Symbol and Secret: Chapter Four

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THE LAST PAGE of the first dated lithograph of the Kitáb-i Íqán, published in Bombay, probably by Naseri Press. This edition, 214 pages, bears the date 1310 A.H. (1892-93 C.E.) and is in the hand of the celebrated Bahá'í calligrapher Mishkin-Qalam. Three copies are held at the Bahá'í World Centre, catalogued as BP362.K8.1892. The only other known copy is in private hands in the Afsharian Library, Los Angeles.
(Courtesy of the Bahá'í World Centre.)

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CHAPTER FOUR

EXEGETICAL TECHNIQUES IN
THE BOOK OF CERTITUDE

The Book of Certitude is not a tafsír in the classical sense. Its exegetical thrust is demonstrative; hence Bahá'u'lláh's own designation of it as an evincive argument (istidlál).¹ Exegesis is a means to an end. In this case, it is a means for realizing the "end of the age."²

Bahá'u'lláh considered his exegetical insights to be universal, applicable to any scripture: "In fact, all the Scriptures and the mysteries thereof are condensed into this brief account."³ By focusing on the author's argumentation itself, the question of which texts are interpreted becomes secondary. Presumably, the techniques Bahá'u'lláh employs to prosecute his exegeses remain the same for both quranic and nonquranic scripture. As we will see, Bahá'u'lláh's longest exegesis is on a biblical text: three verses from the so-called Minor Apocalypse. In the English translation, Bahá'u'lláh's exegesis of Matthew 24:29-31 spans some 57 pages (44 pages in the original Persian), comprising close to⁴ one-fourth of the entire text.

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Rippin offers some insights which certainly apply to The Book of Certitude:

Purpose of Tafsír. Interpretation aims to clarify a text. Tafsír takes as its beginning point the text of the Qur'án, paying full attention to the text itself in order to make its meaning clear. It also functions simultaneously to adapt the text to the present situation of the interpreter. In other words, most interpretation is not purely theoretical; it has a very practical aspect of making the text applicable to the faith and the way of life of the believers. The first of these two interpretive aspects is generally provoked by insoluble problems in meaning, by insufficient detail, by intratextual contradiction, or by unacceptable meanings. Interpretation that fits the text to the situation serves to align it with established social custom, legal positions, and doctrinal assertions.⁵

The adaptive function of tafsír of which Rippin speaks is, in the case of The Book of Certitude, a legitimizing function. The aim of this work is to authenticate the prophetic credentials of the Báb and, beyond him, of the messianic figure whose advent the Báb foretold: "He Whom God Shall Make Manifest." Questions over the imminence of that advent may be answered in historical terms: The messianic advent was considered imminent enough to have invited a flurry of messianic claims. Within the Bábí community there was a heightened eschatological fervor. This tension precipitated a number of pretensions. What Amanat characterizes as "the sense of vigilance for future divine revelations" among the Bábís effectively became "an open invitation for messianic innovation."⁶ On the strength of 'Abdu'l-Bahá as a historical source, we are informed that no less than twentyfive individual Bábís openly advanced claims to be He Whom God Shall Make Manifest (man yuzhiruhu'lláh).⁷

This historical situation minimizes the importance of long-range expectations also set up in the Báb's writings.

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The high incidence of Bábí messianic contenders undercuts any attempt to dismiss the tension generated by short-range expectations.

The revelation of The Book of Certitude was prompted by certain "insoluble problems in meaning" that weighed heavily on the mind of the Báb's uncle, who was faced not with a textual contradiction in scripture as such, but with contradictory views of the eschaton. The most acute source of inner conflict for the Báb's uncle concerned the messianic claim made by his nephew. That claim had little to do with the popular apocalyptic scenario. Like Christ, the Báb was a messianic "scandal" and, by Islamic eschatological standards, a failed messiah. But the Bábí community had the means to rationalize what effectively was a martyred eschaton. Ultimately, it was Bahá'u'lláh who defended the "doctrinal assertions" of the Báb and, in some respects, translated to the less-literate, nonclerical Bábí populace the gist of those assertions.

The Book of Certitude cannot be read without noticing the extraordinary attention Bahá'u'lláh devotes to New Testament apocalyptic. This extensive treatment is remarkable in an Islamic context for its high degree of proportionality relative to quranic exegesis, and for the effective shift in focus to a scripture having little authority for an ordinary Muslim. Bahá'u'lláh's frequent references to the Qur'án and to tradition in his discourse on Matthew 24 tells us much about his Islamic perspective. In fact, this interscriptural approach dominates Part I of the two-part Book of Certitude. Bahá'u'lláh juxtaposes two apocalypses in exegetical dialogue.

THE NEW TESTAMENT AS A
FOIL FOR QURANIC EXEGESIS

Bahá'u'lláh did not take the Wan as his starting point in The Book of Certitude. Rather, his exegetical point of

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departure was New Testament apocalyptic. This exegetical enterprise—an ideal lead-in for approaching the Qur'án later—is the centerpiece of Part I of the text. All this attention paid to a nonquranic scripture serves as a foil from which the subject of quranic interpretation can be developed more neutrally and thus less controversially. The New Testament section of The Book of Certitude also provides insights into Bahá'u'lláh's attitude toward scripture.

For Bahá'u'lláh, since all scripture is revealed from the same Source, exegesis of one by the other is legitimate. Bahá'u'lláh therefore has no compelling reason not to interpret a Christian text by a quranic exemplar. Bahá'u'lláh's biblical/quranic or "interscriptural" exegesis is not unlike the practice of interbiblical. exegesis. This is the single most extensive exegetical device Bahá'u'lláh employs in The Book of Certitude: quranic exegesis by means of New Testament exegesis. It is as if Bahá'u'lláh had anticipated a Christian audience beyond his immediate readership.

Interscriptural exegesis is initially predicated on parallelism:

Gracious God! Notwithstanding the warning which, in marvellously symbolic language (talvihat-i gharib) and subtle allusions (isharat), hath been uttered in days past, and which was intended to awaken the peoples of the world and to prevent them from being deprived of the billowing ocean of God's grace, yet such things as have already been witnessed have come to pass! Reference to these things hath also been made in the Qur'án, as witnessed by this verse: "What can such expect but that God should come down to them overshadowed with clouds?" (Qur ' an 2:210).⁸

Following an extended exordium which recapitulates salvation history up until the advent of Jesus,⁹ Bahá'u'lláh's exegetical point of departure in The Book of Certitude is the problem of the parousia, Christ's Second Coming, in glory.

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Bahá'u'lláh begins with John 14:28 and John 16:7, 12-14 (with an allusion to John 14:16); Matthew 24:29-31; Luke 21:33; Matthew 2:2 and 3:1-2, all of which are either eschatological or adventist in Bahá'u'lláh's presentation. He interprets these verses through reason and appeal to common sense, invoking Qur'án and Shí'í tradition as well. This technique of interscriptural citation permits functional equivalency among biblical, quranic, and traditional texts, all considered non-contradictory as well as validating.

That the Qur'án reinforces Bahá'u'lláh's biblical exegesis is hardly surprising in light of Muslim interpretation in general. As Rippin points out: "Within itself, the Qur'án provides Muslims with a view of the Bible."¹⁰ But Bahá'u'lláh departs radically from one classical Islamic view: that the texts of both Torah and Gospel are corrupt (tahríf). For Bahá'u'lláh's argument, biblical exegesis would be of little avail if the text were suspect. Putative "corruption" of Jewish and Christian scripture was a stock charge in Muslim anti-Jewish/Christian polemics, such charges leveled more often at the Hebrew Bible. Such criticism stems from a literal reading of the quranic charge of tahríf (Qur'án 4:45; 2:75).

Bahá'u'lláh's departure from so stock a Muslim charge would become a mark of Bahá'í doctrinal self-definition:

We have also heard a number of the foolish of the earth assert that the genuine text of the heavenly Gospel doth not exist among the Christians, that it hath ascended unto heaven. How grievously have they erred! How oblivious of the fact that such a statement imputeth the gravest injustice and tyranny to a gracious and loving Providence! How could God, when once the Day-star of the beauty of Jesus had disappeared from the sight of His people, and ascended unto the fourth heaven, cause His holy Book, His most great testimony amongst His creatures, to disappear also?¹¹

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With the quranic accusation, "They pervert the text of the Word of God" (Qur'án 4:45), Bahá'u'lláh fires the arrow back at the archer to indict Muslim clerics with tahríf: "Nay, rather by corruption of the text is meant that in which all Muslim divines are engaged today, that is the interpretation of God's holy Book in accordance with their idle imaginations and vain desires."¹² As a point of interest, Bahá'u'lláh was not alone in this minority opinion. Sayyid Ahmad Khan likewise accepted the integrity of the Christian witness.¹³

It should be pointed out that many of Bahá'u'lláh's interpretations-possibly most-have precedents in Islamic tradition. It is what he does with such interpretations that is powerfully original. Moreover, his themes and overall argument are Islamic in form, but hardly Islamic in their applications. From an orthodox perspective, Bahá'u'lláh's argument against revelatory finality places him well outside of an Islamic worldview. If nothing else, Muslims would surely disavow the implications Bahá'u'lláh draws out of his symbolic exegesis of the Qur'án. After all, how could the Qur'án supersede itself?

JESUS AND COMFORTER

Bahá'u'lláh's first act of exegesis in The Book of Certitude resolves an apparent contradiction in scripture regarding Jesus's Second Coming. To wit, how can Jesus come again, yet send another "Comforter" in his stead? Bahá'u'lláh has identified two distinct traditions behind Jesus' farewell discourse as it relates to the parousia:

He [Jesus] the Revealer of the unseen Beauty . . . referred unto His passing, and, kindling in their hearts the fire of bereavement, said unto them: "I go away and come again unto you." And in another place He said: "I go and Another will come Who will tell you all that I have not told you, and will

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fulfill all that I have said." Both these sayings have but one meanung, were you to ponder the Manifestations of the Unity of God with divine insight.¹⁴

Bahá'u'lláh has identified a possible contradiction in the text. If both statements are true, two advents would be expected: the return of Jesus and the advent of the second Comforter. Without reading too much into Bahá'u'lláh's analysis, his formulation of the textual problem does appear to be an original argument in Islamic circles. Be this as it may, it does anticipate critical questions raised in modern biblical scholarship. Windisch and others have discerned two distinct and incompatible traditions embedded in Jesus' "Farewell Discourse" (John 14-17): (1) the promise of the returning Son (John 14:28) and (2) the promise of the Comforter (John 14:16).¹⁵

In his 1927 monograph on the Comforter (or Paraclete) sayings.¹⁶ Windisch took the position that the promise of the Paraclete and the promise of the returning Son were incommensurate. To resolve this problem, Windisch pursued a literary-critical solution, concluding that the Paraclete sayings were secondary.¹⁷ Windisch drew attention to the fact that the Paraclete represents a successor to Jesus, one who takes the place of Jesus following inevitable martyrdom. Windisch believes that Jesus' last act on behalf of the disciples was "to provide a successor."¹⁸

The Paraclete promise is therefore incompatible with the Second Coming of Jesus, except insofar as it has been tc Mystically reinterpreted" at John 14:18ff.¹⁹ The Paraclete, according to Windisch, is the virtual "double" of Christ with respect to function, and both figures function as prophets. The extensive functional parallelism between Christ and Paraclete has also been noted by Isaacs, who systematicallY develops the extended parallel.²⁰ Are the two figures identical but manifested in different modalities, or are they two distinct figures?

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The distinction between the two savior figures originates nominally with the appellative, "another Comforter. "²¹ Jesus is referred to as a "parákletos" in 1 John 2:1 (albeit in a juridical sense). Reflexive evidence is interesting, for, as Riesenfeld has pointed out, currents in early Christian circles continued to look upon Jesus as the "Comforter" despite the identification of the Comforter with the Holy Spirit as reflected in the Gospel of John.²² A further witness occurs in a fragment from the apocryphal Acts of John discovered in one of the Oxyrhynchus papyri, bearing the invocation: "O Jesus, the Comforter" (POxy 850, verso 10).²³ Jesus must have been the one originally invoked as Comforter, rather than the Holy Spirit.

In the final analysis, according to Windisch, in the Paraclete sayings there is "a faint gleam of the succession of two reigns or ages: the reign of Christ comes to an end so that the reign of the Paraclete can commence."²⁴ In the fifth saying, Windisch detects "a sudden glimpse of a thought which ascribes a certain superiority" to the Paraclete.²⁵

Bahá'u'lláh endeavors to resolve, on a higher plane of unity, the problem of the two distinct eschatological figures: the returning Jesus and the "other Comforter." Historically, the relationship between Jesus and the Paraclete was not an Islamic issue as such. But there was considerable interest in the identity of the Paraclete in relation to Muhammad. In the Qur'án, Jesus foretells the coming of Muhammad. The quranic Jesus refers to this future prophet as "Ahmad" (Qur'án 61:6). Ahmad is traditionally regarded as one of the five names of Muhammad (both derive from the same root, HMD). This does not accord with the biblical record. In the Gospel of John, Jesus does not refer to "Ahmad" at all. A contemporary Muslim response is to suggest that the biblical text (esp. John 16:7) had somehow been altered. We shall return to this problem shortly. In an Islamic context, it is significant that Bahá'u'lláh did not opt for this solution.

