Gate of the Heart: Understanding the Writings of the Bab

Gate of the Heart: Understanding the Writings of the Báb / Nader Saiedi, author

© 2023 Nader Saiedi

c/o Association for Bahá’í Studies

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Ottawa, ON

K1N 7K4 Canada

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First edition, first printing 2008

This printing June 2023

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Saiedi, Nader, 1955–

Gate of the Heart : Understanding the Writings of the Báb / Nader Saiedi Includes bibliographical references and index

Softcover: ISBN 978-0-920904-38-1

Ebook: ISBN 978-0-920904-39-8

1. Bab, Ali Muhammad Shirazi, 1819-1850. 2. Bahai Faith. I. Title.

BP361.2.S34 2023

297.9’2

Every effort has been made to acquire permission for copyright material used in this text, and to acknowledge all such indebtedness accurately. Any errors and omissions called to the publisher’s attention will be corrected in future printings.

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Cover image: Detail of the Shrine of the Báb.

Copyright © Farzam Sabetian

Cover design: Nilufar Gordon

Text design: P.J. Woodland

GATE OF THE HEART

UNDERSTANDING THE

WRITINGS OF THE BÁB

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

A Short Chronological List of the Báb’s Writings

PART I

The Interpretive Revelation

1 The Mode of Interpretation

2 The Divine Chemistry of Fire, Water, Air, and Earth

3 The Remembrance, the Gate, and the Dust

4 The Structure of the Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’

5 The Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’ as Interpretation

PART II

The Metaphysics of the Primal Will and Divine Action

6 The Sanctuary of the Heart and the Path to Truth

7 The Primal Will as the Unity of Subject and Object

8 The Stages of Divine Creative Action

9 The Epistle of Justice and the Root Principles of Religion

PART III

The Primal Point and Progressive Revelation

10 Resurrection and Historical Consciousness

11 History and the Perspective of Unity

12 Community and the Primal Unity

13 Ethics and Laws in the Bayán

14 The Law of the Sword and the Twin Revelations

Notes

References

Index

PREFACE

THIS BOOK IS AN INTRODUCTION to the vast ocean of the writings of the Báb, the young and charismatic Persian Prophet and Forerunner of the Bahá’í religion. I spent my undergraduate years in the Báb’s birthplace, the city of Shiraz, where I studied at Pahlavi University. Memorable occasional visits to the House of the Báb (which was demolished in 1979 by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards) were the ultimate inspiration for my future work on the Báb’s writings. During those years, one of my best friends was my fellow student, Bahrám Yaldá’í. Being of the same age, we took many of the same courses, and I always sat beside him. He was the most selfless, gentle, quiet, and peaceful person I have ever met. Years later I received the shocking news that Bahrám, together with his kind and brave mother, had been put to death by the Islamic regime simply because they refused to recant their faith as Bahá’ís and renounce their right to freedom of conscience, their right to be human. The same fanatical and intolerant culture that had executed the Báb in 1850 was continuing to kill the Báb’s spiritual heirs, the Bahá’ís, at the end of the twentieth century.

My actual research on the writings of the Báb began a decade ago when a dear friend gave me a most precious gift. It was a copy of the Persian Bayán, the most important of the Báb’s works. When I opened it, I recognized instantly the name of the book’s previous owner, written in his own handwriting on the first page. It was my martyred friend, Bahrám. The one who gave me this gift was unaware that Bahrám and I had been friends in our undergraduate years in Iran.

It was in this mysterious context that I began to read again the Persian Bayán, while remembering my friendship with Bahrám in Shiraz. I became entranced by the Báb’s creativity and could not stop studying the works that flowed from His prolific pen. Thus began a journey of exploration that has culminated in this book. Through it I hope to share some of the vibrant and creative experience that I have had in studying the works of the Báb. Even so, it is only a beginning and an invitation to further study and research.

Many people have contributed in various ways to the realization of this book, and although it is impossible to mention them all, I am grateful to every one. A number of scholars including Dr. Muhammad Afnan, Dr. Nosratollah Mohammadhosseini, and Dr. Iskander Ha’i made contributions that were essential. I am also grateful to the Research Department of the Bahá’í World Centre for assistance with the provisional translations that are included in this volume. My research has benefited from the supporting environment of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton College. My thanks go to my editor and the Association for Bahá’í Studies for publishing this book as the first volume of the Bahá’í Studies Series published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. I would like to thank my wife Bita, who always eagerly read various drafts of the manuscript, gave me insightful comments, and enthusiastically supported my work.

Furthermore, I would like to express my love and gratitude to my parents who taught me from an early age the love of reading. This work is an expression of their love and sacrifices throughout my life. Finally, I wish to thank Arden Lee for loving me like a son these last thirty years.

I dedicate this book to my beloved and noble friend from Shiraz, Bahrám Yaldá’í.

