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
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