# 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
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>
> — *The Qur'an in Baha'i Writings (Used by permission of the curator)*