INTRODUCTION

IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY , the world of Shí‘ih Islam was in a state of fervent messianic expectation. Devout believers were awaiting the advent of the holy figure known as the Twelfth Imám, who had been in concealment for a thousand years. According to the prophecies recorded in the Traditions, when the Hidden Imám reappeared he would arise, as the Qá’im , to unleash jihad—holy war— on the forces of evil and unbelief, and would usher in the Day of Judgment and the Resurrection. When in 1844 a mild and refined twenty-five-year-old merchant from Shiraz, Persia, declared that He was that promised figure of Islamic prophecy, it sent a shock wave through Persian society. ¹ His name was Siyyid ‘Alí-Muḥammad Shírází, and He took the title of Báb (the Gate). Response to the Báb and His teachings ranged from ecstatic embrace by those who became His followers, to hostile and violent rejection by the government and clerical hierarchy. Determined to extirpate the newborn religion, the authorities launched a campaign of brutal persecution against the Bábís, culminating in the execution of the Báb Himself before a firing squad in the public square of Tabriz on July 9, 1850. ²

In fact, the Báb had made a claim even more startling than that of being the Qá’im. He also claimed to be both a new Prophet and the herald of yet another messianic figure even greater than Himself, referred to as He Whom God shall make manifest (Man Yuẓhiruhu’lláh). The essence and purpose of the Báb’s own mission (as the Báb would always stress) was to prepare the people for this second and greater Advent. In 1863 one of the Báb’s followers, Mírzá Ḥusayn ‘Alíy-i-Núrí, Bahá’u’lláh, would publicly claim to be that Promised One. In the century that followed, the religion Bahá’u’lláh founded—the Bahá’í Faith—would attract adherents far beyond Iran and the Middle East and would become a world religion with millions of followers across the globe.³

This book is an exploration of the creative and revolutionary ideas of the Báb through a study of some of His numerous writings. It should be regarded as a preliminary attempt to analyze and describe the overall vision and the substantive message contained in the Báb’s texts. For a number of reasons, including their formidable difficulty and apparently hermetic nature, the Báb’s writings have scarcely been studied by scholars. When they have been studied, those texts have often been approached in a literalistic framework and without sufficient attention to their symbolism, and thus they have frequently been misunderstood. This book offers a new approach to the writings of the Báb. Going beyond literalism, it attempts to understand the individual texts within the context of the totality of the Báb’s works as well as His world view and His own explanations of His intentions, His rhetorical choices, and, above all, the language of symbolism and metaphor He employs throughout His works. As a tentative and preliminary exploration, this book is not intended to be a comprehensive or comparative study of the writings of the Báb. Each of the Báb’s texts discussed here could, and no doubt will, become the subject of many volumes of analysis and commentary in the future. In addition to the many topics that are only briefly touched on in this book, much more could be said about all the multiple allusions and meanings contained in the Báb’s writings, as well as the theological and philosophical ideas they contain. For brevity’s sake, all these aspects must be omitted here and left to future scholarship.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the story of the Báb and His followers, and their torture and martyrdom at the hands of the Persian state authorities and fanatical Muslim clergy, touched a receptive chord in some Western intellectuals who learned of it. Prominent among those intellectuals was the Cambridge orientalist, Edward Granville Browne. Despite the scorn of his colleagues, who derided him for spending his time on what they considered a minor and ephemeral phenomenon, Browne dedicated his career to recording and studying the Bábí movement. He was convinced he was witnessing one of the most remarkable phenomena of the present century, and he believed the Báb’s religion was destined to leave a permanent mark in the world. The religion of the Báb, he observed, whatever its actual destiny may be, is of that stuff whereof world-religions are made.⁴

Those first Europeans who became intrigued by the story of the Báb were influenced by various currents of romanticism and tended to concentrate on celebrating the natural, innocent, and courageous character of the Báb and His Revelation.⁵ Although their accounts did help to gain wider recognition for the Báb and His movement outside the Middle East, they generally failed to go beyond traditional simplistic categories and did not even scratch the surface of the complexity and rich symbolism of the mystical and theological system contained in His works. A recent wave of scholarly research, however, has enkindled new excitement and curiosity about the Báb, and there is now a growing body of literature on His history and writings.⁶ Some authors, however, have tended to dismiss the Báb’s works as mere archaeological phenomena devoid of any real significance, let alone relevance beyond a limited historical context.⁷ Within the literalist interpretive approach, several common features have contributed to producing such conclusions. These features include the tendency to treat the Báb’s writings as completely separate from the writings of Bahá’u’lláh, lack of attention to the complexity and creativity of both the form and the content of the Báb’s texts, and overlooking the subtleties of the Báb’s language and logic of expression, especially the rhetorical and symbolic uses of language through which He transforms traditional concepts and at times completely reverses their meanings.

Are the writings of the Báb merely of archaeological interest, or do they have a value and importance that transcends the limits of their historical moment and speaks with relevance to the present? In a sense, this book is an attempt to answer that question, for it is only by coming to a better understanding of the Báb’s works that we can correctly judge their significance, both in historical perspective and in terms of their contemporary relevance. In this chapter I will address the issue through a general introductory methodological examination of the historical background and writings of the Báb.

The Báb’s Critique of Islamic Traditionalism

Before September 11, 2001, few could have imagined that one of the effects of modern Western technological advancement would be the dramatic and violent intrusion, upon the Western world, of the seemingly remote and arcane internal conflicts of Islam. The events of September 11 placed Islam at the centre ofWestern cultural and political discourse as the West struggles to make sense of what seems a bewildering, medieval mindset centring around holy war or jihad as a religious duty. A series of troubling but crucial questions have come to the fore: Is religion, particularly Islam, ultimately only conducive to conflict and hatred? Is the clash of civilizations inevitable? What went wrong in the Middle East’s encounter with modernity? Why has nothing comparable to Christianity’s Reformation occurred within Islam? Does any possibility exist for genuine reconciliation, mutual respect, and peace among the religions of the world? The writings of the Báb provide a challenging, novel perspective from which to examine such questions.

