 130, accessed March 10, 2025, https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/
kitab-i-aqdas/12#704803062.
�� Bahāʾullāh, Iqtidārāt va chand lawḥ-i dīgar (Tehran: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, n.d.), 279–86,
accessed March 10, 2025, https://reference.bahai.org/fa/t/b/ (no. 22). Here, we are citing the unofficial
draft translation by Juan Cole, who gives the Persian text by Bahāʾullāh the title Lawḥ-i Taʾwīl. Juan
Cole, “Tablet on the Interpretation of Sacred Scripture (Ta’wil),” accessed August 27, 2020, https://
bahai-library.com/bahaullah_lawh_tawil_cole.
�� Translated in Cole, “Tablet,” from Bahāʾullāh, Iqtidārāt, 279. I have added the original Arabic/Per­
sian words.
�� Koran Interpreted, slightly amended, accessed March 10, 2025, https://corpus.quran.com/transla
tion.jsp?chapter=2&verse=269. Cole erroneously refers to Q 2:272.
�� Bahāʾullāh, Iqtidārāt, 279f., 283f.
­
340           Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan

ferentiating between mutashābihāt and muḥkamāt, he adds that verses containing
commands or prohibitions (awāmir wa-nawāhī), such as rituals, the payment of blood
money to the victim’s relatives for manslaughter, crimes, and so forth, are intended to
be implemented according to their literal meaning (ẓāhir). But the divine verses con­
cerning the Resurrection and the Hour, whether they were revealed in past scriptures
or in the Qurʾān, are for the most part to be interpreted figuratively. He quotes the
verse “And none knows its interpretation, save only God” (wa-lā yaʿlamu taʾwīlahu illā
Allāh, Q 3:7) to make it clear that human beings are not in the position to offer taʾwīl
of allegorical verses such as those mentioned.55 The message behind this is that, even
though such verses are to be interpreted figuratively, only those who have been cho­
sen by God for this purpose may actually perform universally binding taʾwīl.
Like in the discussion in his “Commentary on the Sura of the Sun,” Bahāʾullāh, on
the one hand, heavily criticizes antinomian Sufis for their allegorical interpretation of
ordinances and divine laws as well as, on the other hand, the famous Sunni Qurʾān
commentator ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿUmar al-Bayḍāwī (685/1286) for his too-literal approach.
Commenting on the Qurʾān verse “It behooves not the sun to overtake the moon, nei­
ther does the night outstrip the day” (Q 36:40), Bahāʾullāh says,

The clergy (ʿulamāʾ), ancient and modern, have commented upon and interpreted figuratively
(tafsīr wa-taʾwīl) this blessed verse, and each derived its meaning from their own beliefs (iʿtiqād).
But these are the stations of delusion and idle fancy, whereas this is the station of knowledge.
The individual whom they call the king of scripture commentators (sulṭān al-mufassirīn), Qadi
Baydawi, asserted that this verse was revealed in refutation of those who worshipped the sun.
Note how far he is from the spring of knowledge, despite the assertion of the people that he was
profoundly learned. The reins of the branches of knowledge are in the grasp of the divine power.
He bestows them upon whomever he desires.56

When Bahāʾullāh says “this is the station of knowledge” in the passage above, he is
referring to himself as the divinely ordained messenger, the “beloved of the mystics”
(maḥbūb al-ʿārifīn) who has brought true knowledge in the form of God’s renewed re­
ligion, asking the reader to be thankful to him: “Indeed, today that which can cleanse
the people of defilement, and can deliver them into true repose, is the faith of God
(madhhab Allāh), the religion of God (dīn Allāh), the Cause of God (amr Allāh). Thus
has the invisible discourse rained down from the heaven of mystical insight (samāʾ al-
ʿirfān), as a grace upon you.”57