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"I AM JESUS": THE UNITY OF THE PROPHETS

Without recourse to a tahríf-based approach, Bahá'u'lláh has perceptively discerned the Jesus/Paraclete contradistinction as a conceptual problem rather than textual incongruence. Indeed, his formulation of the problem was probably calculated to pique the interest of the reader. In any event, his resolution of this eschatological dilemma will have far-reaching implications for his prophetology, as well as his interpretation of the Qur'án:

Every discerning observer will recognize that in the Dispensation of the Qur'án both the Book and the Cause of Jesus were confirmed. As to the matter of names, Muhammad, Himself, declared: "I am Jesus." He recognized the truth of the signs, prophecies, and words of Jesus, and testified that they were all of God. In this sense, neither the person of Jesus nor His writings hath differed from that of Muhammad and of His holy Book, inasmuch as both have championed the Cause of God, uttered His praise, and revealed His commandments. Thus it is that Jesus, Himself, declared: "I go away and come again unto you" (John 14:28).²⁶

Bahá'u'lláh's resolution of this apparent scriptural contradiction is predicated on the quranic doctrine of the equality of prophets. Yet he also seems to invoke an Isma'iIi tradition. The tradition Bahá'u'lláh adduces—"I am all the Prophets," and likewise "I am Adam, Noah, Moses, Jesus"—allows him to distribute Adam's distinction as the "first of the prophets"²⁷ to every prophet, including Muhammad.²⁸ Conversely, the honorific "Seal of the Prophets" will be relativized to all Manifestations of God.

The "I am Jesus" traditions in Bahá'u'lláh's argument appear to confirm the ubiquitous presence of "crypto-Isma'iIi currents" that Amanat speaks of as circulating in heterodox Shí'í circles. These ideas were also important to Shí'í extremists, most notably Rajab Bursi.²⁹ Ironically, what

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survived as an extremist tradition reflects an early universalist stance toward the prophets (e.g., Qur'án 2:136, 285; 3:84; 4:152, etc.), a worldview that enjoyed a short-lived primacy in Islamic origins. On this classical background, Friedmann observes:

The egalitarian approach toward the prophets did not last long. Islamic tradition soon began to insist that Muhammad was the best of creation and consequently better than any other prophet.... This view could find no less Qur'ánic support than its egalitarian counterpart.... The Muslim scholars of hadíth were aware of the apparent incompatibility of the early egalitarian traditions with utterances that asserted Muhammad's superiority among the prophets with ever-uncreasing certainty and self-confidence. They explained the contradiction by saying that the Prophet had declined a superior status to avoid rivalry with other faiths, to steer clear of disparaging the ancient prophets, or out of modesty. Most of them also suggested that the Prophet had uttered the egalitarian statements before he became aware that he indeed was the best prophet and even the "Lord of the sons of Adam" [sayyid wuld Adam].³⁰

Bahá'u'lláh, far removed from Christian Pentecostal presuppositions and arriving at the traditional Muslim position through another line of argumentation, interprets the Johannine Christ's promise of "another Comforter" as a transparent reference to the future advent of a prophet like unto Jesus, namely Muhammad.³¹ Some background on the Muslim identification of Muhammad with the Paraclete will serve to differentiate Bahá'u'lláh's argument from the prevailing Islamic approach. Inspired by Marracci's conjecture in his seventeenth-century translation of the Qur'án into Latin, the following textual argument has won some notoriety among Muslim apologists: that the promise of the paráklêtos ("advocate," "consoler") at John 14:16 (and parallels) is a corruption of the original word which

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stood behind the text, namely, paraklytos, "illustrious, " "celebrated").³²

Were this proposed emendation tenable, then Jesus could be shown to have foretold the advent of Muhammad, whose name means "excellent" or "illustrious," on the basis of a lexical equivalence between the two names. The identification of the Spirit of Truth with Muhammad was first made by Ibn Ishaq in the earliest extant biography of the Prophet (Sira 1:150, gloss on John 15:23), but independent of any Qur'án-inspired association with the name Ahmad (Qur'án 61:6).³³

By contrast, Bahá'u'lláh's identification of the Paraclete (not named but alluded to in The Book of Certitude 34) with Muhammad is achieved through an argument based on a spiritual (not philological) relationship between Jesus, Paraclete, and Muhammad. For Bahá'u'lláh, identity and distinction are exegetical frames of reference, in which both hold true.

'The argument simply provides an ideological foundation which Islam accepts in principle. Transition from the familiar to the new (vindication of the Báb's prophetic credentials) is part and parcel of Bahá'u'lláh's argument-building. Lest the argument be entirely exegetical, Bahá'u'lláh switches to an appeal to reason. This different tact makes use of an analogy drawn from nature:

Consider the sun. Were it to say now, "I am the sun of yesterday," it would speak the truth. And should it, bearing the sequence of time in mind, claim to be other than that sun, it still would speak the truth. In like manner, if it be said that all the days are but one and the same, it is correct and true. And if it be said, with respect to their particular names and designations, that they differ, that again is true. For though they are the same, yet one doth recognize in each a separate designation, a specific attribute, a particular character. Conceive accordingly the distinction, variation, and unity characteristic of the various Manifestations of holiness, that

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thou mayest comprehend all the allusions made by the Creator of all names and attributes to the mysteries of distinction and unity, and discover the answer to thy question as to why that everlasting Beauty should have, at sundry times, called Himself by different names and titles.³⁵

This analogy serves to strengthen the premise that the prophets of God not only are equal but share an essential identity irrespective of differences in name. This approach is not intended to diminish the status of Muhammad, but it will be used to undermine the cardinal Islamic dogma that no prophet would appear after him. The argument against revelatory finality dominates the whole of The Book of Certitude.

BAHÁ'U'LLÁH'S MINOR APOCALYPSE

Bahá'u'lláh progresses now to the problem of realized eschatology as it relates to the new religious situation created by the appearance of the Báb. Bear in mind that the purpose behind Bahá'u'lláh's exegesis is two-fold: (1) to vindicate the mission of the Báb; and (2) to reorient the Bábí community in anticipation of the Bábí messiah. In so doing, Bahá'u'lláh heightens the eschatological fervor of the Bábís. He piques the short-term messianic prophecies of the Báb, which revolve around the prophetic figure mysteriously referred to as He Whom God Shall Make Manifest" (man yuzhiruhu'lláh), otherwise known as the mustagháth (He Who shall be invoked). But first the pieces of the apocalyptic puzzle have to be put together.

Bahá'u'lláh turns to the problem of eschatological fulfillment. The Minor Apocalypse of Matthew 24 together with the Farewell Discourse of Jesus in John 14-17 are far more explicit about the advent of a messianic figure at the eschaton than is the Qur'án. In fact, the Qur'án is not at all explicit about such a figure. In the absence of direct quranic

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references, Bahá'u'lláh's recourse to Matthew 24:29-31 is all the more advantageous for his development of the theme of progressive revelation. The biblical text reads:

Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, the moon shall not give its light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken.

And then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven; and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet.³⁶

Bahá'u'lláh's exegesis of Matthew 24:29-31 (having no ostensible place in Islamic doctrine) is arguably the most detailed exegesis undertaken in The Book of Certitude, and it is performed at considerable length. The major conceptual sequences of interpretation for this verse can be summarized so: Tribulation refers to spiritual deprivation. The imagery of celestial bodies in apocalyptic discourse aptly befits prophets and saints. Ideally, it can also apply to religious leaders. But this symbolism can be positive or negative, and, in certain cases, literal as well as metaphorical. Historicity apart, Bahá'u'lláh's acceptance of the star of the Magi as literal³⁷ perhaps reflects the interpretive perpetuation of a biblical metaphor taken literally.³⁸

Religious leaders are stars in the heaven of God's religion, but can become spiritually dark and plummet to their demise. Corruption in the sacerdotal order precipitates this fall from grace. By virtue of the lofty position such divines occupy, their fall is of stellar magnitude, and it is to such benighted stars that Jesus refers. These anti-clerical fulrninations, are not simply exegetical. There is a point to all this interpretation. Small wonder that Bahá'u'lláh anticipates

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opposition from the divines of his day, as in the days of Jesus. The parallelism Bahá'u'lláh develops is explicit , entertaining the possibility of a new Jesus or Moses:

And now, take heed, O brother! If such things be revealed in this Dispensation, and such incidents come to pass, at the present time, what would the people do? I swear by Him Who is the true Educator of mankind and the Revealer of the Word of God that the people would instantly and unquestionably pronounce Him an infidel and would sentence Him to death. How far are they from hearkening unto the voice that declareth: Lo! a Jesus hath appeared out of the breath of the Holy Ghost, and a Moses summoned to a divinely-appointed task!³⁹

This is not simply theoretical. From the Bábí perspective, a new Moses or Jesus had indeed appeared, in the person of the Báb. And there befell him the same kind of opposition that afflicted Jesus all the way to the cross. The Báb was executed in 1850. What if another prophetic advent were in the offing? Bahá'u'lláh's transparent allusion to the Báb could easily have doubled as an oblique circumlocution for his own impending messianic advent:

Great God! When the stream of utterance reached this stage, We beheld, and lo! the sweet savours of God were being wafted from the Day-spring of Revelation, and the morning breeze was blowing out of the Sheba of the Eternal.... Upon the anemones of the garden of love It bestoweth the mysteries of truth, and within the breasts of the lovers It entrusteth the symbols of innermost subtleties.

At this hour, so liberal is the outpouring of Its grace that the Holy Spirit itself is envious! . . . So great are the overflowings of Its bounty that the foulest beetle hath sought the perfume of the musk, and the bat the light of the sun. It hath quickened the dead with the breath of life, and caused them to speed out of the sepulchres of their mortal bodies....

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The universe is pregnant with these manifold bounties, awaiting the hour when the effects of Its unseen gifts will be made manifest in this world...

From the garden of whose soul will the blossoms of the invisible realities spring forth? ... Thus have We illuminated the heavens of utterance with the splendours of the Sun of divine wisdom and understanding, that thy heart may find peace, that thou mayest be of those who, on the wings of certitude, have soared unto the heaven of the love of their Lord, the All-Merciful.⁴⁰

Note the abundant use of what Persian rhetoric calls the "metaphorical" genitive (idafay-i isti'ári).⁴¹ The idáfa is a particle—an enclitic, to be precise—used for possessive, descriptive, and partitive purposes. Bahá'u'lláh's use of this construct becomes an important exegetical device. Why? Because he interprets a verse in a certain way, explicating a symbol by suggesting its referent. He then uses both symbol and referent together, bound grammatically by the Persian metaphorical genitive, to reinforce his exegesis.

How does this work in The Book of Certitude? Take, for example, Bahá'u'lláh's exegesis of "earth." In Bahá'u'lláh's citation of Matthew 24:29, the variant of "earth" occurs in place of "heaven" found in the received text: "Immediately after the oppression of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the powers of the earth shall be shaken."⁴² Notwithstanding, reference to the earth in this apocaIYPtic context is thematically supported by Isaiah 13:10, 13 (which appears to stand behind this verse), Joel 2:10, 30-31; 3:15-16, and Luke 21:25. Here, then, is Bahá'u'lláh's interpretation of eschatological "earth":

In like manner, endeavour to comprehend the meaning of the 4C changing of the earth." Know thou, that upon whatever hearts the bountiful showers of mercy, raining from the "heaven" of divine Revelation, have fallen, the earth of those hearts hath

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verily been changed into the earth of divine knowledge and wisdom. What myrtles of unity hath the soil of their hearts produced! What blossoms of true knowledge and wisdom hath their illumined bosoms yielded! ... Thus hath He said: "On the day when the earth shall be changed into another earth." (Qur'án 14:48.)⁴³

Bahá'u'lláh coordinates his various explications by means of extended metaphors. The sun, responsible for all life on earth, is the perfect metaphor for the source of spiritual guidance or "life." The pastoral imagery of Jesus' parables functioned in much the same way. Further on, Bahá'u'lláh cites the eschatological verse al-Zamakhshari (d. 1144 C.E.) had analyzed as the incidence of takhyil (imagery to convey the abstract):

And now, comprehend the meaning of this verse: "The whole earth shall on the Resurrection Day be but His handful, and in His right hand shall the heavens be folded together. Praise be to Him! and high be He lifted above the partners they join with Him!" (Qur'án 39:67). And now, be fair in thy judgment. Were this verse to have the meaning which men suppose it to have, of what profit, one may ask, could it be to man? Moreover, it is evident and manifest that no such hand as could be seen by human eye could accomplish such deeds, or could possibly be ascribed to the exalted Essence of the one true God!

Nay, to acknowledge such a thing is naught but sheer blasphemy, an utter perversion of the truth. And should it be supposed that by this verse are meant the Manifestations of God, Who will be called upon, on the Day of Judgment, to perform such deeds, this too seemeth far from the truth. On the contrary, by the term "earth" is meant the earth of understanding and knowledge, and by "heavens" the heavens of divine Revelation. Reflect thou, how, on one hand, He hath, by His mighty grasp, turned the earth of knowledge and understanding, previously unfolded, into a mere handful, and, on the other, spread out a new and highly exalted earth in the hearts of men, thus causing the freshest and loveliest blossoms

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to spring forth from the illumined bosom of man. In like manner, reflect how the elevated heavens of the Dispensations of the past have, in the right hand of power, been folded together, how the heavens of divine Revelation have been raised by the command of God, and have been adorned by the sun, the moon, and stars of His wondrous commandments. Such are the mysteries of the Word of God, which have been unveiled and made manifest.⁴⁴

This passage is quoted at length to give a fair impres sion of the kind of argumentation Bahá'u'lláh employs in the course of his exegesis. Rather than appeal to the au thority of a classical tafsír, Bahá'u'lláh argues by an appeal to absurdity. In ruling out the plausibility of a literal reading of this verse, "earth" now becomes a symbol. Bahá'u'lláh's explication of it as the ground of consciousness—the good earth yielding spiritual verdure—is more plausible within the extended nature metaphor Bahá'u'lláh uses.⁴⁵

Note again Bahá'u'lláh's stylistic use of the metaphorical genitive in order subtly to reinforce his exegesis. Eschatological "earth"—in a variant saying of Jesus—has come to mean knowledge, understanding, and, generally, the capacity of the human heart. This line of interpretation underlies Bahá'u'lláh's references to inner spiritual gardens. The Persian literary tradition is rich in such imagery.⁴⁶

In a passage that is likely reflexive, Bahá'u'lláh appears to intimate the imminence of his own revelation:

The universe is pregnant with these manifold bounties, awaiting the hour when the effects of Its unseen gifts will be made manifest in this world.... In the soil of whose heart will these holy seeds germinate? From the garden of whose soul will the blossoms of the invisible realities spring forth? Verily, I say, so fierce is the blaze of the Bush of love, burning in the Sinai of the heart, that the streaming waters of holy utterance can never quench its flame. Oceans can never allay this Leviathan's

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burning thirst, and this Phoenix of the undying fire can abide nowhere save in the glow of the countenance of the Well-Beloved.