Between the traditionalist rejection of modernity (including its postmodern modifications) on the one hand, and the atheist rejection of religion on the other, there has existed a third position within Islam—a modernist, eclectic, though somewhat inconsistent and contradictory, interpretation of Islamic holy texts. This approach sought to safeguard the sacredness of tradition while imposing upon it a limited and superficial modern form.⁸ But modernist Islam failed to question certain fundamental assumptions, and thus its ideology essentially consisted of superficial revisions and borrowings from the West imposed over the same traditionalistic bases without a thorough reexamination of their underlying cultural and religious concepts. Not surprisingly, the modernist approach has been relatively unpersuasive and ineffectual in the Muslim world.

Against a background of intellectual and political impasse within Islam, the historic significance and revolutionary import of the writings of both the Báb and Bahá’u’lláh stand out. For there was indeed a radical reform movement in Islam—so radical in its transformation of Islamic concepts and categories that ultimately it has ceased to be perceived as a part of Islam at all—in much the same way that Christianity, although appearing at first to be a reform movement within Judaism, came to be recognized as a separate and independent religion. But the movement initiated by the Báb was far more than an Islamic Reformation. The Báb engaged in a foundational reexamination of traditional conceptions of religion and religious identity, expounding a spiritual world view that was dynamic, historical, and oriented toward progress and communication.

At a time when the Middle East was ignoring the West, and Muslim religious leaders were insisting on adherence to the old traditions and rituals, avoiding communication and contact with non-Muslims, and rejecting any form of learning that came from the inferior infidels, the Western world was rapidly improving its technological, economic, political, military, and cultural institutions and extending its influence throughout the world—including the Middle East. While the Islamic world was dominated by the culture of traditionalism, which defined the old ways as sacred, eternally valid, and unalterable—and hence obstructed change and progress—the West was experiencing the exact opposite trend: the rise of the culture of rationalization and rationalism called modernity.

Modernity, of course, does not necessarily mean a rejection of all tradition. Yet it does imply a rational and deliberate reexamination of tradition in terms of consistent and universal criteria, a process that can lead to the selective retention of those aspects of tradition that are conducive to progress and universal moral principles. Social and economic advancement depends on such an open and dynamic attitude toward truth and values, while blind traditionalism obstructs progress and creativity in any society.

But religious traditionalism in the Middle East was very different from traditionalism as it was defined by Max Weber.⁹ For Weber, traditional authority was based more on the idea of habit than on the deliberate elevation of tradition to the realm of the sacred. The kind of traditionalism Weber was concerned with is much easier to overcome because practices based on mere force of habit and on taken-for-granted institutions can easily crumble when confronted by the advantages of a rational, deliberative, calculative, and purposive orientation. The traditionalism of the Middle East (like most religious traditionalism in general) was much more entrenched and resistant to change because the eternal validity of tradition was grounded in the eternal validity and truth of divine revelation itself. Islamic traditions and rituals, the realm of the religious laws or sharí‘ah, were defined as binding because they were the Word of God. And because it was assumed that the Word of God was not only eternally valid but unchanging, traditions were perceived to be absolute and unalterable because they represented the eternal, unalterable will of God.

In Islam, this traditionalism was based on belief in the finality of the Islamic Revelation: after the Prophet Muḥammad, there would be no further revelation and no change in the religious law. So strong was this traditionalism that it was even projected into the past: all the previous revealed Holy Scriptures, it was reasoned, must have advocated the same laws and rituals as those found in the Qur’án since divine truth is absolute and the divine will is eternal. The apparent inconsistency of the sacred texts and laws of Judaism and Christianity with the those of the Qur’án was explained by the doctrine of corruption of the texts: the followers of the older religions were presumed to have altered their own holy books for the sole purpose of refuting Islam.

In Islam, the static thesis of finality, or the end of history, has remained the underlying force of a traditionalism that categorically rejects all that is modern (and, for that reason, by definition heretical), has blocked socioeconomic vitality and creativity, and has exacerbated the social and economic problems of Muslim nations, but which also finds its own difficulties to be a further vindication of its hatred of the infidels. Even modernist Islam, while more progressive than militant traditionalism, remains imprisoned within the same set of traditional assumptions about the finality of the Islamic Revelation and the eternal, unchanging nature of religious law. While modernist Islam is more flexible in adopting some superficial elements of modern culture, it has never questioned the fundamental premises of the traditionalistic model. The result, for the world of Islam, has been the cultural and spiritual deadlock described above; continuing social, political, and economic problems; and the pervasive negative perception and suspicion of the West and its institutions.

The writings of the Báb offered a novel solution to Islam’s cultural and spiritual impasse. The Báb’s dynamic approach to truth questioned all forms of traditionalism. His transformative interpretation of the finality doctrine overturned the very foundations of Muslim traditionalism by explaining divine revelation—past, present, and future—as a continuous process that was cyclical and progressive. What had been the basis of traditionalism became, in the Báb’s writings, the foundation of a thorough critique of the traditionalist orientation itself.