�� Ibid., 284.
�� Ibid., 284f. Obviously, this single example of al-Bayḍāwī is given for rhetorical purposes. Bahāʾullāh
is not presenting a detailed history of tafsīr, which undoubtedly holds a wide variety of interpreta­
tions for this particular verse.
�� Cole’s translation, cf. Bahāʾullāh, Iqtidārāt, 285f.
The Qurʾān in Bahai Writings         341

In a similar vein, ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ wrote Qurʾān and hadith commentaries58 in which
he confirms that the word of God has various meanings, from external and literal to
mystical and hidden. One of his important commentaries is a lengthy text about sura
30, ar-Rūm (The Romans), where he expounds upon the name ar-Rūm and the first
words “The Byzantines have been overthrown” (ghulibat ar-Rūm). This is a reference
to the overthrow of the Byzantines in Syria by the Persians during the time of the
prophet Muḥammad (614 CE).59
Moojan Momen, who brought this Arabic writing (“tablet”) by ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ to
light and produced an unofficial translation of it, says that it is

a manual or guide to Bahai mysticism in that it lays out the pathway or stages for the ascent of
the soul from its lowest state of abasement and preoccupation with the things of the world to its
highest state, where the human qualities are effaced and only the divine attributes are manifest
in the individual, the state where it becomes aware of the secrets of hidden and invisible real­
ities.60

In his commentary, ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ gives nine esoteric interpretations of ar-Rūm and
ghulibat ar-Rūm. In the ninth of these, he says that ar-Rūm signifies the stages of the
soul (nafs; mineral, vegetative, animal, and human), its states (an-nafs al-ammāra bi-s-
sūʾ Q 12:53, an-nafs al-lawwāma Q 75:2, an-nafs al-muṭmaʾinna, Q 89:27), degrees, eleva­
tion, ascent, and descent. Momen summarizes the commentary thus:

In relation to his commentary on the overthrow of “Rum,” Abdulbaha says that it means, in this
context, that as the human soul ascends stage by stage, it overthrows the conditions of the lower
stage in order to attain the higher stage.
It can thus be seen that not only has Abdulbaha given nine spiritual or esoteric
interpretations of this sentence of the Qurʾān, but he has done so in relation to only one event –
the coming of the Manifestation of God. Presumably Abdulbaha could have given further inter­
pretations of this verse relating to other aspects of spiritual reality.61

Among ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s noteworthy commentaries, his tafsīr of the ḥadīth qudsī, which
he wrote in his youth, stands out: “I was a Hidden Treasure and loved to be known.

�� For a selection with introductions and context, see Vahid Rafati, Badāyiʿ-i maʿānī va tafsīr: Maj­
mūʿah-yi az āsār ḥażrat ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ dar tafsīr-i āyāt-i Qurʾānī a aḥādīs-i Islāmī (Darmstadt: ʿAṣr-i
Jadīd, 2012).
�� Moojan Momen, “ʿAbduʾl-Bahá’s Commentary on the Qurʾánic Verses concerning the Overthrow of
the Byzantines: The Stages of the Soul,” Bahai Studies Review 12 (2004): 67–90; and in Lights of Irfan 2
(2001): 99–118, accessed March 10, 2025, https://bahai-library.com/momen_byzantines. The Arabic text
of the commentary was published in Makātīb-i ḥażrat-i ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ (Tehran: Muʾassasah-yi Milli-yi
Maṭbūʿat-yi Amrī, 1910), 1: 62–102, accessed March 10, 2025, https://reference.bahai.org/fa/t/ab/MA1/
ma1-61.html; see also Min Makātīb-i ḥażrat-i ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Bahai Brasil, n.d.),
1:12–31, accessed March 10, 2025, https://reference.bahai.org/fa/t/ab/MMAB/mmab-10.html; see also, Ra­
fati, Badāyiʿ, 86–117.
�� Momen, “ʿAbduʾl-Bahá’s,” 67.
�� Momen, “ʿAbduʾl-Bahá’s,” 72.
342          Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan

Therefore, I created the Creation that I might be known” (Kuntu kanzan makhfiyyan
fa-aḥbabtu an uʿrafa fa-khalaqtu al-khalq).62 Shoghi Effendi mentions that he com­
posed “while still in His adolescence in Baghdád” and “at the suggestion of Bahá’u’l­
láh,” a “superb commentary on a well-known Muḥammadan tradition.”63 ʿAbd al-
Bahā wrote it at the request of Ali Şevket (ʿAlī Shawkat) Pasha, an Ottoman official
and, apparently, a Sufi. The commentary is one of the most important sources for the
study of Bahai mysticism and metaphysics, according to Momen, and ʿAbd al-Bahā’s
“clearest and fullest exposition of many important points.”64 The phrases on which
ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ comments are “Hidden Treasure,” “Love,” “Creation,” and “Knowledge,”
all themes in the works of the great Muslim mystic Muḥyī d-Dīn b. al-ʿArabī (638/1240),
to whom ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ alludes in his commentary.
Ultimately, the gist of this commentary is that it is impossible for humans to ever
fully acquire or attain knowledge of God. ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ argues that the most that
human beings can ever hope to know of God is to discern fully the signs of God within
themselves. In support of this, he quotes Q 17:14: “Read your own book, your self/soul
is sufficient to give an account against you this day.” Momen explains that ʿAbd al-
Bahāʾ compares this verse to “the point of a compass. However far human beings may
travel in their search for knowledge of God, ultimately they are only travelling in a
circle around the implications of this verse.”65 These “signs of God” within human
beings are best and most fully uncovered through the guidance of one of the Manifes­
tations of the Divinity (messengers of God) who appear upon the Earth from time to
time. Hence, the “knowledge of God” referred to in this tradition is recognition of the
Manifestation of God, under whose guidance the new and fuller knowledge of the
signs of God within each individual human being is revealed.
In another, shorter commentary that ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ composed in Turkish,66 in
which he refers to the stages of the human soul in a concise form, he echoes the ter

�� Moojan Momen, “Commentary on the Islamic Tradition ‘I Was a Hidden Treasure . . .,’” Bahá’í
Studies Bulletin 3, no. 4 (December 1995): 4–35, revised version available online, accessed March 10,
2025, https://bahai-library.com/abdulbaha_kuntu_kanzan_makhfiyyan; Arabic text: ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ, “Taf­
sīr kuntu kanzan makhfiyyan,” in Makātīb-i ḥażrat-i ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ, ed. Farajullāh Zakī l-Kurdī (Cairo:
Kurdistān al-ʿIlmiyya, 1911/12), 2: 2–55, available online, accessed March 10, 2025, https://reference.
bahai.org/fa/t/ab/MA2/ma2-55.html; see also Rafati, Badāyiʿ, 174–218.
�� Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By (Wilmette, IL: Baháʾí Publishing Trust, 1979), 241, accessed March 10,
2025, https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/shoghi-effendi/god-passes-by/16#055478979. Re­
cent research has established that the place of composition was Edirne in Turkey. See Bahāʾullāh’s
and ʿAbd al-Bahāʾs own statements in Safinih-yi-‘Irfán 6: 10; Masumian 2021; and Makátíb 2: 55; see also
Rafati, Badāyiʿ, 179.
�� Momen, “Commentary,” 4.
�� Ibid., 7.
�� On ʿAbd al-Bahāʾs Turkish and his renown among Ottoman literati, see Necati Alkan, “ʿAbdu’l-Bahá
ʿAbbás,” in The World of the Bahá’í Faith, ed. Robert H. Stockman (London: Routledge, 2021), 78f.
The Qurʾān in Bahai Writings         343