Therefore, O brother! kindle with the oil of wisdom the lamp of the spirit within the innermost chamber of thy heart, and guard it with the globe of understanding, that the breath of the infidel may extinguish not its flame nor dim its brightness. Thus have We illumined the heavens of utterance with the splendours of the Sun of divine wisdom and understanding, that thy heart might find peace, that thou mayest be of those who, on the wings of certitude, have soared unto the heaven of the love of their Lord, the All-Merciful.⁴⁷

The abundance of metaphorical genitives in this passage is self-evident. Each relates, directly or indirectly, to a given interpretation in The Book of Certitude.

To recapitulate, the interpretive point of departure in The Book of Certitude is exegesis of New Testament apocalyptic as a foil for the quranic exegesis pursued throughout the rest of the book. The textual integrity of the Paraclete sayings as well as Jesus' apocalyptic discourse at Matthew 24:29-31 is defended against Muslim charges of corruption (tahríf). Bahá'u'lláh then takes recourse to "interscriptural exegesis" (interpretation of the New Testament by the Qur'án and vice versa). Bahá'u'lláh adduces Qur'án 55:5⁴⁸ and 70:40⁴⁹ to expound the significance of the eschatological sun and moon to which Jesus refers.

Moreover, Qur'án 82:1⁵⁰ and 39:67⁵¹ are cited and explicated, and the interpretation transferred to Matthew 24, as is Qur'án 51:22⁵² on the meaning of "heaven." As to the significance of eschatological "clouds,". Qur'án 2:87⁵³ , 25:25⁵⁴ , and 25:7⁵⁵ are adduced. It would appear that Bahá'u'lláh's interpretive procedures involve what Fishbane refers to as "those hermeneutical strategies whereby meaning is produced for a given text."⁵⁶

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THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE BOOK OF
CERTITUDE TO SHI'I TAFSÍR

Embedded in Bahá'u'lláh's discourse are specifically Shí'í technical terms, traditions, and techniques of exegesis. This section will address the question of precedent: To what extent is The Book of Certitude prefigured by Shí'í tafsír? The answer is clear: The principles of exegesis found in Akhbari (Imámi tradition-based) Shí'í tafsír are manifestly present in the Kitáb-i Íqán. These principles have more to do with the subject of exegesis than with its procedures. The interpretive strategies in Bahá'u'lláh's work are amply attested in the classical Sunni heritage, which has permeated the Shí'í domain. The branch, after all, stems from the trunk. Both are fed by the same roots.

There are sufficient formal similarities and thematic emphases between later Shí'í (those known as Akhbari) works of tafsír and The Book of Certitude to warrant comparison. Such a study would present itself as the logical starting place for a foundational study of Bahá'u'lláh's work. To treat simply the Shí'í context of the text is too narrow, however. The pitfall of such a reductionist approach is that the presence of identifiable Shí'í features of exegesis in the text can elucidate, but cannot "explain," the event of The Book of Certitude purely in terms of a natural extension or development of Shí'í tradition. The same exegetical agenda demonstrating the quranic basis of the authority of the Twelve Shí'í Imams-is invoked by Bahá'u'lláh not to validate Shí'í tradition but to effect a break from that tradition.

A paradox of authority surfaces in the structure of Bahá'u'lláh's argument: the authority of the institution of the Imamate is confirmed, but not, as it were, the "apostolic succession"—to use a Christian term—that derives from it. Bahá'u'lláh's critique of contemporary Shí'í authority is more than "protestant." It is tantamount to a shared Shí'í concern over authority, but a reversal of its legitimation as invested in

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the clerical order of his day. The exegetical aims are parallel. But they clash. Bahá'í and Sllfi authority claims are at cross purposes. The former subordinates the latter.

Thematically, and in good Shí'í fashion, concern over authority is of paramount interest in The Book of Certitude. This is thoroughly Shí'í. One must not be seduced by the continuity, however. While Bahá'u'lláh's conception of spiritual authority presupposes Shí'í structures, to regard The Book of Certitude as simply an extension of Shí'í thought is to turn a blind eye to Bahá'u'lláh's doctrinal revolution the overruling of Shí'í constraints on authority in favor of a new locus of authority: a post-quranic revelation. The figures of the Báb himself and the Bábí messiah ubiquitously anticipated in the Báb's writings represent in effect two new claims to revelation and the theoretical dissolution of Shí'í ulama. To make matters worse, from a Shí'í perspective, there is a decidedly anti-clerical strain in the works of both the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh.

Two images of Shí'ísm in Bahá'u'lláh's discourse thus emerge. The first is historical and doctrinal. It is nostalgic and purist. The Imams are revered. Various traditions ascribed to them are adduced as proof texts. In The Book of Certitude, the frequency of Bahá'u'lláh's recourse to imámi akhbar is second only to his appeals to the Qur'án. This is a patently Akhbari procedure. The second picture of Shí'ísm Bahá'u'lláh portrays is one of its perceived failings, particularly in its contemporary (nineteenth-century) setting.

Bahá'u'lláh's exegesis may be characterized as polemically anti-Shí'í, but explicitly pro-'Ali. This critique of Shí'ísm is not revisionist. There is no agenda for restoring Shí'ísm to its pristine state. It would appear that in Bahá'u'lláh's view of salvation history, Shí'ísm had run its course. Bahá'u'lláh's exegesis may be overstated as a kind of counter-Shí'ísm, due to the rivalry of authority claims. Since a break from the past had already been effected by the Báb

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in both the Arabic and Persian Bayán, The Book of Certitude may be seen as a development of Bábí "revelation" beyond the renewal of Shí'ísm. Where, one might ask, is there precedent in Shí'í exegetical tradition for Bahá'u'lláh's supersedure of the assumed finality of "Seal of the Prophets" (Quran 33:40) by the eschatological certainty of encountering God (Qur'án 33:44)? Here, the singlemost crucial prophetological verse in the Qur'án is overruled, in Bahá'u'lláh's exegesis, by another verse just four verses later in the same sura. This latter verse is glossed as the refraction of beatific vision realized in the "Manifestation of God" who is the eschatological "God" by proxy, even as Moses was said to be "as God unto Pharaoh." Such an exegesis is not to be found in Twelver Shí'í tafsír. The stark nature of this contrast, far from discouraging comparison, invites further comparison.

A recent study by Lawson has contributed to Western understanding of the principles of Shí'í exegesis. Bahá'u'lláh's argument against revelatory finality finds no precedent in Shí'ísm. But The Book of Certitude represents, from a certain perspective, a clear development of existing Shí'í tendencies, which Lawson has brought to light. It is now possible to explain, in retrospect, how it was theoretically conceivable for a new authority claim to be asserted without appearing to usurp the authority of the Qur'án. Such a procedure was effected through Akhbari exegesis, in which the exegesis, invoking the authority of sacred Imami tradition, functionally supersedes the text it is intended to elucidate.⁵⁷

Discussions of Shí'ísm run the risk of certain biases of selectivity, of interpretation and of weight in terms of emphasis. Systematization is a well-intentioned structure, but one nevertheless imposed. The methodological elegance of Lawson's study is that he has presented representative, traditionally acclaimed systematizations of Shí'í thought by Shí'í authorities themselves. These systematizations,

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propounded in the tafsír prologues, are illuminating. These native programmatic statements reveal the extent to which Akhbari interpretations of the Qur'án are characteristically Imamocentric. In such commentaries, Imami reports are not so much used to explain the Qur'án (this is the formal procedure) as the Qur'án is used to legitimate a Shí'í agenda. In any case, the Qur'án effectively becomes a Shí'í text.

This systematization of Akhbari exegetical principles illuminates the immediate context of The Book of Certitude. Lawson's study has made it possible to explain The Book of Certitude as representing, in effect, the logical trajectory of Shí'í exegetical tendencies, which are ultimately, if carried to their logical conclusion, self-transcending. This trajectory depends entirely on the reader's theoretical acceptance of one crucial substitution: the authority of the Báb (in the shadow of whose authority stands Bahá'u'lláh) as the eclipse of the traditional authorities: Qur'án and Imami tradition, Prophet and Imam. The revelation of the Báb constitutes the new locus of spiritual authority, an authority transfer cast in terms of eschatological prerogative and legitimated in terms of prophetic "fulfillment."

Arguably, the most salient feature of Akhbari Shí'í interpretations of the Qur'án is how such commentaries reflect on issues of authority. All of Islam revolves around notions of authority: guidance, the Path, the Caliphate, pedagogy, etc. In Shí'í Islam, the Imamate is paramount. According to Lawson, what characterizes Akhbari Qur'án commentaries is the exegetical procedure of "finding the true reading of the verse in question through metonomy or metaphor for the Imam or some related topic such as walaya [inspired guidancel."⁵⁸ In its various manifestations throughout Islamic history, Shí'ísm, from its inception, has always been predicated on various conceptions of authority. Twelver Shí'ísm, the dominant form of Shí'ísm today, views spiritual authority as vested in the Imamate. The very identity of

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Shí'ísm is bound up with authority claims. Shí'í assertions of authority explicitly contest rival Sunni claims. The Qur'án, tradition (hadith), and especially the Imami oral legacy are invoked for legitimation. The selective and tendentious use of such authorities is meant to validate what Sunni Islam rejects.

The Book of Certitude shares similar concerns, but looks ahead in time to a post-quranic and post-imamite Dispensation. Bahá'u'lláh's emphasis on authority is equal to Shí'í concerns. Such concerns preoccupied the immediate audience at least. This agenda had to be addressed in order to facilitate a transfer of spiritual authority, mediated by faith—a transfer from Shí'í institutions to a new source of charisma—the Báb. The revelation of the Báb had made explicit what was for the most part implicit in Shí'í visions of the end. Through the Báb, a new eschatological landscape was outspread, canopied by a new heaven of faith.

Bahá'u'lláh effects what might be considered the thematic inversion of Shff hermeneutics through a stated continuity expressed as "fulfillment." Such fulfillment is tantamount to abrogation, however. In The Book of Certitude, Shí'í exegetical principles are invoked to counter Shí'í authority, though formally it appears otherwise. This is the subtlety of Bahá'u'lláh's argument.

The Book of Certitude reinforces the Shí'í view of the Qur'án, that it has a symbolic dimension that only an inspired interpreter might accurately demystify. In Akhbaari Shí'ísm , the Qur'án as a text is functionally inseparable from its valid interpretation. Although interpretation is still a human enterprise, the guarantor of accuracy is reliance upon traditions ascribed to the Imams. In this respect, the sacred text is imbued with the charisma of both the Prophet and the Imams. "Because of the fusion of the Im,am and text," Lawson observes, "the Qur'án is experienced as a charismatic text" and as "encounter."⁵⁹

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In the case of Bahá'u'lláh's immediate precursor, the Báb, this tendency became even more pronounced. Lawson remarks: "We see the 'logical' culmination of this process in the Qur'án commentaries of the Báb (d. 1850), who depended heavily on the akhbar [Imami traditions] in his early tafsír, but appears to have abandoned their explicit use in later similar works. In this later phase of commentary, it is virtually impossible to distinguish between commentary, text, reader, God, Prophet, and Imam. In short, the exegetical act became scripture."⁶⁰ From the foregoing discussion, it is clear that the principles of Shí'í hermeneutics do indeed inform The Book of Certitude. The supplanting of Sunni authority by Shí'í sources and their extensive, even dominant use in exegesis had, in a sense, paved the way for innovative authority claims initially posing as commentary.

Phenomenologically speaking, revelation is somewhat tradition-bound. To communicate within the constraints of context, the exercise of ingenuity and subtlety becomes a necessary transitional preliminary before any open arrogation of fresh authority is possible. Procedurally, Bahá'u'lláh followed one with the other. Exegesis, as performed in The Book of Certitude along some very traditional Akhbari lines, was followed by proclamation. This sequence is what characterized the birth of a new world religion, which at once had to speak to Islamic tradition and yet effect a break from it.

TAFSÍR-RELATED STYLISTIC FEATURES
OF THE BOOK OF CERTITUDE

A word should be said as to the prosaic style of The Book of Certitude, and what purpose such a style might serve. Bahá'u'lláh's writings strike many Western readers as flowery. Such embellishments often are seen as unnecessary and distracting, or worse. Orientalist Allesandro Bausani has remarked on some of the difficulties raised by "the Bahá'í

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expressive style" for those unfamiliar with it. According to Bausani: "The difficulty that Westerners experience in fully understanding the style of the Bahá'í writings lies in our having lost the living sense of the tripartition of reality: Unknowable God, World of Symbols, material world."⁶¹ Momen has shown the ontological reality behind Bahá'í symbolism. Bahá'í metaphysics does postulate such a "World of Symbols," as Bausani has indicated. Bahá'u'lláh, in a Tablet known as the Lawh-i Varqá, states:

The meaning of the Kingdom (malakut) in its primary sense and degree is the scene of transcendent glory. In another sense it is the world of similitudes ('alam-i mithal) which existeth between the Dominion on high (jabarut) and this mortal realm (nasut); whatever is in the heavens or on the earth hath its counterpart in that world.⁶²

This much is implicit throughout The Book of Certitude: There exists a law of correspondences between the physical and spiritual worlds. 'What else would scriptural symbols represent? The presence of the spiritual dimension in this life is what religious symbols, after all, try to evoke.