The Báb’s approach to the challenge of modernity was utterly different from that of Islamic traditionalists. Muslim traditionalists attributed the Middle East’s backwardness, and its political and economic subjugation to Europe, to the Muslims’ own failure to adhere to the traditional practices of early Islam. The solution they proposed was fundamentalism: the wholesale rejection of modernity and a return to the practices, institutions, and laws of over a thousand years ago. The traditionalist explanation is of course too simplistic and does not confront the real questions. The Muslims’ failure to observe Islamic practices of the past cannot explain the rise of the Western infidels to power and their cultural creativity, for Western peoples were even further than the Muslims in their deviation from Islamic practices. Still, this view was a major factor that contributed to legitimizing traditionalism, and it has remained a great obstacle to development and creativity in the Middle East.

According to the Báb, however, it is absolutely true that the solution to the problems of Islam lies in a return to the original creative spirit and source of the religion. But this return to the source, as it unfolds in the writings of the Báb, is the exact opposite of a return to the former Islamic rituals and practices. In the Báb’s theology, the creative spirit of Islam is the same divine spirit that has been the source of all the religions and civilizations of the past. The creative nature of that spirit is defined by the progressive and historically specific character of divine revelation. Thus the creativity of the divine spirit involves not the conservation but the abrogation of previous social laws and practices, and their periodic renewal in new forms.¹⁰ Return to the creative spirit of Islam is thus simultaneously a return to the creative spirit that animated Judaism and Christianity. Such a return to the spirit of Islam, therefore, far from demanding adherence to certain historically specific social laws and practices, requires no less than a thorough questioning of the traditionalist logic behind those practices, as well as a dynamic spiritual orientation and a cultural transformation based on the requirements of justice and progress in the contemporary world. In this systematic reexamination, the Báb advocates adopting useful elements of Western modernity—for example, He encourages trade relations with the West and urges learning from the sciences, arts, and industries of the Christians (that is, Europeans). But He rejects the particularistic, materialistic, and morally harmful aspects of modernity that obstruct the progress of human civilization.

Beyond Fundamentalism and Sociologism

Although the writings of the Báb, and in even more explicit ways those of Bahá’u’lláh, offer an elegant solution to the crisis of Islam in the contemporary world, the relevance of the Báb and His writings goes far beyond the question of Islam and modernity. One of those aspects with wider import is the Báb’s approach to all religions, an approach that addresses the fundamental sources of conflict between religious communities and which has relevance not only for traditional religious discourse but for the sociology of religion.

In discourse about sources of religious conflict, the positions represented by religious fundamentalism and sociological reductionism (sociologism) are regarded as essentially extreme opposites. Although these two views are assumed to represent contradictory perspectives and dissimilar methodologies, the reality is much more complex. In fact, the viewpoints and methodologies of these groups have much in common, and they share an important premise that is directly related to the persistence of religious conflict in the world. Thus the need for a thorough reexamination of the current approach to religion is not confined to varieties of religious fundamentalism; it is crucial for academic sociologism as well.

Religion is a multi-dimensional phenomenon, possessing a meta-physical/spiritual and a social/empirical aspect. Religion advocates a metaphysical vision as the revelation of a transcendent Absolute Reality; at the same time religion is embodied in particular forms of human beliefs, behaviours, organizations, and institutions that are subject to sociological and historical dynamics. Any adequate approach to the study of religion must recognize these two dimensions. Traditionalist religious discourse and classical sociology of religion, however, both deny the multi-dimensional character of religion, and both insist on reducing religion to one of those two aspects. Religious fundamentalism defines religion solely in terms of the transcendental/metaphysical dimension and denies the relevance of the social/historical aspect. In this dogmatic perspective, religion is absolute and the divine Word is an expression of the eternal, unchangeable will of God. It is not surprising that, from this standpoint, conflict between religions is inevitable: the absolute character of religion means that only one’s own religion is true and all other religions must be false.

The dominant perspective in sociology of religion, while taking a position opposite to fundamentalism, actually culminates in some of the same implications. This view usually defines religion in terms of its social/cultural dimension and denies the reality of any transcendental/metaphysical aspect. Some of the greatest sociologists have even turned the sociology of religion itself into an argument for the non-existence of God and the soul. In their theories, religion is viewed as a social construction that can be adequately explained by the culture of a particular society, while the notion of divine revelation is defined as an error that can be disproved through scientific reasoning and evidence. Marx and most of the Marxists reduced religion to the material and economic aspects of society; denied the possibility of the existence of God, revelation, or the soul; and dismissed the idea of God as an illusion. Following Feuerbach, who reduced theological propositions to products of human beings’ alienation from their own nature, Marx explained religion in terms of material alienation within the civil society.¹¹ Durkheim considered the ideas of both the soul and God to be illusions misrepresenting the real nature of religion, which was the collective consciousness/conscience of society, its common culture, projected (that is, alienated) onto a distorted conceptual realm.¹² Freud defined God as the psychological misrecognition of the unconscious perception of the father that is projected onto an imaginary realm.¹³ And Auguste Comte conceived sociology itself, the positive science, as the refutation of theological and metaphysical perspectives.¹⁴

But when closely examined, all these forms of analysis, despite their claims to rest on scientific—that is, objective—methods, are themselves methodologically unscientific. Sociology as an empirical science cannot, by its own definition, make judgments on the truth value of any metaphysical or theological propositions. Whether God exists is not a question that can be resolved by using the empirical tools of sociological research. Thus when Marx, Comte, Durkheim, or others use the authority of sociology as science to deny the validity of the metaphysical dimension of religion, they are no longer speaking as scientists and sociologists. They are, instead, making a rhetorical appeal to the authority of science in order to persuade readers to adopt what, in reality, are their own particular metaphysical assumptions. While they are of course convinced that these assumptions are brute scientific facts about reality, the premises offered as axiomatic are actually metaphysical assumptions. These assumptions have led to oversimplified and inaccurate representations of religion, and as a result science is portrayed as an enemy of religion.