minology used by Ibn al-ʿArabī. In this tafsīr of sura 95, at-Tīn (The Fig),67 in which
ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ discusses the words “fig” and “olive” (az-zaytūn), he explains that the
interpretation of the fig and the olive as fruits is problematic in the context of the
passage, which continues with the terms “Mount Sinai” (ṭūr sīnīn) and “secure city”
(al-balad al-amīn). He informs the addressee that, although the “people of truth” (ehl-i
hakikat) do accept the famous Muslim commentators’ traditional interpretations of
the first verse of sura 95, they “have carefully examined this blessed verse and unrav­
elled therein other far-reaching meanings.” He identifies the “fig” as Mount Tīnā and
the “olive” as Mount Zītā/Zaytāʾ, “two blessed mounts” in the vicinity of Jerusalem
where God has honored his prophets and appeared to them. Mount Sinai is the “day­
spring of God’s boundless grace,” where the divine signs were disclosed to Moses. Con­
trary to his own and traditional Islamic interpretations, ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ says that “the
City of security” is Medina (Medine-i münevvere), where Muḥammad had migrated,
“the centre of the manifestation of Islam and the designated point where the Word of
God had been raised.”68
In ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s summary of sura 95 in his Turkish commentary, God swears by
Mount Tīnā, Mount Zaytāʾ, Mount Sinai, and “this City of security” that he has created
the reality and temple of man in the “best of forms” (aḥsan taqwīm Q 95:4). Although
other creatures and all of creation are the manifestations of various signs (of God),
only man embodies the totality of signs and the reality of divine perfection collec­
tively. Man is the greatest demarcation (barzakh; Turk. berzah), the archetype of the
macrocosm – i.e., of all the worlds of God. ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ states that only humankind
has the privilege of receiving divine messengers who hold the station of prophethood.
And the reality of all things in creation, the intrinsic worth of human beings, and the
mysteries in creation, first hidden in the imaginary world, will be discovered and ap­
pear in the visible realm through the power of human mental faculties and talents.
That human beings have been created in the “best form,” that they are a barzakh,
“demarcation” or “barrier,” and, perhaps paradoxically, an essential “link” between
two worlds is indicative of their destiny. Creation, according to ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ, is collec­
tively a manifestation of clear signs (āyāt-ı beyyināt), but only human beings are the
focal points (cf. maẓāhir) of divine perfections. If spiritual powers are victorious over
physical constraints, individuals can become heavenly, a source of love. But, if the
sensual side and carnal senses dominate, human beings become a mine of darkness, a
source of deceit, a manifestation of ignorance and wickedness. As in Sufism, ʿAbd al-
Bahāʾ here also states that man, by attaining spiritual perfection on his path to God,

�� Necati Alkan, “‘By the Fig and the Olive’: ʿAbdu’l-Bahá’s Commentary in Ottoman Turkish on the
Qurʾánic Sura 95 – Notes and Provisional Translation,” The Bahai Studies Review 10 (2001/2002):
115–128; cf. Johanna Pink, “The Fig, the Olive and the Cycles of Prophethood: Q 95:1–3 and the Image of
History in Early 20th-Century Qurʾanic Exegesis,” in Islamic Studies Today: Essays in Honor of Andrew
Rippin, ed. Majid Daneshgar and Walid A. Saleh (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 317–38.
�� Alkan, “‘By the Fig and the Olive,’” 123.
344          Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan

first has a nefs-i emmare, a “lower” soul that commands him to behave immorally. It
then becomes a nefs-i levvame, a still unsubmissive soul that blames itself for its own
shortcomings. At the end of his journey, man reaches the station of nefs-i mutmaine,
an obedient soul at peace.69
In her study on the puzzling oaths at the beginning of sura 95, Johanna Pink refers
to Necati Alkan’s paper on ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s tafsīr, remarking ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ “presents his
interpretation as a Muslim one, without any mention of the Bahā’ī faith.” However, be­
cause he emphasizes the Holy Land as the site of a number of unspecified prophets, she
says, this easily allows for the inclusion of his father Bahāʾullāh, “without being specific
enough to offend Muslims.” In Pink’s view, ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s commentary “is not simply a
veiled attempt to legitimize a new religion and connect it to Islam” but is part of the
zeitgeist of “a renewed and original entanglement with the Qurʾān” by Muslim scholars
and intellectuals in an atmosphere of intense interreligious debate and polemics in the
historical context of British and French imperialism in the Middle East, Christian mis­
sionaries proselytizing in that region, and new interpretations of the origins of Islam by
Western Orientalists.70
ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ often took the mystics’ approach when interpreting aḥādīth or Qu­
rʾānic verses, as we have seen in relation to his commentaries above. Another short
example is his (likewise) Turkish tafsīr of the hadith “God doth give victory to this
religion by means of a wicked man” (inna llāha yuʾayyidu hādhā d-dīna bi-rajulin
fājir), recorded as the words of Muḥammad in Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl al-Bukhārī’s
(870/256) collection of hadiths.71 In his commentary on this hadith, ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ
seems to ignore its negative context – the fact that the Prophet Muḥammad is refer­
ring to this person, though he fights alongside the Muslims, as one of the people of
hell-fire (i.e., a person destined for hell) – and puts forth a more positive interpreta­
tion of the words. ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s tafsīr here stands in the Islamic tradition of reading
the inner meaning (bāṭin) of the words. At first glance, it may seem puzzling that ʿAbd
al-Bahāʾ is taking not a doubtful, but rather what is regarded as an “authentic” (ṣaḥīḥ)
hadith from no less a source than al-Bukhārī, and is not questioning its authenticity
but giving it a completely new and unexpected meaning. He is making the inner
meaning (bāṭin) take the opposite of the manifest meaning (ẓāhir).
The main point of interest in our context is that, in ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s commentary,
the word fājir, usually translated as “disobedient,” “evil,” or “wicked,” suddenly be­
comes positive, meaning fāriq – that is, “distinguishing” and “rich.” Whereas in the
hadith it is a man who claims to be a Muslim fighting for God’s religion, though he is
described by Muḥammad as fājir and a “man of hell-fire,” ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ elucidates the

�� Ibid., 123–25.
�� Pink, “The Fig,” 325f.
�� Necati Alkan, “ʿAbduʾl-Baha’s Commentary on the Islamic Tradition: ‘God Doth Give Victory to This
Religion by Means of a Wicked Man’ – a Provisional Translation and Notes,” The Bahá’í Studies Review
11 (2003): 53–57.
The Qurʾān in Bahai Writings        345

word fājir alone, rather than commenting on the entirety of the hadith. Muḥammad’s
intended meaning in his use of the word fājir, says ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ, is a person rich in
the spiritual sense who will aid the cause of God by discriminating between good and
evil, forbidden and lawful, truth and error – in short, someone who has knowledge of
the divine mysteries.
Overall, in ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ’s brief commentary, we see two themes that recur in
Bahai tafsīr. The first is the emphasis placed on the Islamic hermeneutic presupposi­
tion of a multiplicity of meanings in scripture and the prominence given in Bahai taf­
sīr to allegorical interpretation. The second theme is the great extent to which Bahai
interpretation focuses on the ethical and spiritual development of humankind.

4 Conclusion
It is fair to say that the Qurʾān plays a role in the Bahai faith that is analogous to the
way in which the Hebrew Bible functions in Christianity. Christians are patently not
Jews, but they nonetheless revere the sacred scripture of what they consider to be the
Old Testament (cf. the Arabic al-ʿahd al-qadīm), precisely because they understand the
covenant that lives at the center of that book as having been renewed within the
scope of Jesus’ mission in the New Testament (al-ʿahd al-jadīd). This discussion should
be considered something of an introduction to the role and function of the Qurʾān in
the Bahai faith, which similarly sees itself as renewing the covenant that is at the
heart of Islam, Muḥammad’s mission, and, of course, the Qurʾān. There are many
other works of Bahai scripture to explore, including the Most Holy Book itself, the
Kitāb-i Aqdas, whose Qurʾān-like status in the Bahai faith is reflected in its Qurʾānic
diction and, sometimes, content.72 It is hoped that this brief exploration will encour­
age further research into this fascinating topic.
Finally, it can be observed that Bahai readings of the Qurʾān, from their historical
beginnings until today, revolve around the guiding Bahai aspiration and struggle for
universal peace. The Bāb chose to “rewrite” the Qurʾān so that the peaceable and for­
giving prophet, messenger, and, in Bahai terminology, divine manifestation (maẓhar
ilāhī), Joseph, son of Jacob, would assume central importance. Joseph, after all, is dis­
tinguished in the Islamic tradition for his beauty (both moral and physical), for his
ability to interpret and bring order to chaos, for combining both worldly and spiritual
authority, and, finally, for forgiving his brothers, who sold their young brother, Jo­
seph, into slavery due to their own jealousy and greed while betraying their broken-
hearted father, Jacob. Joseph could have behaved differently but, even after they rec