As early in the book as the exordium-before any actual exegesis is engaged in-Bahá'u'lláh's description of the mission of Moses is implicitly exegetical, setting up an expectation of the approach Bahá'u'lláh will later take:

...there came the turn of Moses. Armed with the rod of celestial dominion ('asay-i amr), adorned with the white hand of knowledge (bayday-i marifat), and proceeding from the Paran of the love of God (faran-i muhabbat-i ilahiyya), and wielding the serpent of power and everlasting tnajesty (thu'ban-i qudrat wa shawkat-i samaddaniyya), He shone forth from the Sinai of light (sinay-i núr) upon the world. He summoned all the peoples and kindreds of the earth to the kingdom of eternity, and invited them to partake of the fruit of the tree of faithfulness.⁶³

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Symbolism arises from a common poetic stock, expressed in a metaphorical view of reality. Figurative language and ideology are often linked in historical texts.⁶⁴ This relationship is even more pronounced in the case of "salvation history," which designation fits The Book of Certitude quite well. Salvation history is a view, not of the past, but of the present. Henry Corbin, in one of his useful overstatements, observes: "Hence, the ta'wíl is preeminently the hermeneutics of symbols.... Ta'wíl presupposes the superimposition of worlds and interworlds, as the correlative basis for a plurality of meanings in the same text."⁶⁵

WANSBROUGH'S TAFSÍR TYPOLOGY

Adopting a particular methodology involves a choice between adapting an existing one to the research at hand or creating a new one. I have opted for the former. The framework of analysis chosen for this book is the tafsír typology developed by John Wansbrough. His elaboration of classical exegesis of the Qur'án is theoretically elegant, testable, and predictive.

On methodological grounds alone, Wansbrough has contributed much to our understanding of tafsír by proposing a critical assessment of Qur'án commentaries. He advocates a literary analysis⁶⁶ of revelation as well, freeing both Qur'án and tradition from their splendid theological isolation. Wansbrough proposes two types of criteria in his study of tafsír: (1) functional criteria; and (2) stylistic criteria. By "concentrating on the elements of explication both in and out of context," Wansbrough hopes to "isolate and identify methodological devices which can be recognized."⁶⁷ These stylistic devices act as criteria for analysis of the dynamics of exegesis within functional types of tafsír. The presence and distribution of these "methodological devices" (more often termed "procedural devices") are claimed to be "mutually

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corroborative."⁶⁸ It could prove productive, perhaps illuminating, to apply this framework of analysis to The Book of Certitude, bearing in mind that procedural devices are each "potentially variable but not beyond recognition."⁶⁹ As in Wansbrough's own study, the functional and stylistic analysis of Bahá'u'lláh's Qur'án commentary pursued in the present monograph is essentially an "experiment."⁷⁰

Wansbrough has classified classical tafsír into five types. which roughly follow a chronological sequence of dev'eiop, ment of increasing sophistication: Narrative, Legal, Textual, Rhetorical, and Symbolic/Allegorical. Of this literary taxonomy, Rippin writes: "While the historical sequence itself may be open to some debate, the categorization itself is, in true scientific fashion, functional, unified, and revealing."⁷¹ These categories are comprehensive, but do not constitute the total typology. They represent the domains across which Islamic hermeneutics spread its wings. What makes these categories come to life are the exegetical dynamics that ensoul them. Thus, Wansbrough's typology consists of five tafsír types and twelve procedural devices: i.e. "the twelve explicative elements proposed as criteria for a descriptive analysis of exegetical literature. "⁷²

Wansbrough's identification of these explicative elements offers a literary framework of analysis for any given work of tafsír, isolating its major interpretive components. The number and distribution of each of these techniques within a given text should tell us more precisely what the exegete is doing with his material, and should add to our understanding of what makes up a particular exegetical type.

All but two of Wansbrough's procedural devices were employed by Bahá'u'lláh in the Kitáb-i Íqán. The two absent are: variant readings and poetic exemplars (save for a single citation of poetry, rather for exclamatory than for exegetical purposes). The absence of variant readings indicates something of Bahá'u'lláh's attitude towards the Qur'án:

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The text is not only sacred, but fixed--that is, fixed within canonical limits, not interpretive ones. This clearly reflects nineteenth-century Muslim attitudes to the text: the Qur'án is intact as given, the text taken for granted as received. The question of Bahá'u'lláh's alleged inexact Qur'án citations will be addressed briefly, but will be dismissed as referential and not as alternate readings for exegetical purposes.

Using Wansbrough's typology as a framework of analysis for study of The Book of Certitude, it is not my intent to present Bahá'u'lláh as an Islamic scholastic or as a formal Qur'án commentator in the classical sense. Indeed, the analysis given might strike the reader as somewhat disjointed. This was inevitable, in attempting to break down a text into its explicative procedures. The examplars adduced are, for the most part, wrenched out of sequence and atomized; but they are, at the same time, framed in exegetical theory.

Even so, using Wansbrough's model, The Book of Certitude is more effectively presented for its unity of argument, sustained at every turn through recourse to a variety of procedural devices, the use of which alone reflects the cumulative nature of the Islamic exegetical heritage in which Bahá'u'lláh stood. In his ostensibly Islamic argument, Bahá'u'lláh develops a paradox of world historical proportions: If the Qur'án is shown to have presaged a future revelation, such exegesis carries an implicit challenge to the authority of Islam in the wake of the dual claims advanced by the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh.

PROCEDURAL DEVICES IN THE BOOK OF CERTITUDE

We will now take a closer look at the ways in which Bahá'u'lláh interprets the Qur'án. His methods will not correspond, in every instance, to what Wansbrough has identified as interpretive mechanisms, but approximations are

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as useful as they are illustrative. I will argue that a consistent approach to interpretation in The Book of Certitude may be discerned: As a first-level premise, Bahá'u'lláh argues that eschatological discourse is figurative. In the Qur'án, Bahá'u'lláh reads such figurative eschatological discourse as functionally symbolic. Symbolic value depends on the representational quality of such discourse, which the reader is taught to recognize as nonliteral.

Bahá'u'lláh offers rhetorical explanations, enabling the reader first to recognize figurative discourse. The interpretation of symbols depends on this underlying view of text and its use of representational language. The recognition of symbols, which are often unmarked for figurative discourse, is context-dependent, interpreted through a law of correspondence. Such correlativity has in view an ontologically higher reality, or at least a psychologically deeper worldview. The dynamic between figure and symbol, then, is foundational to the overall argument which The Book of Certitude presents: that is, that post-quranic revelation is possible, predicted, and present in the world today.

A word should be said about the general Islamic style of argumentation which Bahá'u'lláh stood to inherit. Bahá'u'lláh's analysis and exegesis of selected quranic texts is accomplished primarily by analogy and appeal to tradition. Moreover, Bahá'u'lláh's approach exhibits what might be called an exercise in philosophical aesthetics, as applied to revelation. Kemal defines aesthetics in classical Arabic literary criticism as "a concern with characterising the nature of the poetic discourse generally, . . . through displaying how ... poetic and aesthetic discourse works."⁷³

In The Book of Certitude, Bahá'u'lláh's aesthetic appreciation of the Qur'án is bound up with his appreciation of its wealth of figurative expression. Despite his argument for post-quranic revelation, Bahá'u'lláh's reverence for the Qur'án should never go unheeded. There are several explicit

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appreciations of the Qur'án in The Book of Certitude, one of which extols the holy book so:

He, the divine King, hath proclaimed the undisputed supremacy of the verses of His Book [the Qur'án] over all things that testify to His truth. For compared with all other proofs and tokens, the divinely-revealed verses shine as the sun, whilst all others are as stars. To the peoples of the world they are the abiding testimony, the incontrovertible proof, the shining light of the ideal King.

Their excellence is unrivalled, their virtue nothing can surpass. They are the treasury of the divine pearls and the depository of the divine mysteries.... Through them floweth the river of divine knowledge, and gloweth the fire of His ancient and consummate wisdom. ⁷⁴

Beyond aesthetics is interpretation proper, the act of exegesis. Bahá'u'lláh states his purpose quite simply: "All these things which We have cited from divers sources, have no other purpose but to enable thee to grasp the meaning of the allusions in the utterances of the chosen Ones of God."⁷⁵ In the course of his exegeses, interpretation is mostly predicated on the nonliteral nature of eschatological texts. While Bahá'u'lláh was no literary theorist, I think the conceptions underlying his approach to the text are as literary as they are theological. Younger sums up the nature of figurative language as it applies to biblical texts. His statement seems to apply with equal validity to quranic figuration and its symbolic possibilities:

Thus, in figurative language there is, of course, a stratification of meaning, in which an incongruity of sense on one level produces an influx of significance on another.... The power of metaphor derives precisely from the interplay between discordant meanings it symbolically coerces into a unitary conceptual framework and from the degree to which that coercion is successful in overcoming the psychic resistance such

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semantic tension inevitably generates in anyone in a position to perceive it.⁷⁶

Wansbrough's stylistic criteria, or "procedural devices," will be presented in the order in which he treats them. Though somewhat arbitrary, this is illustrative for our purposes. Bear in mind that this methodological framework is being imposed on Bahá'u'lláh's work for purposes of analysis, and that this framework formed no part of the author's conscious enterprise. Bahá'u'lláh was not a scholar. He had no clerical background. He received the rather unsophisticated traditional education of the nobility. This involved private instruction in Qur'án and tradition.

Far more important are Bahá'u'lláh's mystical experiences, which gave rise to a sense of divine election, continually reinforced throughout his forty-year ministry by a remarkable ability to "reveal" a wealth of Tablets, all of which came to have a status that, for Bahá'ís, collectively superseded the authority of the Qur'án. Bahá'u'lláh displays an awareness of some important tafsír-related issues, in discussions of debated topics in Islam as well as in his occasional references to Qur'án commentators, not by name but rather by argument.⁷⁷

VARIAE LECTIONES

Nowhere in The Book of Certitude does Bahá'u'lláh exPlicate the Qur'án by adducing variant readings. His attitude toward the canonical text seems to preclude this approach. His orientation toward canonical authenticity completely ignores some of the traditional Shí'í misgivings over critical parts of scripture.⁷⁸

In Chapter Two, evidence was presented documenting Bahá'u'lláh's own instructions to bring all Qur'án citations in The Book of Certitude into alignment with the standard

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text of the Qur'án. This was because, in the original Bombay lithograph of The Book of Certitude, citations of the Qur'án were inexact paraphrases. Critics of the Bahá'í Faith questioned the integrity of The Book of Certitude as a "revealed" text, because revelation cannot admit of error.

Whether paraphrase or error, the inexact citations are not exegetically intrusive. Such imprecisions are slight and likely represent a paraphrasing from memory. Inexact references to the Qur'án are referential and not text-critical. The reader recognizes the verse, gets the exegetical point, and the inexact citation serves its purpose. Jeffery's remarks on variants to the opening sura of the Qur'án which he encountered in Cairo as well as in Shí'í circles apply with equal (albeit unintended) validity to the inexact Qur'án citations in The Book of Certitude:

There is no ascertainable reason for the variant readings. They are not alterations in the interests of smoother grammatical construction or of clarity, nor do they seem to have any doctrinal significance. They are just variants as one might expect in the transmission of a prayer at first preserved in oral form.⁷⁹

Bahá'u'lláh's respect for the sacred text is very explicit:

For instance, the Qur'án was an impregnable stronghold unto the people of Muhammad. In His days, whosoever entered therein, was shielded from the devilish assaults, the menacing darts, the self-devouring doubts, and blasphemous whisperings of the enemy. Upon him [the believer] was also bestowed a portion of the everlasting and goodly fruits-the fruits of wisdom, from the divine Tree. To him was given to drink the incorruptible waters of the river of knowledge, and to taste the wine of the mysteries of divine Unity.

All the things that the people required in connection with the Revelation of Muhammad and His laws were found to be revealed and manifest in that Ridvan of resplendent glory.

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That Book constitutes an abiding testimony to its people after Muhammad, inasmuch as its decrees are indisputable, and its promise unfailing. All have been enjoined to follow the precepts of that Book until "the year sixty" [1260 A.H.]—the year of the advent of God's wondrous Manifestation [the Báb].⁸⁰

One might question how far Bahá'u'lláh's respect for the Qur'án went if he believed the text was already abrogated by the revelation of the Báb. But, this likely has no bearing on how Bahá'u'lláh regarded the integrity of the text itself. Unlike some strains of Shí'í tradition that have called into question whether the Qur'án is even complete—the standard edition of 'Uthman having allegedly suppressed passages favorable to 'Ali—Bahá'u'lláh takes no issue with the text itself. Its interpretation, as we shall see in some detail, is an entirely different matter.

POETIC LOCI PROBANTES

In adapting Wansbrough's categories to a text which performs exegesis yet is not a tafsír in the classical sense, some conceptual modifications are necessary to fit the text to the methodology intended to elucidate it. In the classical tradition, those exemplars adduced from the corpus of principally "pre-islamic" poetry by literary theorists "eager to illustrate their rhetorical figures" are termed in Arabic: shawáhid. The technical equivalent in Western literary theory is poetic loci probantes.⁸¹ There is one instance in The Book of Certitude in which Bahá'u'lláh does adduce poetry. Shoghi Effendi renders this verse: "Marvel not if in the Qur'án the unbeliever perceiveth naught but the trace of letters, for in the sun, the blind findeth naught but heat."⁸² For comparison, in the first English translation of the Kitab-i-Íqán, Khan sets apart the poetic citation so:

'ajab nabud kih az Quran nasíbí nist juz naqshi,
kih az khurshid juz garmi nayabad chashm-i nabina⁸³

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Be not astonished if from the Koran no portion is gained except its letters,
For in the sun, the eye of the blind findeth nothing but heat.⁸⁴

These two translations do not differ significantly, except that Khan has set off the citation of poetry by presenting it formally as verse. This verse is exclamatory, reinforcing Bahá'u'lláh's reiterative argument against literalist interpretation of quranic passages in which deeper meaning resides. The provenance of this piece of poetry is itself unclear. No citation formula is given. It is possible that Bahá'u'lláh has cited from his own mystical poetry (much of it no longer extant) but the verse here has a very traditional ring.