Within the boundaries of empirical inquiry, sociologists can justifiably discuss the social and psychological conditions under which people are more or less likely to believe in certain forms of religious beliefs and practices. They can also legitimately establish empirical regularities concerning the relation of certain social conditions to certain forms of conceptualizing the sacred. Yet none of these endeavours is the same as proving or disproving metaphysical propositions about religious phenomena such as the existence of God, the soul, or revelation. It is possible to assume that a God exists as a metaphysical truth, and yet to state that the understanding of that truth, as well as the forms of its conceptualization, are dependent on the dynamics of cultural development and the specific conditions of human social existence. Human inadequacy to comprehend the Absolute, and the dependence of various forms of conceptualization on social factors, have nothing to do with the metaphysical question of the existence or non-existence of that Absolute. Thus sociologism’s denial of the existence of the transcendental/metaphysical dimension of religion is an expression of its own tacit materialistic metaphysics that masks the axiomatic nature of that metaphysics—that is, conceals the fact that something is being accepted as an assumption without proof—by labelling its particular metaphysical propositions as scientific facts.

Not all sociologists of religion, of course, go as far as Marx and Durkheim in subordinating religion to the social realm. Yet even contemporary liberal and postmodern approaches to religion usually view religion as conditioned by the particular social culture in which it develops. The differences between religions are ascribed to the differences between cultures, and because each of those cultures represents a series of unique historical conditions, those cultures (and religions) are considered incommensurable. The existence of any common universal truth among all religions is explained in material terms—that is, as resulting from the similarities in the basic universal conditions of human life to which every culture must respond in its own way.

Thus people are considered to be imprisoned within different closed theological/cultural universes, and all religions are doomed to eternal separation from one another. It is easy to see how this particular perspective unwittingly undergirds the alienation of religions from one another. Religions become conceived of as closed cultural frameworks, a situation leading inevitably to mutual rejection and conflict. In other words, despite the good intentions of theorists, sociologistic methodology’s reduction of religion to sociocultural phenomena provides a scientific basis for justifying the alienation of religions from each other and thus contributes to a situation in which religion is a force for hatred and communal strife. While for decades this approach to religion was the accepted norm in academic disciplines, emerging trends have put into question these premises as well as the various assumptions associated with the now increasingly discredited doctrine of cultural relativism.¹⁵

The perspective advocated by the Báb in the 1840s transcends the limitations of both religious fundamentalism and the sociological reductionism just described. The key to this perspective is the recognition of religion’s multi-dimensional character. Each religion, with its particular practices and laws, is explained as the product of the interaction between the divine Will and a specific set of historical, social, and cultural conditions. The Will of God is not static but ever-creative, renewing the form in which It manifests Itself in accordance with humanity’s stage of development; the various religions are all viewed as diverse, sequential expressions of the same divine truth. The writings of the Báb direct attention away from the token or secondary manifestations of religion—those laws and practices that are diverse—and they focus attention instead on the one common source of all those varying expressions: the divine Will. In other words, the Báb’s writings combine historical consciousness with mystical consciousness, encompassing both dimensions of religion and emphasizing that the core reality of all the religions is one and the same.

The Crisis of Modernity

The significance of the writings of the Báb, as well as those of Bahá’u’lláh, is not limited to questions of religion and religious truth; Their writings are also directly relevant to the contemporary social and political crises of Western civilization. For if the Middle East has failed to adequately address the challenge of modernity because of its own imprisonment within a predominantly traditionalist outlook, the West has equally failed to deal with its own crisis of modernity because it has not applied the spirit of systematic search and deliberation to the realm of spiritual truth. The consequence of this failure is the persistence of a contradiction at the heart of Western modernity, the effects of which are increasingly evident in the breakdown of its moral premises and an inevitable slide into relativism with regard to truth and values.

The Western achievement of modernity was founded on the realization and institutionalization of certain fundamental moral principles including equality, freedom, and tolerance, based on a definition of human beings as endowed with inalienable human rights. Various legal and cultural institutions were created to institutionalize the egalitarian moral individualism of Enlightenment philosophy at the levels of the family, civil society, and politics, and to protect people’s rights and freedom. Rejecting traditionalism, Western intellectual leaders accomplished this moral construct in the name of logic and reason. Since they themselves did not question the static premises of religious traditionalism, they tended to equate revelation with traditionalism, and thus founded the republic of reason on the ruins of religion.