�� On the Kitāb-Aqdas, see now: Omid Ghaemmaghami, and Shahin Vafai, Exploring the Kitáb–IAq­
das: The Laws and Teachings of the Bahá’í Faith (New York: I.B. Tauris, 2025. https://doi.org/10.5040/
9780755606283.
346            Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan

ognized him and Joseph had the power to do whatever he deemed just, he said to his
perfidious brothers, “No reproach shall be uttered today against you. May God forgive
you your sins: for He is the most merciful of the merciful” (Q 12:92). Indeed, according
to the Sīra, the prophet Muḥammad addressed the formerly inimical Meccans with
the following verse after the conquest of Mecca: “I say to you what my brother Joseph
said ‘No blame will be upon you this day. God will forgive you!’”73 This admiration for
Joseph’s peacemaking ministry is particularly salient in the context of the terrible ani­
mosity that, with depressing regularity, has characterized the relations between
Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Undoubtedly, it is this context that at least partly explains
why the deeply mystical (and Shiite) Bāb chose to compose his commentary on the
sura of Joseph as a fitting announcement for the return of the Hidden Imam who
would, as the Shiite traditional prophecy has it, restore justice to a deeply unjust
world. And this may be one of the reasons why Bahāʾullāh honored the Qayyūm al-
Asmāʾ as “the first, greatest, and mightiest of all books.” However, as we well know, it
is not only the Muslim world that has been plagued and exhausted by mutual hatred
and animosity. One might say that it is now a worldwide pandemic. And it is for this
reason that this same veneration of what might be called a Josephian and, frankly,
Qurʾānic dedication to peace and harmony among all peoples was spread by Bahāʾul­
lāh and ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ, going far beyond the traditional geographic and cultural bor­
ders of the Qurʾān’s audience, to the point that it is now a permanent and essential
part of the ethos of the worldwide Bahai community.74

5 Bibliography
5.1 Sources

ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ. Makātīb-i ḥażrat-i ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ. Tehran: Muʾassasah-yi Milli-yi Maṭbūʿāt-i Amrī, vol. 1, 1910.
Accessed March 10, 2025. https://reference.bahai.org/fa/t/ab/MA1/.
ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ. Makātīb-i ḥażrat-i ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ. Ed. Farajullāh Zakī l-Kurdī. Cairo: Kurdistān al-ʿIlmiyya, vol. 2,
1911/12. Accessed March 10, 2025. https://reference.bahai.org/fa/t/ab/MA2/.
ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ. “Tafsīr kuntu kanzan makhfiyyan.” In Makātīb-i ḥażrat-i ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ. Cairo: Kurdistān al-
ʿIlmiyya, vol. 2, 1911/12: 2–55. Accessed March 10, 2025. https://reference.bahai.org/fa/t/ab/MA2/.
ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ. Min Makātīb-i ḥażrat-i ʿAbd al-Bahāʾ. Rio de Janeiro: Editora Bahai Brasil, vol. 1, n.d. Accessed
March 10, 2025. https://reference.bahai.org/fa/t/ab/MMAB/mmab-10.html.
Bahāʾullāh. Iqtidārāt va chand lawḥ-i dīgar. Tehran: Bahá’í Publishing Trust, n.d. Accessed March 10, 2025.
https://reference.bahai.org/fa/t/b/.