With respect to his writings in general, Bahá'u'lláh is not inclined to adduce poetry often, except in his Sufi-oriented mystical works. Yet he does draw attention to some of the obviously poetic quranic passages when illustrating figuration and symbolism. That is not to say that the Qur'án itself is poetry: Bahá'u'lláh, as with Muslims universally, would never draw such equivalence.

There is an implicit motive for citing this couplet, beyond its presence as an intensifier. Bahá'u'lláh has just cited several quranic verses dealing with the rejection of revelation (Qur'án 2:23; 45:5; 45:6; 45:8; 26:187; 8:32) and draws what for him is the obvious parallel to his own historical present. The revelation of the Báb had, of course, been rejected by the vast majority of the Shí'ís of his day. The rejection was extreme in the case of the divines, many of whom conspired with the state to persecute and exterminate the Bábí community.

Bahá'u'lláh was critical of contemporary Shí'í leaders, whom he typologically finds condemned by the Qur'án as possessed of the same hard-heartedness as the disbelievers of yore: "These people," writes Bahá'u'lláh, ". . . sought to exchange the divinely-revealed verses for their foul, their vile, and idle desires."⁸⁵ Bahá'u'lláh does not mean the

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"exchange" of quranic verses, though a cursory reading of the passage might not reveal this. He has in view the Shí'í rejection of the so-called "Bábí Qur'án." "Although the seas of life ... are surging within the Ridvan of the heart, yet these people ... [have] contented themselves with the stagnant waters of a briny lake."⁸⁶ This rejection of the Báb's revelation, according to Bahá'u'lláh, is actuated by spiritual blindness:

Gracious God! How strange the way of this peoplel They clamour for guidance, although the standards of Him Who guideth all things are already hoisted. They cleave to the obscure intricacies of knowledge, when He, Who is the Object of all knowledge, shineth as the sun. They see the sun with their own eyes, and yet question that brilliant Orb as to the proof of its light.... Yea, the blind can perceive naught from the sun except its heat, and the and soil hath no share of the showers of mercy. "Marvel not if in the Qur'án the unbeliever perceiveth naught but the trace of letters, for in the sun, the blind findeth naught but heat."⁸⁷

The verse citation concerns the Qur'án, but Bahá'u'lláh makes its rejection motif double for rejection of the Báb's revelation, and, perhaps allusively, his own. The Báb is clearly intended as the subject of this passage. This reading might be strengthened by the possible allusion to the term "Mahdi" in the statement, "They clamour for guidance," since the Mahdi is the "Rightly-Guided" One. But it is hard to suppress the reading that Bahá'u'lláh is speaking reflexively of himself, in a highly allusive way, and that the Qur'án (in the verse cited) is his own revelation.

LEXICAL EXPLANATION⁸⁸

(1) "Oppression": In the first part of this chapter, we discussed Bahá'u'lláh's treatment of New Testament apocalyptic.

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We return to this section of The Book of Certitude briefly, since his interpretation will be generalized to a parallel verse in the Qur'án. Moreover, Bahá'u'lláh's interpretations in this case entail certain lexical considerations. As stated, Bahá'u'lláh writes at considerable length on the words of Jesus in the Minor Apocalypse of Matthew 24 at verses 29-31:

Immediately after the oppression of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the earth shall be shaken: and then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet.⁸⁹

Shoghi Effendi's translation-modeled stylistically upon the King James Version-is from the Arabic text cited in the Persian original of the Kitáb-i Íqán. (Bahá'u'lláh cites these biblical verses in Arabic translation. He follows with a paraphrase in Persian.) Two differences in citation/translation of this text present themselves: The first, a difference over the choice of an English equivalent (Shoghi Effendi favoring "oppression" over the King James Version "tribulation"). The second is a difference reflected in the Arabic text itself, "the powers of the heavens" (King James Version) becomes, in The Book of Certitude, "the powers of the earth" (quwat al-ard), though the cosmic sense of the passage is retained.⁹⁰ In the Arabic citation, the term for "oppression" (4iq) is rendered into Persian as tangi (emended from tanki [sic] in Persian text). The lexical definition Bahá'u'lláh supplies in his Persian paraphrase of the Arabic 4iq is rather straightforward: The Persian word tangi means "tightness" (abstract⁹¹ formed from tang, "tight").

As to "oppression" versus "tribulation," the Greek word

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found in the New Testament original is thlipsin.⁹² As Shoghi Effendi notes, thlipsis literally means "pressure," while figuratively it means "oppression."⁹³ Since the figurative meaning is already supplied in the King Jánies Version and all English versions, Bahá'u'lláh's argument might strike a Western reader as specious.

Not so to the popular audience for whom The Book of Certitude was intended. To bring out that fact, Shoghi Effendi inserts a parenthesis into his translation: "Were this 'oppression' (which literally meaneth 'pressure') to be interpreted that the earth is to become contracted, or were men's idle fancy to conceive similar calamities to befall mankind, it is clear and manifest that no such happenings can ever come to pass" (emphasis added).⁹⁴ At each interpretive turn, Bahá'u'lláh takes full advantage of the opportunity to argue against literalism with regard to eschatological texts. Shoghi Effendi makes every effort to reflect this in his translation.

(2) "Heaven cloven by the clouds" at Qur'án 25:25: In apocalyptic drama, clouds often serve as the deus ex machina of the eschatological savior. Clouds are literal or figurative. Since, as a rule, clouds do not descend, they are open to interpretation in passages such as this. The descent of clouds can be considered either as the suspension of natural law which is a divine prerogative at the eschaton or as a marker, signaling the incidence of figurative speech. The first reading is governed by theological considerations (i.e., it is entirely within God's power to suspend natural law), while the latter gives interpretive priority to the text itself. In the former reading, clouds are taken literally. In the latter, the passage is figurative and clouds are representational, requiring either metaphorical or symbolic interpretation. Bahá'u'lláh opts for the latter:

By the term "clouds" is meant those things that are contrary to the ways and desires of men.... These "clouds" signify, in

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one sense, the annulment of laws, the abrogation of former Dispensations, the repeal of rituals and customs current amongst men, the exalting of the illiterate faithful above the learned opposers of the Faith. In other words, they mean the appearance of that immortal Beauty in the image of mortal man, with such human limitations as eating and drinking, poverty and riches, glory and abasement, sleeping and waking, and other such things as cast doubt in the minds of men, and cause them to turn away. All such veils are symbolically referred to as "clouds." These are the "clouds" that cause the heavens of the knowledge and understanding of all that dwell on earth to be cloven asunder. Even as He hath revealed: "On that day shall the heaven be cloven by the clouds." Even as the clouds prevent the eyes of men from beholding the sun, so do these things hinder the souls of men from recognizing the light of the divine Luminary.⁹⁵

Bahá'u'lláh's reading of verse 25:25: "On that day shall the heaven be cloven by the clouds" (emphasis added), is quite interesting. The text is cited accurately in Arabic, but there still is a variant reading here. It is not textual but is, rather, a lexically variant reading, in that the function or effective meaning of a single preposition is under question. The Arabic text of the verse Bahá'u'lláh interprets here is as follows:

wa yawma tashaqqaql as-sama"' bil-ghamdmi

Of significance is the reading of the prefixed preposition bi as an instrumental preposition (harf al-alah) carrying the lexical value "by," rather than "with," in Bahá'u'lláh's reading of the verse (the same lexical options—instrumentality and accompaniment—are likewise characteristic of the English "with"). This runs counter to the conventional sense of the text, for which, in translation, Arberry is representative: "Upon the day that heaven is split asunder with the clouds." A double interpretation obtains here through

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Shoghi Effendi's translation of the Arabic text which Bahá'u'lláh adduces. Bahá'u'lláh's interpretation of the verse in the sentence immediately following the citation suggests the instrumentality of the preposition bi, but it is Shoghi Effendi's rendering of the quranic text that makes explicit and reads into the verse instrumentality ascribed to the preposition bi.

To sustain the figurative reading required for the symbolic parallel-clouds =veils (e.g., abrogation/mortality/ doubts)-Bahá'u'lláh must make "the clouds" (al-ghamám) the logical agent of the action of "cleaving." In the verse's formal structure, heaven (sama) is the syntactical agent of tashaqqaq, which is a fifth-stem reflexive. So, grammatically speaking, "heaven," though logically passive, is the agent of the verb "cleave/cloven," which is why the preposition bi is usually read as "with," in the sense of accompaniment. Bahá'u'lláh allows for an anomalous reading here, though the figurative sense of clouds as agents of cleaving does not explicitly convey personification. This may be why Bahá'u'lláh refrains from interpreting clouds as divines (as he does elsewhere in The Book of Certitude) and restricts the symbolism to inanimate "veils." Indeed, the verbal form ghamma can be read figuratively as "to veil."

Bahá'u'lláh's reading of bi in this verse assumes an unconventional syntactical analysis, though he says nothing specific about the preposition itself. But the reading is not incorrect. The verse presents a situation of polysemy with regard to bi, in which the interpreter is obliged to supply the context. The syntactical ambiguity in the text allows for the possibility of alternative deep structures.

Bahá'u'lláh's reading results from an original interpretation of the agent/patient relationship in this verse, wherein, according to Bahá'u'lláh, the underlying structure presents the clouds as agent, and heaven as patient. By virtue of word order and case, the preposition bi in this

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verse shows a hierarchy in which heaven is higher than clouds, though this does not necessarily bear informationally on the interpretation. The instrumentality of bi is shown vividly in Shoghi Effendi's translation.

According to O'Shaughnessy, the verb tashaqqaq' is to be read nonliterally here:

The scriptural and rabbinic symbolism of the throne is paralleled by other concrete signs of approaching judgment found especially in the older suras of the Qur'án. One most commonly mentioned is the splitting open of the heavens, a phenomenon expressed by the Arabic verbs fatara, to cleave, split, rend; shaqqa, to cut lengthwise, cleave split; and faraja, to make an opening between, open, split. This type of figurative language implies, as the Hebrew Bible does, that the heaven is a canopy or metal strip that can be torn open or rolled up. Similar notions are repeated in the New Testament, for example, in Revelation, 2 Peter, and Mark's Gospel.⁹⁶

O'Shaughnessy has pointed out that heaven is split or fragmented not only as a sign of the approaching day of Judgment (Qur'án 14:48; 21:104; 25:25; 39:67; 44:10; 52:9; etc.), but also as a sign to confirm belief: to confirm a prophet's mission (Qur'án 17:92; 26:187), to vindicate Noah (54:11); as a sign rejected by disbelievers (15:14; 34:9; 52:44); and also as a sign of moral lapse: blasphemy (19:90; 42:5), polytheism (1:22). Conversely, the heaven is unsplit, either to exclude disbelievers (7:40), or as a sign of God's perfection (50:6 and 67:3).⁹⁷

Is realized eschatology really an eschatology? Read literally or symbolically, Beggiani is right to point out that: "Eschatology speculates on the fulfillment of God's plan of salvation."⁹⁸ The plot of the apocalyptic drama thickens with a sudden twist of agent here. The clouds are no longer passive in Bahá'u'lláh's interpretation. This example goes to show what kinds of new meaning can be produced from a

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text with the slightest change in reading: in this case, the change in lexical value of an innocent preposition.

What is Bahá'u'lláh's overall interpretive objective here? "Clouds" now drift into the human psyche, as the entire range of apocalyptic imagery is transferred into the realm of faith represented by a symbolic spiritual landscape. In this new location, the reader will have to exercise the same sort of judgment regarding quranic interpretation as with any other matter of faith. If the interpretation of this verse were not obvious-and indeed the symbolic gist of it has been missed (from Bahá'u'lláh's perspective) for centuries the reader may also have to reconsider prophetic credentials from the standpoint of prophecy fulfillment. A claimant who does not literally fulfill prophecy is rejected out of hand by scriptural fundamentalists. However charismatic the Báb was, he was no miracle worker. On the other hand, a claimant who points out that prophecy is not literal cannot be rejected out-of-hand for having wrought no signs and wonders. Such a candidate for prophecy fulfillment has to be considered in much more subtle terms.

Bahá'u'lláh's exegesis of "clouds" represents his broad interpretive strategy. In a sense, all prophecy concerns people and spiritual events. It is the inner landscape that the Qur'án paints a symbolic picture of. The Qur'án's "similitudes" are sometimes marked and sometimes not marked. Bahá'u'lláh's reading of "clouds" represents his reading of the text as an unmarked quranic similitude, which he then must decode.

GRAMMATICAL EXPLANATION

(1) Against received grammatical analyses at Qur'án 50:20: This is probably the most textually controversial of Bahá'u'lláh's interpretations in The Book of Certitude. To appreciate Bahá'u'lláh's interpretation of this verse, it is

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necessary to consider first the use of verbs in Arabic generally, particularly with reference to figurative uses of tense (i.e., so-called "tense metaphors").

Linguistically speaking, figuration can occur in two ways: (1) figurative use of form (i.e., syntax, morphology, grammar); or (2) lexical figuration. Both can result in a semantic interpretation which is figurative, since any instance of figuration is semantic. Diachronically, many languages demonstrate subjective location in time. This is characteristic of Western languages in which anteriority, simultaneity, and posteriority are expressed explicitly.