The philosophers of the Enlightenment believed that human reason and logic alone could arrive at truth and infer right values. However, reason alone, absent any human spiritual dimension, is unable to deduce universal moral values. In fact, the system of morality advocated by Enlightenment philosophy was caught in a fundamental contradiction between the ethics of consequences (utilitarianism) and the ethics of inalienable human rights.¹⁶ Enlightenment philosophy not only failed to recognize the tension between these two moral theories, but it also failed to realize that its own assumptions about the possession of rights by individuals were based on taken-for-granted spiritual principles derived from the sources of its own cultural and philosophical heritage—the teachings of Judaism and Christianity. Enlightenment philosophers assumed that they were rejecting religion even while they were tacitly using religious premises as the precondition for the operations of their own reason.

However, in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, many of the remnants of those religious underpinnings were increasingly detected and rejected by various political philosophers. The result was the emergence of a moral crisis: concepts such as equality and inalienable human rights are founded on metaphysical beliefs that posit the sacred nature of humans as created in the image of God—and, as even some who do not accept those religious origins have argued, such rights can only be founded on that kind of religious belief.¹⁷

With the rejection of any metaphysical construct as an illusion, Nietzsche, in the nineteenth century, announced the death of all truth and values. Throughout the twentieth century, the crisis of modernity deepened, and with disillusion came skepticism that reason could indeed solve all human problems. The optimism that had greeted promises of scientific models of society turned into revulsion as those models yielded totalitarianism and world war. In the mid-twentieth century, modernity itself was pronounced dead and a postmodern age was proclaimed. According to postmodernist theorists, modernism had simply made the same metaphysical mistake: by elevating reason to the status of a transcendent source of universal truth, modernism had only replaced one metaphysical illusion with another.

The thorough rooting out of metaphysical assumptions has led to the prevalent view that there are and can be no foundations for anything, that all values are relative, and that there is no objective and rational criterion of moral judgment that can transcend the values and ideas of specific cultures and traditions. The disturbing and ominous message of some contemporary theorists is that human beings have no universal human identity independent from their local, cultural identity. The only apparent source of authority that many could see as a basis for moral principles, or even human identity, was, ironically—tradition.

Thus, in the West, no less than in the Islamic world, tradition once again has been elevated to the realm of the sacred. The celebration of tradition and the reduction of human identity to cultural categories has become the ultimate message of a discursive reason stripped of all vestiges of spiritual values. Now that reason has been abandoned as a transcendent Absolute, the challenge of postmodernity is to locate some ground for values and ethics in order to safeguard the positive aspects of modernity—its egalitarian and democratic principles—without returning to repressive religious traditionalism. The forces of globalization have only exacerbated this crisis and thrust upon the world the imperative of finding an ethical framework to regulate relations between actors— whether nations, peoples, cultures, or corporations—in an interdependent global society.

The twenty-first century finds itself trapped between awareness of the need for a universal ethic and a global moral framework, and pervasive suspicion of universalism and of foundations. We are thus left with a cult of tradition that eliminates the possibility of any universal criterion for judging among contending cultures and normative practices in the world. The spirit of this contradiction is nowhere more visible than in the heart of the very idea of postmodernism and cultural relativism itself. Advocates of these theories venerate diversity and equality, and yet they do so by denying the possibility of any objective, rational, and universal ground for morality and truth. Thus the acceptance of diversity, which is a reflection of the consciousness of the equal value of all human beings, has become turned into the worship of tradition. The dark side of cultural diversity, however, is that racism, patriarchal suppression of women, ritual mutilation, genocide, colonialism, and other practices that oppress one segment of society and maintain the dominance of another are also venerable cultural traditions.¹⁸ And it has not escaped some repressive regimes that Western postmodernist theories of cultural relativism can be invoked to rebuff demands from the world community that those regimes conform to international standards of human rights, by claiming that their repressive traditions and practices cannot be judged by outsiders employing culturally alien notions such as universal human rights.

The positive egalitarian and democratic principles of Western modernity can be safeguarded with integrity only if the spiritual foundations of those principles are rediscovered—but not by a return to traditionalism. What is called for, instead, is a reexamination of Western instrumental rationality’s approach to religion and spiritual principles, and the application of the spirit of systematic search for truth to the spiritual as well as the material dimensions of life. Reason need not be alienated from the spiritual dimension of human reality. A dynamic understanding of human civilization and culture can be harmonized with a dynamic approach to the mystical and spiritual dimension of reality. Such an approach to truth is the heart of the message of the Báb.

The writings of the Báb, and those of Bahá’u’lláh, unfold a vision that is simultaneously historical and mystical, in which phenomenal reality is linked to its transcendental ground, the principle of the unity of all beings. Human reason, assisted and inspired by a spiritual perspective, becomes empowered to discover the basis of universal moral truth which is eternal in its principle while relative in its historical expression and realization. Although elements of the outline of such a new moral order can be found in the writings of the Báb, it is in the writings of Bahá’u’lláh that this complex mystic-historical consciousness is systematically realized as the global consciousness of the oneness of humanity.