�� Alfred-Louis de Prémare, Joseph et Muhammad, le chapitre 12 du Coran: Étude textuelle (Aix-en-
Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 1989), 175.
�� Todd Lawson, “The Return of Joseph and the Peaceable Imagination,” in Lawson, Being Human,
11–35.
The Qurʾān in Bahai Writings              347

Bahāʾullāh. “Tablet of Aḥmad.” In Baháʾí Prayers. Trans. Shoghi Effendi. Wilmette, IL: Baháʾí Publishing
Trust, 1982: 209–13. Accessed March 10, 2025. https://reference.bahai.org/en/t/c/BP/.
Bahāʾullāh. Gleanings from the Writings of Baháʾuʾlláh. Trans. Shoghi Effendi. Wilmette, IL: Baháʾí Publishing
Trust, 1969. Accessed March 10, 2025. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/
gleanings-writings-bahaullah/.
Bahāʾullāh. Muntakhabātī az āsār ḥażrat-i Bahāʾullāh. Hofheim-Langenhain: Baháʾí-Verlag, 1984. Accessed
March 10, 2025. https://www.bahai.org/fa/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/gleanings-writings-
bahaullah/). Persian and Arabic original of Gleanings, previous entry.
Bahāʾullāh. Tablets of Bahá’u’lláh Revealed After the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Wilmette, IL: Baháʾí Publishing Trust, 1988.
Accessed March 10, 2025. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/tablets-
bahaullah/.
Bahāʾullāh. Kitāb-i Īqān. The Book of Certitude. Trans. Shoghi Effendi. Wilmette, IL: Baháʾí Publishing, 1989.
Accessed March 10, 2025. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/kitab-i-iqan/.
Bahāʾullāh. Kitāb-i Aqdas. Haifa: Bahá’í World Centre, 1992. Accessed March 10, 2025. https://www.bahai.
org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/kitab-i-aqdas/.
Bahāʾullāh. The Kitáb-i-Aqdas, The Most Holy Book, trans. Baháʾí World Centre. Mona Vale: Baháʾí
Publications Australia/Baháʾí Publishing Trust of the United Kingdom, 1993.
Bahāʾullāh. “Tafsīr-i Kuntu Kanz.” In Safinih-yi-‘Irfán: Studies in Principal Beliefs and Sacred Texts of the Bahá’í
Faith 6 (2006): 10.
The Bāb. Selections from the Writings of the Báb, trans. Habib Taherzadeh et al. Haifa: Baháʼí World Centre
Publications, 1976.
The Bāb. Muntakhabāt-i Āyāt az Āthār-i Ḥaz̲rat-i Nuqṭah-ʾi Ūlá. Chadigarh India: Carmel Publishers, 2007.
The Bāb. Tafsīr sūrat Yūsuf or Qayyūm al-Asmāʾ. Two early manuscripts collated in an unpublished digital
text. N.d. Kindly supplied by Dr. Moojan Momen.
The Bāb. Tafsīr sūrat Yūsuf or Qayyūm al-Asmāʾ. In Al-Āyāt ash-Shīrāziyya: an-nuṣūṣ al-muqaddasa li-muʾassis
al-ḥaraka al-Bābiyya, edited by Qāsim Muḥammad ʿAbbās. Damascus: Dār al-Madā li-th-Thaqāfa wa-
n-Nashr, 2009: 54–137.
The Koran Interpreted, trans. Arthur J. Arberry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Accessed March 10,
2025. https://corpus.quran.com/