Not always explicit is subjective judgment of time. Subjective judgment of time does not merely draw distinctions as to past, present, and future but uses different verbal forms to express degrees of remoteness. This latter kind of judgment seems to reflect the situation in classical Arabic, in which the reference point is not necessarily the present moment of speech, but can be located in past or future. Comrie's work on tense discusses the Arabic verbal system. He represents this system as one of relative tense (in which there are relative points of reference with respect to time) rather than absolute tense (in which the point of reference for time is the present moment at the time of utterance).

Tense is form, not time. Tense can therefore act symbolically as well as literally. "The only time-marked verb (unless time-marked by a modifying functional or an adverbial)," according to Beeston, "is the suffix set verb in cases where it has dynamic aspect."⁹⁹ In other words, the Arabic verbal system shows itself to be a relative tense system rather than an absolute tense system. Subjective judgment of time may depend on syntactical (i.e., use of conditionals), lexical (i.e., time adverbials), or contextual (i.e., situational) considerations.

Those instances in which figurative uses of tense become conventional result in undermining the verbal system,

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culminating in different degrees of interdependence in tense, modality, and aspect. Thus, extra-linguistic considerations can be used to locate a reference point in time.

Another factor that should be considered is ellipsis. Arab linguists would often reconstruct a missing element along an assumed deep structure of a given text. Missing elements would then be supplied in the course of analysis.

At this juncture Bahá'u'lláh challenges the assumptions which governed (and still govern) the received grammatical analysis of Qur'án 50:20. His argument is bold and presents a new reading of the text against the view which had achieved a level of consensus. In the passage below, Bahá'u'lláh recapitulates the received exegesis of the verse. Two traditional analyses are presented: (1) ellipsis; and (2) tense figuration.

As the commentators of the Qur'án ('ulamay-i tafsír) and they that follow the letter thereof (ahl-i zahir) misapprehended the inner meaning (batin) of the words of God and failed to grasp their essential purpose, they sought to demonstrate that, according to the rules of grammar, whenever the term "idhá" (meaning "if" or "when") precedeth the past tense, it invariably hath reference to the future. Later, they were sore perplexed in attempting to explain those verses of the Book wherein that term did not actually occur. Even as He hath revealed: "And there was a blast on the trumpet,—lo! it is the threatened Day! And every soul is summoned to a reckoning,—with him an impeller and a witness" (Qur'án 50:20). In explaining this and similar verses, they have in some cases argued that the term "idhá" is implied.

In other instances, they have idly contended that whereas the Day of Judgment is inevitable, it hath therefore been referred to as an event not of the future but of the past. How vain their sophistry! How grievous their blindness! They refuse to recognize the trumpet blast which so explicitly in this text was sounded through the revelation of Muhammad.¹⁰⁰

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The Arabic text of the quranic verse is as follows:

wa-nufikha fi'l-quri dhalika yawmu
al-wa'di wa-ju'at kullu nafsin maha saiqun wa shahidun
la-qad k unta fi ghaflatin min hadha fakashafna 'anka
ghata'aka fa-bÁqáruka al-yawma hadidun

Bahá'u'lláh ascribes to Qur'án commentators two possible justifications for reading futurity into this highly representative eschatological verse: futurity due to the ellipted particle idha; and futurity due to use of a past tense metaphor for a future event due to certainty of occurrence (subjective judgment of time). The former is a syntactical analysis, while the latter is a contextual approach.

As to the implied (ellipted) idhá in the verse's deep structure, Arab grammarians would have had little difficulty citing quranic verses in which the idha nufikha construction explicitly occurs (e.g., Qur'án 23:101, 36:51, 39:68, 69:13). Verses in which idhá is lacking in connection with nufikha—ellipted or otherwise—are 18:99, 6:73, 20:102, 27:87, 78:18, thus providing textual parallels to 50:20. Arab grammarians tended to resolve the use of past tense in clearly eschatological contexts as instances of majáz (figuration).¹⁰¹

As N. Kinberg points out:

A formal integration of grammatical tropes as a sub-category of figures is exhibited by as-Suyuiti (d. 911/1505). In his work on Qur'ánic sciences (al-itqan fi 'ulum al-Qurlan), as-Suyuti dedicates a chapter to literal and figurative language in the Qur'án. In this chapter, the author specifies a sub-category of trope in which a grammatical form is used in a "transferred, deviant" way (majaz), instead of its "regular, ordinary" usage (haqiqa). In this sub-category he adduces examples of anomalous occurrences of certain verbal derivations; ... expressing the future by means of a past verb due to the certainty of its occurrence (namely, the so-called "prophetic perfect"). ¹⁰²

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This kind of analysis does not require an ellipted idha. Al-Suyuti, for instance, adduces a parallel verse at Qur'án 39:68 to argue that the Qur'án exhibits a figurative use of tense (in this case, of passive past tense) to imply futurity.¹⁰³ A similar analysis in the discipline of Islam

An interesting observation regarding figurative use of tenses is made by al-Qazwini (d. 1338 C.E.) in his commentary on as-Sakkáki. In a short discussion about non-literal usage of grammatical forms, he not only mentions the use of past tense to express the future, but also specifies the rhetorical motive behind this anomalous use of tense, namely: "in order to call attention to the certainty of its occurrence."¹⁰⁴

This presumed tense figuration has its analogue in the biblical use of "prophetic perfect."¹⁰⁵ The coexistence of two alternate explanations for the assumed futurity of the verse in question shows the interpretation of Qur'án 50:20 to be less decisive than thought, and oblivious to a possible reading of the text in which the point of reference in time is Muhammad's own historical present.

Concerning Arabic verbs generally, one cannot speak of definite markedness for time. In any event, what follows in the text Lo! it is the threatened Day is a nominal clause (with no verb), identificatory relative to theme and predicate, static in aspect, and thus not marked for time (though here expressing simultaneity with the preceding clause). However, one can establish a hierarchy of futurity, in which idhá + suffix conjugation, and yawma + prefix (imperfect) conjugation (as in Qur'án 20:102) stand at one end of the time continum, whereas the suffix conjugation with no idha stands at the other end.

As to the former approach, the verb nufikha ("was blown") is an internal passive. As to aspect (considered by Beeston to be "more important than time"¹⁰⁶), the event-stating predicate

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is dynamic (depicting a change from one situation to another, in contrast to static aspect). Given the aspectually dynamic nature of the verb in this instance, the verb has a necessary setting in time. This verb-as a suffix set itempredicates a fact (whereas the prefix set embodies a notional concept, represented in English by the auxiliary use of "could," "might," "would," etc.).¹⁰⁷ It is clearly marked for past tense (tense, defined as a grammaticalized indication of time). In this special context, the time reference of the suffix conjugation would most naturally be interpreted as past, unless extra-grammatical considerations locate the point of reference either in the past or in the future. But the question as to whether or not past tense here is past time is a matter of interpretation, if Comrie's analysis of the Arabic verbal system is correct, i.e., that Arabic is a system structured on relative tense.

If one assumes that all trumpet blasts in the Qur'án consistently refer to eschatological events, and that the eschaton is in the distant future, then it is easy to argueon the basis of those verses where idha does occur—that there must be an ellipted idha at Qur'án 50:20. It could be argued from silence that Bahá'u'lláh seems to disregard the other trumpet blast verses having an actual idhá present, and privileges this verse for an unconventional—though literal—reading with respect to time. In rejecting both arguments adduced by grammarians—ellipted idha and futurity expressed as certainty—by implication, Bahá'u'lláh appears to accept the idha nufikha parallels as references to a future eschaton, whereas Qur'án 50:20 is taken to refer to a past eschaton, contextualized with the revelation of Muhammad However, Bahá'u'lláh does accept the futurity of the trumpet blast at Matthew 24:31.

One remaining question is whether Bahá'u'lláh read this verse as iterative (that is, reenacting itself in every prophetic dispensation). There is no marked form to express this notion.

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Since iterative notionality expresses recurrence, Arabic (as other languages) tends to present such notionality as a state. Moreover, such notions of habituality are most often expressed in the present (e.g., the present simple tense). A suffix conjugation can express iterativity (as in proverbs or in oaths [performative]). But the dynamic aspect of Qur'án 50:20 seems to rule out this possibility.

The functional idha—as a time-marking subordinator—takes the syntactical structure of a conditional (medieval Arab grammarians construed this functional as an adverbial as well as a conditional). Since an event envisaged in the future cannot be a fact (as it might not take place), future time using idha would take the characteristic conditional construct. In other words, in order for the analysis of an implied idha to be valid, a corresponding conditional structure (protasis/apodosis) must obtain. But in the case of Qur'án 50:20, a conditional structure is not necessarily present. If protasislapodosis can be ruled out here, so can an ellipted idha. Otherwise, a prefix set item—with its notional value—should be used here to express futurity.¹⁰⁸ But the problem with this analysis is that ellipses of apodoses in quranic Arabic is a common construction.¹⁰⁹

How else could this verse express futurity when the verb here clearly indicates past time? The other alternative, leading to the same interpretive result, is figurative use of tense-similar to that of the "prophetic perfect" in Hebrew-in which the subjective location of point of reference is in the future. The more natural reading of this verse would be to find a present point of reference identical with the present moment of speech. In Bahá'u'lláh's interpretation, Qur'án 50:20 is coextensive with the revelation of Muhammad. Bahá'u'lláh's argument for a contemporary historical approach to the passage cited is the controlling hermeneutical principle here.

A principle to bear in mind is that figurative usage of

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language is often not marked, but context-dependent. The present tense implication of the nominal clause is rendered so by Arberry ("That is the Day of the Threat") and by Sher 'Ali ("This is the Day of Promise") and Rodwell ("It is the Threatened Day!") where the same verb can be rendered "promised" or "threatened," depending on positive or negative connotations associated with the text.

In arguing against tense figuration, Bahá'u'lláh comes close to arguing for figuration on a lexical level. Remember that grammarians would analyze the deep structure of texts in terms of ellipsis when the surface structure did not support their reading. Virtually all commentators on this passage work under the assumption that, since the text is manifestly eschatological, it must have a future meaning. The circular argument to which Bahá'u'lláh objects is recourse by grammarians to one of two explanations to support an assumed reading. If the argument for (1) an ellipted idha fails, due to lack of a corresponding conditional structure, the grammarians fall back on (2) a context-dependent argument. This is tantamount to having one's cake and eating it, too. Bahá'u'lláh, however, introduces a third possibility: (3) a literal reading of the verse as to time.

In accepting a literal reading with respect to time, Bahá'u'lláh adopts what amounts to an anti-majázi analysis of time in order to realize a greater rhetorical potential for the verse. A literal reading as to time here results in a figurative meaning for the entire constellation of eschatological imagery found in the Qur'án. At this interpretive juncture, exegesis becomes purely symbolic, since Bahá'u'lláh's argument is still a majázi one on a lexical level.

The significance of this exegesis becomes apparent when Bahá'u'lláh's literal reading of the verse regarding time effects a sweeping interpretive reversal of the traditional Islamic understanding of quranic apocalyptic as invariably

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located in the future. The traditional Islamic view allows for miracles to abound in this interpretive eschaton, permitting a literal understanding of the eschaton itself with scarce regard for implausibility. By contrast, in Bahá'u'lláh's reading of Qur'án 50:20, all eschatological imagery becomes symbolic, since the impossibility of the quranic scenario having literally come to pass in Muhammad's lifetime should be apparent.

(2) "Perchance it is nigh" in Qur'án 17:51: Bahá'u'lláh sustains his contemporary and historical reading of Qur'án 50:20 in his exegesis of Qur'án 17:51, concerning the imminence of the eschatological "Hour." The identification of the Day of Judgment with the advent of Muhammad is, for Bahá'u'lláh, borne out in the verse at Qur'án 17:51: "Erelong will they wag their heads at Thee, and say, 'When shall this be?' Say: 'Perchance it is nigh.'""O Bahá'u'lláh's commentary on this verse illustrates one of the exegetical devices whereby tawíl is brought into alignment with the controlling hermeneutical principle of a repeated eschaton at each theophanic advent:

Nay, by "trumpet" is meant the trumpet-call of Muhammad's Revelation, which was sounded in the heart of the universe, and by "resurrection" is meant His own rise to proclaim the Cause of God. He bade the erring and wayward arise and speed out of the sepulchres of their bodies, arrayed them with the beauteous robe of faith, and quickened them with the breath of a new and wondrous life. Thus at the hour when Muhammad, that divine Beauty, purposed to unveil one of the mysteries hidden in the symbolic terms "resurrection," "judgment," "paradise," and "hell," Gabriel, the Voice of Inspiration, was heard saying: "Erelong will they wag their heads at Thee, and say, 'When shall this be?' Say: 'Perchance it is nigh.'" The implications of this verse alone suffice the peoples of the world, were they to ponder it in their hearts.¹¹¹

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Expectation of an imminent eschaton ("the Hour") is one thing. Acceptance of its realization is quite another. If Bahá'u'lláh can succeed in convincing the reader that an eschaton did take place at the advent of Muhammad, by appealing to the past as a foil for the present, the plausibility of a realized eschaton in the reader's own present is not so untenable as once thought. Once the eschaton is voided of its supernatural character, its realization becomes a matter of spiritual discernment.

A choice will have to be made by the reader as to who is right: the ulama or Bahá'u'lláh. The reader initially predicates legitimacy on interpretive grounds. If the learned divines can be discredited, the reader will naturally be expected to entertain the validity of another source of authority who can offer a better interpretation. Bahá'u'lláh's interpretations throughout The Book of Certitude undermine the consensus vested in learned Islamic exegesis. Bahá'u'lláh's first challenge to traditional authority rests on interpretive grounds. In the post-Baghdad period (1863-92), Bahá'u'lláh will challenge that authority on other grounds.