Shí‘ih Millenarianism and the Renewal of Charismatic Authority

In A.H. 1260 (A.D. 1844), when the Báb made His proclamation, millenarian expectations in the Shí‘ih world had reached an intense pitch as the time for the return of the Hidden Twelfth Imám approached. In Shí‘ih Islam, authority was charismatic, and was vested in the Imáms, in contrast to Sunni Islam, where the Qur’án and the oral Traditions (Ḥadíth) formed the basis of a routinized and traditional type of authority. The Shí‘ih Imáms, beginning with ‘Alí ibn Abí-Ṭálib (Muḥammad’s cousin and son-in-law), were regarded as the only legitimate leaders of the Muslim community and as the vicegerents or successors of the Prophet. Later Shí‘ih theology also defined them as endowed with infallible authority inspired by divine knowledge. But in A.H. 260 (A.D. 874), when the Eleventh Imám died, the Twelfth Imám went into concealment or occultation. For more than seven decades afterwards, mediators called Bábs (Gates) or Ná’ibs (Representatives) communicated between the Hidden Imám and the people. The fourth of those Gates, however, claimed that the Imám had gone into an indefinite Grand Occultation, during which time he would cease to communicate with the people. According to the doctrine, the Twelfth Imám remained alive but, because of the threat from his enemies, in concealment from which he would only emerge shortly before the Day of Judgment. Then, as the Qá’im (He who will arise) or Mahdí (He who is rightly guided), with his sword he would unleash holy war against the forces of evil, would vanquish the unjust and the unbelievers, and would initiate a reign of justice in the world. He would be followed by the return of Christ, along with Imám Ḥusayn as well as the other Imáms and holy figures of Islam.

During the Twelfth Imám’s occultation, the question of leadership within the Shí‘ih community became particularly problematic. The Imám’s absence left a gap which became filled by the traditional authority of the ‘ulamá, the scholars of religious law, who increasingly attempted to extend and consolidate their power and influence in society. To legitimize their authority, these clerics increasingly defined themselves as the general representatives of the Hidden Imám on earth. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the ‘ulamá’s power was greatly expanded by the triumph of the Uṣúlí school of Shí‘ih Islam. Uṣúlí doctrine held that true knowledge (‘ilm) belonged only to the Hidden Imám, but in his absence conjecture (ẓann) was a valid basis for legal inferences by expert jurist-scholars. These scholars were certified by their professional education and by the permission or licence conferred on them by senior legal scholars, which allowed them to make independent judgments. Each Shí‘ih believer was expected to follow and obey a particular religious scholar on matters of law. This ideology also encouraged the creation of a corporate hierarchy among Shí‘ih scholars, one which was increasingly centralized and, with its increasing tendency to have a universal centre of imitation, resembled the Christian papacy.¹⁹

For centuries, the Islamic clergy had defined and determined all aspects of individual and community life, including the minutest details of the individual’s private concerns, as phenomena subject to the regulation of the sharí‘ah. Since a correct understanding of those laws required expert knowledge possessed only by the ‘ulamá, the clerical elite’s function and authority became further entrenched. With the victory of Uṣúlí doctrine and its corporate centralization, the ‘ulamá’s power expanded to an unprecedented extent.

This form of authority, by its very nature, was based on tradition and acted to conserve and guard the sacred ways of the past. It was in this situation, in the decades preceding the Báb’s proclamation, that Shaykh Aḥmad-i-Aḥsá’í (1743–1828), and later his successor Siyyid Káẓim-i-Rashtí (1793–1843), revived interest in charismatic authority by focusing attention on the Imáms, particularly the Hidden Imám. Moreover, they attributed their own authority not only to their traditional and professional education, but to mystical knowledge received directly from the Hidden Imám. The community of Shaykh Aḥmad’s adherents was characterized by fervent millenarian expectations, complex mystical and esoteric knowledge, insistence on the absolute transcendence of the divine Essence (and hence a categorical rejection of the Sufi pantheistic doctrine of the unity of existence, or vaḥdatu’l-vujúd), a reinterpretation of the traditional doctrine of the Day of Resurrection as physical but not material, and ambiguous assertions concerning the necessity of the presence of a living Gate (a Báb) to the Hidden Imám for the guidance of the Shí‘ih community.²⁰

On the fifth of Jumádi’l-Avval, 1260 (the eve of May 23, 1844), the Báb met with Mullá Ḥusayn, a young Shaykhí leader and scholar whose journey in search of the Promised One had led him to Shiraz. According to the account of that meeting as recorded in The Dawn-Breakers, Mullá Ḥusayn had privately decided upon two tests he would put to anyone claiming to be the promised Qá’im. The first test was to explain the mysterious allusions in a treatise Mullá Ḥusayn had written on the esoteric teachings of Shaykh Aḥmad and Siyyid Káẓim. Anyone who could unravel these mysteries would then be asked to reveal a commentary on the Qur’án’s Súrih of Joseph, but in a style and language entirely different from the prevailing standards of the time. Mullá Ḥusayn had once asked Siyyid Káẓim to reveal such a commentary but Siyyid Káẓim had declined, saying that such a task was beyond him. However, he told Mullá Ḥusayn, He, that great One, who comes after me will, unasked, reveal it for you. That commentary will constitute one of the weightiest testimonies of His truth, and one of the clearest evidences of the loftiness of His position. Mullá Ḥusayn’s account, according to the Dawn-Breakers, continues:

‘I was revolving these things in my mind, when my distinguished Host again remarked:Observe attentively. Might not the Person intended by Siyyid Káẓim be none other than I? I thereupon felt impelled to present to Him a copy of the treatise which I had with me. Will you, I asked Him, read this book of mine and look at its pages with indulgent eyes? I pray you to overlook my weaknesses and failings. He graciously complied with my wish. He opened the book, glanced at certain passages, closed it, and began to address me. Within a few minutes He had, with characteristic vigour and charm, unravelled all its mysteries and resolved all its problems. Having to my entire satisfaction accomplished, within so short a time, the task I had expected Him to perform, He further expounded to me certain truths which could be found neither in the reported sayings of the Imáms of the Faith nor in the writings of Shaykh Aḥmad and Siyyid Káẓim. These truths, which I had never heard before, seemed to be endowed with refreshing vividness and power.Had you not been My guest, He afterwards observed, your position would indeed have been a grievous one. The all-encompassing grace of God has saved you. It is for God to test His servants, and not for His servants to judge Him in accordance with their deficient standards. Were I to fail to resolve your perplexities, could the Reality that shines within Me be regarded as powerless, or My knowledge be accused as faulty? Nay, by the righteousness of God! it behooves, in this day, the peoples and nations of both the East and the West to hasten to this threshold, and here seek to obtain the reviving grace of the Merciful. Whoso hesitates will indeed be in grievous loss. . . .He then proceeded to say: Now is the time to reveal the commentary on the Súrih of Joseph. He took up His pen and with incredible rapidity revealed the entire Súrih of Mulk, the first chapter of His commentary on the Súrih of Joseph. The overpowering effect of the manner in which He wrote was heightened by the gentle intonation of His voice which accompanied His writing. Not for one moment did He interrupt the flow of the verses which streamed from His pen. Not once did He pause till the Súrih of Mulk was finished. I sat enraptured by the magic of His voice and the sweeping force of His revelation. At last I reluctantly arose from my seat and begged leave to depart. He smilingly bade me be seated, and said: If you leave in such a state, whoever sees you will assuredly say: ‘This poor youth has lost his mind.’"²¹

On that night, which marked the first day of the Bábí era, and which would be observed afterwards as a holy day, Mullá Ḥusayn became the first to acknowledge his belief in the Báb. After him seventeen others recognized the Báb through their own independent search. Together these first eighteen disciples, seventeen men and one woman, were designated the Letters of the Living.

In the very work that the Báb began to write that night in the presence of Mullá Ḥusayn, the Commentary on the Súrih of Joseph, or Qayyúmu’l-Asmá’ (The Self-Subsisting Lord of All Names) as the Báb preferred to call it,²² the Báb refuted the traditional authority of the Muslim religious jurists, including the Uṣúlí justification of rational conjecture. He claimed that the age of true knowledge had begun, and henceforth no religious leader of any faith was justified in pronouncing binding judgments:

O concourse of divines! Fear God from this day onwards in the views ye advance, for He Who is Our Remembrance in your midst, and Who cometh from Us, is, in very truth, the Judge and Witness. Turn away from that which ye lay hold of and which the Book of God, the True One, hath not sanctioned, for on the Day of Resurrection ye shall, upon the Bridge, be, in very truth, held answerable for the position ye occupied.

In all His Tablets, God hath verily ordained vain imaginings and conjecture (ẓann) to be a manifest sin.²³ . . . God verily hath made it unlawful for you to pronounce, in clear defiance of truth, any injunction or to exercise any legal judgment while bereft of the absolute knowledge of this Book.²⁴

With what authority did the Báb make such audacious statements, overturning the entire basis of the Shí‘ih clerical establishment? One of the most significant yet misunderstood aspects of the Báb’s writings is this very question—what station and authority He claimed for Himself, and specifically, the apparent change in that claim over the course of His mission. In the early writings it appears that the Báb is identifying Himself as the Gate (Báb) to the Hidden Imám. Less than halfway through the six years of His ministry, He begins to explicitly proclaim His station to be that of the Hidden Imám, a new Prophet, and the Manifestation of the Primal Will of God. But does this apparent difference in His claims represent, as some have said, a change in His own consciousness and perception of His station, or, as others suggest, is it accountable to mere concealment or dissimulation (taqíyyih)?²⁵

I will argue that the works of the Báb throughout the seven years of His Revelation express a message that, rather than being discontinuous or reflecting an evolving consciousness, is unitary and coherent from beginning to end. Despite the prodigious diversity of His texts and the range of topics and symbols in His writings, all these elements can be seen to unveil systematic aspects of a single underlying logic. The gradual disclosure of the Báb’s actual station signified neither a change of consciousness nor mere dissimulation; moreover, the multiple stations He claimed were a coherent and integral part of His message and theology. As we shall see, that message and that theology is defined by the principle of the unity in diversity of all reality. The history of the gradual disclosure of the Báb’s identity will be shown to express the very principle that is the heart of that identity. What at first appears to be concealment, once placed in its full context, becomes visible as the consummate disclosure. In the Báb’s early writings, the exalted nature of the station He claimed is unmistakably evident, but for rhetorical reasons related to the reception of the people, His writings appear to convey the impression that He is only the Gate to the Hidden Imám. Yet even when the Báb describes His station ambiguously, from the very beginning it is evident that He is defining it in an unprecedented way.

The Brief Ministry of the Báb

Many of the details and specific dates of various events in the life of the Báb are subject to differing opinions among various authors. The short historical account presented here is intended only to provide the general background necessary for the discussion that follows and is tentative and preliminary. This study concerns the works of the Báb and not the history of His life. For more extensive and