5.2 Secondary Literature

Alkan, Necati. “‘By the Fig and the Olive’: ʿAbdu’l-Bahá’s Commentary in Ottoman Turkish on the Qur’ánic
Sura 95 – Notes and Provisional Translation.” The Baháʾí Studies Review 10 (2001/2002): 115–28.
Alkan, Necati. “ʿAbduʾl-Baha’s Commentary on the Islamic Tradition: ‘God Doth Give Victory to This
Religion by Means of a Wicked Man’ – a Provisional Translation and Notes.” The Baháʾí Studies Review
11 (2003): 53–57.
Alkan, Necati. “‘Abdu’l-Bahá ‘Abbás.” In The World of the Bahá’í Faith, edited by Robert H. Stockman.
London: Routledge, 2021: 72–87.
Amanat, Abbas. Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844–1850. Los Angeles:
Kalimát Press, 2005.
Al-ʿĀmilī l-Iṣfahānī, Abū l-Ḥasan. Muqaddimat-i tafsīr-i mirʾāt al-anwār wa-mishkāt al-asrār bā tarjamah wa-
sharḥ-i ḥāl-i muʾallif wa-fihrist-i kitāb. Tehran: Maṭbaʿah-yi Āftāb, 1374 [1955].
Amir-Moezzi, Mohammad Ali. The Divine Guide in Early Shiʻism: The Sources of Esotericism in Islam. Trans.
David Streight. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.
348           Todd Lawson and Necati Alkan

Buck, Christopher. “The Kitab-i Iqan: An Introduction to Bahaʾuʾllah’s Book of Certitude with Two Digital
Reprints of Early Lithographs.” Occasional Papers in Shaykhi, Babi and Baha’i Studies 2, no. 5
(June 1998). Accessed August 24, 2020. https://www.hnet.org/~bahai/bhpapers/vol2/iqan&sn.htm.
Buck, Christopher. Symbol and Secret: Qurʾan Commentary in Bahá’u’lláh’s Kitáb-i-Íqán. Los Angeles: Kalimát
Press, 2004.
Buck, Christopher. “Bahāʾīs [Supplement 2016].” In EQ, edited by Jane Dammen McAuliffe. Leiden: Brill,
2001–2006. Accessed August 24, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1875-3922_q3_EQCOM_050505.
Cole, Juan. “‘The Commentary on the Surah of the Sun,’ Introduction and Translation.” Bahai Studies
Bulletin 4, no. 3–4 (1990): 4–22.
Cole, Juan. “Tablet on the Interpretation of Sacred Scripture (Taʾwíl).” Accessed August 27, 2020. https://
bahai-library.com/bahaullah_lawh_tawil_cole.
Corbin, Henry. En Islam iranien: Aspects Spirituels et Philosophiques. 4 vols. Paris: Gallimard, 1971–72.
De Prémare, Alfred-Louis. Joseph et Muhammad, le chapitre 12 du Coran: Étude textuelle. Aix-en-Provence:
Publications de l’Université de Provence, 1989.
Eschraghi, Armin. Frühe Šaiẖi- und Bābī-Theologie: Die Darlegung der Beweise für Muḥammads besonderes
Prophetentum (Ar-Risāla fī Iṯbāt an-Nubūwa al-Ḫāṣṣa). Leiden: Brill, 2004.
Eschraghi, Armin. “Promised One (mawʿūd) or Imaginary One (mawhūm)? Some Notes on Twelver Shīʿī
Mahdī Doctrine and its Discussion in Writings of Bahāʾ Allāh.” In Unity in Diversity: Mysticism,
Messianism, and the Construction of Religious Authority in Islam, edited by Orkhan Mir-Kasimov. Leiden:
Brill, 2014: 111–35.
Hornby, Helen, ed. Lights of Guidance: A Bahá’í Reference File. New Delhi, India: Bahá’í Publishing
Trust, 1983.
Lawson, Todd. “The Dangers of Reading: Inlibration, Communion and Transference in the Qurʾán
Commentary of the Báb.” In Scripture and Revelation: Papers Presented at the First Irfan Colloquium
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England, December 1993 and the Second Irfan Colloquium Wilmette, USA,
March 1994, edited by Moojan Momen. Oxford: George Ronald, 1997: 171–215.
Lawson, Todd. “Qurʾān Commentary as Sacred Performance: The Bāb’s Tafsīrs of Qurʾān 103 and 108, ‘the
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-- The Qur'an in Baha'i Writings (Used by permission of the curator)