RHETORICAL EXPLANATION

(1) The mathal of bread/fruit in Qur'án 76:9; 5:117; 14:24: Figurative language is nonliteral representation. The trick for the reader is to recognize symbolic language when it is not obvious. In good didactic fashion, Bahá'u'lláh exposes the reader to obviously representational verses from the Qur'án, as an approach to nonexplicit symbolism:

This wronged One will cite but one of these instances, thus conferring upon mankind, for the sake of God, such bounties as are yet concealed within the treasury of the hidden and sacred Tree, that haply mortal men may not remain deprived of their share of the immortal fruit, land attain to a dewdrop

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of the waters of everlasting life which, from Baghdad, the "Abode of Peace," are being vouchsafed unto all mankind. We ask neither meed nor reward. "We nourish your souls for the sake of God; we seek from you neither recompense nor thanks" (Qur'án 76:9).

This is the food that conferreth everlasting life upon the pure in heart and the illumined in spirit. This is the bread of which it is said: "Lord, send down upon us Thy bread from Heaven" (Qur'án 5:117). This bread shall never be withheld from them that deserve it, nor can it be exhausted. It groweth everlastingly from the tree of grace; it descendeth at all seasons from the heavens of justice and mercy. Even as He saith: "Seest thou not to what God likeneth a good word? To a good tree; its roots firmly fixed, and its branches reaching unto heaven; yielding its fruit in all seasons" (Qur'án 14:24).¹¹²

We immediately notice the self-reference to "the hidden and sacred Tree" in keeping with messianic secrecy. But this is not the main point of the passage. Clearly, the term ka- (like; as) in the text is a rhetorical flag. Even more explicit is the inevitable allusion to the verse following at Qur'án 14:25. Arberry renders both verses so:

Hast thou not seen how God has struck a similitude? A good word is as a good tree-its roots are firm, and its branches are in heaven; it gives its produce every season by the leave of its Lord. So God strikes similitudes for men; haply they will remember.

The equation, nourishment=bread=fruit from heaven, is an effective inner-quranic exegesis which identifies references to food in the Qur'án as having spiritual purport.

Behind the general reference lies a specific one. Bahá'u'lláh states that his exegesis promises to vouchsafe to "mortal men" their "share of the immortal fruit" which comes from Baghdad, the "Abode of Peace." This allusion to Qur'án 10:25 and 6:127 redraws the eschatological map. The sacred

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cartography of paradise finds its literal Cartesian coordinates in the "Abode of Peace." Earthly Baghdad, unlikely enough, ends up as the literal location of an eschatological symbol in this interpretation. Subtly-in retrospect obviously-Bahá'u'lláh hints at his concealed station as the "hidden and sacred Tree" in eschatological. paradise, from which flow the "waters of everlasting life" and in which is grown "the immortal fruit."¹¹³

(2) God's Light (Qur'án 9.33) and God as Light (Qur'án 24:35): Bahá'u'lláh's writings are rife with metaphors. In the passage below, for example, he takes up a biblical metaphor in saying: "Gird up the loins of endeavour" (kamar-t himmat-ra muhkam bayad bast). The metaphor of girding up one's loins had its origin in ancient belt-wrestling.¹¹⁴ but over time the metaphor eclipsed its original referent and transformed into a faded or "dead" metaphor. Bahá'u'lláh works in quranic metaphors stylistically as well, such that there is an implicit reinforcement of every act of exegesis with the abundant literary use of metaphorical expression.

As much for rhetorical as well as exclamatory purposes, Bahá'u'lláh adduces two verses with light imagery:

Dear friend! Now when the light of God's everlasting Morn (subh-i azal [a reference to Bahá'u'lláh himself]) is breaking, when the radiance of His holy words: "God is the light of the heavens and of the earth" (Qur'án 24:35) is shedding illumination upon all mankind; when the inviolability of His tabernacle is being proclaimed by His sacred utterance: "God hath willed to perfect His light" (Qur'an 9:33); and the Hand of Omnipotence, bearing His testimony: "in His grasp He holdeth the Kingdom of all things," is being outstretched unto all the peoples and kindreds of the earth; it behooveth us to gird up the loins of endeavour, that haply, by the grace of God, we may enter the celestial City.¹¹⁵

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The former verse, of course, is the celebrated "Light Verse" of the Qur'án. Bahá'í scholar Abii'l-Fa41, following the authoritative rhetorician al-Taftazani, observes that in the same verse the statement "the likeness of His Light is as a niche wherein is a lamp" (Qur'án 24:35) is an explicit simile (tashbih).¹¹⁶ Bahá'u'lláh takes full advantage of known and accepted quranic similes and metaphors (i.e., the general Islamic acceptance of God's "light," God's "hand," etc. as figurative) and, through frequent use of Persian genitivemetaphors, stylistically inundates the reader with metaphorical expressions.

Far from being merely ornate, his style renders the actual task of interpretation easier, as Bahá'u'lláh acelimates the reader to a metaphorical view of reality. Any reference to God's "hand" is likely to be understood as a patent metaphor, though the reader is immediately presented with an unfamiliar metaphor: "the celestial City." This nonquranic expression is explained later in The Book of Certitude:

Therefore, whosoever, and in whatever Dispensation, hath recognized and attained unto the presence of these glorious, these resplendent and most excellent Luminaries, hath verily attained unto the "Presence of God" Himself, and entered the city of eternal and immortal life. Attainment unto such presence is possible only in the Day of Resurrection, which is the rise of God Himself through His all-embracing Revelation.¹¹⁷

In the course of this passage, distinctions between quranic figurative language and Bahá'u'lláh's own become blurred. Exegesis is ongoing, nevertheless, as Bahá'u'lláh reiterates his "Presence of God" as "Manifestation of God" equivalence. In this passage, light imagery is subtly woven into the exegetical process, such that the very use of the expression "Luminaries" to mean Messengers of God resonates with the entire range of quranic light imagery. In

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fine, much of Bahá'u'lláh's rhetorical exegesis is augmented by his rhetorical style.

(3) "Wherefore slew ye them?"—Typology at Qur'án 3:183 and Qur'án 2:89: As to ingenuity in argument and the use of rhetorical reasoning, one of the most interesting sections of The Book of Certitude is Bahá'u'lláh's commentary on a quranic accusation that can best be read typologically. Bahá'u'lláh wishes to establish that the persecutors of the Báb are essentially the same in character as the slayers of the prophets of old. He cites a quranic proof-text to this effect, arguing that a literal reading of the verse would lead to absurdity:

And it came to pass that on a certain day a number of opponents of that peerless Beauty, those who had strayed far from God's imperishable Sanctuary, scornfully spoke these words unto Muhammad: "Verily, God hath entered into a covenant with us that we are not to credit an apostle until he present us a sacrifice which fire out of heaven shall devour" (Qur'án 3:183). The purport of this verse is that God hath covenanted with them that they should not believe in any messenger unless he work the miracle of Abel and Cain, that is, offer a sacrifice, and the fire from heaven consume it; even as they had heard it recounted in the story of Abel, which story is recorded in the scriptures. To this, Mu4ammad, answering, said: "Already have Apostles before me come to you with sure testimonies, and with that of which ye speak. Wherefore slew ye them? Tell me, if ye are men of truth" (Qur'án 3:183).

And now be fair: How could those people living in the days of Muhammad have existed, thousands of years before, in the age of Adam or other Prophets? Why should Muhammad, that Essence of truthfulness, have charged the people of His day with the murder of Abel or other Prophets? Thou hast none other alternative except to regard Muhammad as an impostor or a fool—which God forbid!—or to maintain that those people of wickedness were the self-same people who in

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every age opposed and caviled at the Prophets and Messengers of God, till they finally caused them all to suffer martyrdom.¹¹⁸

The reader will recall that Bahá'u'lláh cites the Qur'án in Arabic and chooses at times to paraphrase the gist of it in Persian for those on whom the Arabic is lost. The argument here is clearly rhetorical, where Muhammad's exclamation, "Wherefore slew ye them?" (Qur'án 3:183)¹¹⁹ is shown to be typological. This verse is understood in much the same vein as Christ's indictment of the Jewish leaders of his day of complicity in the death of the prophets of yore (Matthew 23:34-35).

Likewise, Bahá'u'lláh adduces Qur'án 2:89 to establish that the hard-heartedness of the people in his day convicts them, even in quranic terms, of being the self-same oppressors of old:

Likewise, Muhammad, in another verse, uttereth His protest against the people of that age. He saith: "Although they had before prayed for victory over those who believed not, yet when there came unto them, He of Whom they had knowledge, they disbelieved in Him. The curse of God on the infidels!" (Qur'án 2:189.) Reflect how this verse also implieth that the people living in the days of Muhammad were the same people who, in the days of the Prophets of old, contended and fought in order to promote the Faith, and teach the Cause of God. And yet, how could the generations living at the time of Jesus and Moses, and those who lived in the days of Muhammad, be regarded as being actually one and the same people?

Moreover, those whom they had formerly known were Moses, the Revealer of the Pentateuch, and Jesus, the Author of the Gospel. Notwithstanding, why did Muhammad say: "When He of Whom they had knowledge came unto them'—that is Jesus or Moses—"they disbelieved in Him?" Was not Muhammad to outward seeming called by a different name?

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How then can the truth of this verse be established, and its meaning be made clear?¹²⁰

This mode of reasoning is consistent with the treatment of Qur'án 3:183 above, and it should be pointed out that two verses later (at Qur'án 2:91) there is a parallel to verse 3:183: "Say: Why were you slaying the Prophets of God in former time, if you were believers?"¹²¹ This would seem to corroborate Bahá'u'lláh's interpretation.

Some simple rhetorical reasoning is sufficient to flesh out a typology which can be applied across prophetic history to the present. If the infidels of Muhammad's day were the same as the disbelievers of old, then the persecutors of the Bábís must be seen to be the same, according to this line of interpretation. Yet the "return" of the infidels of yore is an incomplete reenactment in the apocalyptic drama unless there is a prophet who "returns" as well. The villain is meaningless without the hero. And when he does return in a later age, what happens?

Bahá'u'lláh carries the extended typological metaphor one step further:

Strive therefore to comprehend the meaning of "return" which hath been so explicitly revealed in the Qur'án itself, and which none hath as yet understood. What sayest thou? If thou sayest that Muhammad was the "return" of the Prophets of old, as is witnessed by this verse, His Companions must likewise be the "return" of bygone Companions, even as the "return" of the former people is clearly attested by the text of the above-mentioned verses.... Furthermore, it is evident to thee that the Bearers of the trust of God are made manifest to the peoples of the earth as the Exponents of a new Cause and the Bearers of a new Message.¹²²

Within Islam, certain eschatological predictions foretell the return of Jesus and other prophets, as well as the return of al-Dajjal (i.e., Abu-Sufyan) and other evil men.

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By accepting the concept of the return of certain ancient worthies and their enemies, Bahá'u'lláh completes the extended metaphor, pointing out that if the circumstances surrounding the advent of a past messenger are to be reenacted, it is only logical to expect that a new religion replete with scripture and law would be brought as well. This idea of a new revelation and a new law is developed throughout The Book of Certitude. What is ostensibly a commentary on certain eschatological verses of the Qur'án ends up to be an argument for its supersession by a new revelation.

PERIPHRASIS

(1) Periphrasis on the Mysterious Letters at Qur'án 2:1: On the isolated letters (alif, lam, mim) that open the Sura of the Cow, Bahá'u'lláh's interpretation is as mainstream as it is incidental. He states: "In the disconnected letters of the Qur'án the mysteries of the divine Essence are enshrined, and within their shells the pearls of His Unity are treasured. For lack of space We do not dwell on them at this moment. Outwardly they signify Muhammad."¹²³ This is one standard interpretation in Muslim exegesis. For instance, Ibn al-'Arabi states that mim refers to Muhammad.¹²⁴ Bahá'u'lláh's purpose is not to advance a fresh interpretation, but rather to show that even quranic letters have symbolic significance.

Through an unostentatious reiteration of an existing Islamic interpretation, Bahá'u'lláh reinforces the symbolic dimension of the Qur'án. Unlike his predecessor, Bahá'u'lláh resists giving what Lawson refers to as the Báb's "exploded commentary" on single letters of the Qur'án.¹²⁵

Bahá'u'lláh's discourse represents a stylistic departure from the writings of the Báb, but not necessarily a prophetological one. From a historical perspective, The Book of Certitude functions as an apology for the Báb by making more

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accessible—as well as defensible—the Báb's prophetology. Bahá'u'lláh's own theophanology represents a crystallization of the ideological foundation already laid by the Báb. Bahá'u'lláh's presentation of what originated as a Bábí theory of prophecy is much different not in content but in accessibility.

The Báb's mystical writings were convoluted, fasciiiating (this is not a subjective assessment, but rather an observation of its impact on the reader), and assertive. Bahá'u'lláh's presentation, on the other hand, is calculated to persuade by force of "explicative logic." Throughout The Book of Certitude, the symbolic dimension of the Qur'án is argued in a variety of ways (including the use of ten standard procedural devices), but more often than not, symbolism is explained as predicated on underlying figuration. The representational possibilities of quranic discourse are demonstrated in the isolated letters themselves, in their presumed abbreviatory function.

ANALOGY

(1) "The hand of God is chained up" in Qur'án 5:67: The "hand of GoW appears in most works on rhetoric as the classic example of quranic figuration. According to al Jurjani, the value of a metaphor resides in its ability to render "hidden meanings clear and revealed to the eye." Moreover, one of the merits of the isti'ára is its ability to convey "delicate ideas" which are "buried in the intellect" as if "the eye actually sees them."¹²⁶

Given the evident anthropomorphism here which tradition had long recognized, the figurative intent of Qur'án 5:67 is assumed, while Bahá'u'lláh pursues a typological exegesis based on the idea of rejectionism. He sets up this analogy to strike a parallel between the Shí'í disbelievers of his day and the Jewish detractors in the time of

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Muhammad, represented in the verse which polemicizes: 'The hand of God, ' say the Jews, 'is chained up.' Chained up be their own hands! And for that which they have said, they are accursed. Nay, outstretched are both His hands." (Qur'án 5:67.) Bahá'u'lláh's commentary on this verse is worth citing to see how the analogy is developed between the Jews against whom the Qur'án inveighs, and Muslim intransigence against any further revelation:

Although the commentators of the Qur'án have related in divers manners the circumstances attending the revelation of this verse, yet thou shouldst endeavour to apprehend the purpose thereof. He saith: How false is that which the Jews have imagined! How can the hand of Him Who is the King in truth, Who hath caused the countenance of Moses to be made manifest, and conferred upon Him the robe of Prophethood-how can the hand of such a One be chained and fettered? How can He be conceived as powerless to raise up another Messenger after Moses?

Behold the absurdity of their saying; how far it hath strayed from the path of knowledge and understanding! Observe how in this day also, all these people have occupied themselves with foolish absurdities. For over a thousand years they have been reciting this verse, and unwittingly pronouncing their censure against the Jews, utterly unaware that they themselves, openly and privily, are voicing the sentiments and belief of the Jewish people!¹²⁷

This comparison must have been an invidious one to Shí'ís challenged by it. The pill was made even harder to swallow when Bahá'u'lláh, a few sentences later, refered to his Shí'í detractors as "small-minded, contemptible people."¹²⁸

Harsh words, but the treatment Bahá'u'lláh received at the hands of Shí'í ulama was considerably harsher. "These people have imagined," continues Bahá'u'lláh, "that the flow of God's all-encompassing grace and plenteous mercies, the cessation of which no mind can contemplate, has been

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halted."¹²⁹ This indictment against Muslim theology for keeping to the belief that "out of the Tabernacle of ancient glory the Messengers of God have ceased to be made manifest"¹³⁰ is prosecuted on the basis of analogy with similar assertions of revelatory finality in Judaism.

(2) Past/Present Analogy—No Messenger after Joseph at Qur'án 40:34: In the Qur'án, the Jews are singled out repeatedly as the classic rejectionists of God's revelations. Bahá'u'lláh takes advantage of this quranic theme to invert the quranic indictment upon the Muslim clerics themselves. The Qur'án represents the Jews as saying, after the passing of Joseph, "God will by no means raise up a Messenger after him." (Qur'án 40:34.) An analogy is struck by the mere citation of this verse; yet in Bahá'u'lláh's comment on it, the Jews are not directly mentioned:

Therefore, understand this verse and know of a certainty that the people in every age, clinging to a verse of the Book, have uttered such vain and absurd sayings, contending that no Prophet should again be made manifest to the world. Even as the Christian divines who, holding fast to the verse of the Gospel to which We have already referred, have sought to explain that the law of the Gospel shall at no time be annulled, and that no independent Prophet shall again be made manifest, unless He confirmeth the law of the Gospel. Most of the people have become afflicted with the same spiritual disease. Even as thou dost witness how the people of the Qur'án) like unto the peoples of old, have allowed the words "Seal of the Prophets" to veil their eyes.

And yet, they themselves testify to this verse: "None knoweth the interpretation thereof but God and they that are well-grounded in knowledge" (Qur'án 3:7). And when He Who is well-grounded in all knowledge, He Who is the Mother, the Soul, the Secret, and the Essence thereof revealeth that which is the least contrary to their desire, they bitterly oppose Him and shamelessly deny Him. These thou hast already heard

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and witnessed. Such deeds and words have been solely instigated by leaders of religion, they that worship no God but their own desire, who bear allegiance to naught but gold, who are wrapt in the densest veils of learning, and who, enmeshed by its obscurities, are lost in the wilds of error.¹³¹

This is obviously another assault upon an Islamic dogma. The blow is softened only to the extent that Jews and Christians are equally culpable for having rejected Muhammad. The past again is used as a foil for the present. It is interesting that the very cornerstone of the Islamic doctrine of revelatory finality is questioned. Bahá'u'lláh implies that Islamic tradition has been overconfident in its interpretation of the "Seal of the Prophets."

What is unclear in Bahá'u'lláh's commentary is this: to whom does he allude when he speaks of "the Mother, the Soul, the Secret, and the Essence thereof?" Is the Báb or Bahá'u'lláh himself in view here? Had the context a clear contemporary time frame, the reference to Bahá'u'lláh himself would be probable, since the Báb had already fallen victim to rejection when he suffered martyrdom eleven or twelve years earlier (1850). However, even in the original Persian the reference is unclear. The safest reading would be to identify the Báb as the subject of this passage, since he is the subject of The Book of Certitude as a whole.

I am obliged to exercise some interpretive restraint here. Had this passage a clear reflexive intent on the part of Bahá'u'lláh, our working hypothesis would have been strength ened. A third possibility presents itself: Perhaps Bahá'u'lláh has been intentionally vague here, so that the passage could be read either way. This possibility is consistent with the hypothesis of Bahá'u'lláh's "messianic secret," to which he could only allude at this time.

(3) Analogy with Alchemy: An important aspect of 33aha'u'lláh's argument is his use of analogies drawn from

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topical issues of interest within popular religion. The occult science of alchemy had certainly been of more than passing interest to many Bábís. In the passage below, Bahá'u'lláh compares spiritual transformation to the process of alchemy:

Such is the potency of the Divine Elixir, which, swift as the twinkling of an eye, transmuteth the souls of men! For instance, consider the substance of copper. Were it to be protected in its own mine from becoming solidified, it would, within the space of seventy years, attain to the state of gold.... Be that as it may, the real elixir will, in one instant, cause the substance of copper to attain the state of gold ... Likewise, these souls, through the potency of the Divine Elixir, traverse, in the twinkling of an eye, the world of dust and advance into the realm of holiness.... It behooveth thee to exert thine utmost to attain unto this Elixir which, in one fleeting breath, causeth the west of ignorance to reach the east of knowledge, illumines the darkness of night with the resplendence of the morn, guideth the wanderer in the wilderness of doubt to the well-spring of the Divine Presence and Fount of Certitude, and conferreth upon mortal souls the honor of acceptance into the Ridvan of immortality.¹³²

Elsewhere in The Book of Certitude Bahá'u'lláh criticizes alchemy as a figment in "the realm of fancy" existing on "the plane of mere pretension."¹³³ yet the topic had provided a descriptive model for Shafth Ahmad al-Absa'i (d. 1826 C.E.) in his treatise on "Alchemy and the Resurreetion Body"¹³⁴ as part of the immediate intellectual background for The Bábí and Bahá'í Religions.

At the time The Book of Certitude was written, many (probably most) Bábís were quite fascinated by alchemy, so it was natural for them to approach Bahá'u'lláh on the subject. Several of his Tablets on alchemy have been published, but none has been translated. These are among the most arcane and recondite of Bahá'u'lláh's writings, and unless one has been exposed to the occult terminology of

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alchemy, one will be at an utter loss to fathom even one sentence of such a Tablet. Bahá'u'lláh's alchemical Tablets are somewhat like secret recipes, mystifying to read.¹³⁵ it seems that during the Baghdad period, Bahá'u'lláh not only concentrated on mysticism, ethics, and doctrine, he also satisfied the curiosity of his fellow Bábís who took an interest in the esoteric.¹³⁶

In so doing, Bahá'u'lláh was able to redirect their energies toward more useful enterprises, like personal transformation. Since the mythical "Elixir" had been sought in vain by alchemists for centuries, it provided a perfect symbol for the object of a spiritual quest. By transferring alchemical imagery to the realm of faith, Bahá'u'lláh could begin to speak of an elixir within reach of the true believer. With regard to the above passage, the interpretive question again arises: Is "this Elixir" an allusion to the Báb or to Bahá'u'lláh, or both?

(4) Analogies from Nature—the Sun: The sun is one of the most frequently used analogies in Bahá'í teachings. Bahá'u'lláh draws analogy with other elements of nature (such as the rose).¹³⁷ but the sun—as developed in The Book of Certitude—is a more compelling metaphor for prophetology. The prophets of God are frequently compared to the sun. Just as the sun is effectively the source of all life on earth, so is the Manifestation of God the source for all spiritual life, according to Bahá'í theology.

There is longstanding Shí'í precedent in identifying celestial bodies with holy persons. Take the quranic oath: "By the Sun and his noonday brightness! By the Moon when she fOlloweth him! By the Day when it revealeth his glory! By the Night when it enshroudeth him!" (Qur'án 91:1-4, Rodwell). Respectively, "sun" and "moon" are said by al-Qummi (author of one of the best-known Shí'í commentaries on the Qur'án) to represent Muhammad and 'Ali. The "day" is the Imam (or, in

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some traditions, precisely the Mahdi), while the "night" represents collectively the enemies of the Imams, particularly Abu Bakr, whose caliphate "enshrouded" 'Ali.¹³⁸

In light of Shí'í readings such as these, Bahá'u'lláh refers to a received interpretation of Qur'án 55:5. It is important to take a look at this text for a moment, in order to make a point about his use of analogies. Lest the reader think that all of his interpretations of the sun are the same, the sun can serve as a negative analogy as well as a positive one. In the passage below, Bahá'u'lláh turns a positive analogy into a negative one, and then cites Qur'án 55:5 as his prooftext, assuming that the reader already is conscious of its interpretation. Pay close attention to the verse itself, because its translation is surprising:

That the term "sun" hath been applied to the leaders of religion is due to their lofty position, their fame, and renown. Such are the universally recognized divines of every age, who speak with authority, and whose fame is securely established. If they be in the likeness of the Sun of Truth, they will surely be accounted as the most exalted of luminaries; otherwise, they are to be recognized as the focal centres of hellish fire. Even as He saith: "Verily, the sun and moon are both condemned to the torment of infernal fire." (Qur'án 55:5J You are no doubt familiar with the interpretation of the term "sun" and "moon" mentioned in this verse; no need therefore to refer to it. And whosoever is of the element of this "sun" and "moon", that is, followeth the example of these leaders in setting his face towards falsehood and in turning away from the truth he undoubtedly cometh out of infernal gloom and returneth thereunto.¹³⁹

Loftiness is Bahá'u'lláh's constant for the symbol of the sun. That status can be good or bad. In the ancient Near East, the nimbus of the sun was referred to as its "glory." This glory denoted solar radiance. It connoted fame. Bahá'u'lláh is tapping into a venerable interpretive heritage

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here. He puts a moral spin on such imagery, however. The image of light can trade on notions of hell-fire, expressive of corrupt leadership. This is a departure from the stock light/darkness dichotomy.

Now Qur'án 55:5 is Bahá'u'lláh's proof-text. He is not interpreting the text as such. Rather, he is alluding to an already accepted interpretation. This verse citation presents a problem for the present-day reader, however. Surely every reader of Shoghi Effendi's translation of The Book of Certitude who has ever looked up Qur'án 55:5 in any standard translation of the Qur'án has failed to find this verse in the form in which Shoghi Effendi has rendered it. The Arabic text for verse 55:5 as cited by Bahá'u'lláh in the Persian original is in standard quranic form:

al-shamsu wa al-qamaru bi-husbanin¹⁴⁰

Verily, the sun and moon are both condemned to the torment of infernal fire.
(according to Shoghi Effendi)

Rodwell's translation provided a model which, as a rule, Shoghi Effendi closely adhered to. In this particular instance, there is a significant departure from that standard. Compare Shoghi Effendi's translation with Rodwell and others, as provided below. Verse 55:6 has been added for contextual reasons, as will be explained shortly:

The Sun and the Moon have each their times,
And the plants and the trees bend in adoration.
(Rodwell)

The sun and the moon to a reckoning,
and the stars and the trees bow themselves.
(Arberry)

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The sun and moon are made punctual.
The stars and the trees adore.
(Pickthall)

The sun and the moon move according to a fixed reckoning;
and the stars and trees submit to Him.

(Zafrulla Khan)

The sun and moon run their courses according to a fixed reckoning.
And the stemless plants and the trees humbly submit to His will.

(Sher'Ali)

The sun and moon adhere to a schedule,
and the stars and the trees, all bow in worship.

(Maududi)

In the above translations, an extra verse was cited. This is because the context of Qur'án 55:5 is supplied by Qur'án 55:6. It was added to show how easily such a verse could lend itself to symbolic interpretation, as the imagery of stars (or plants!) and trees doing obeisance to God in verse 55:6 is so patently tropical. Qur'án 55:6 is clearly an instance of prosopopkia (fictio personae or personification), a literary device.¹⁴¹

Bahá'u'lláh's adducing of Qur'án 55:5 as symbolic is consistent with the already figurative reference to nature in Qur'án 55:6, where stars (or plants) and trees submit to, or even worship, God. Acknowledgement of figuration allows for equivalences to be drawn, to supply a veridical meaning in place of the tropical. A literal rewording suffices as a gloss on the figurative. Symbolic interpretation goes one step further. It provides the putative referent; it points to the symbol's presumed allusion or identity. Bahá'u'lláh thus reads Qur'án 55:5 as symbolic of benighted religious leaders, depicted as celestial bodies by virtue of their lofty status, but who, in the end, are consigned to hell.

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In light of the dynamic interpretive interplay between notions of reckoning and judgment, the balance does not tip in favor of the benighted divines of whom Bahá'u'lláh speaks, and of whom Qur'án 55:5 has already spoken in Shí'í circles. (We are taking Bahá'u'lláh at his word here, when he asserts: "You are no doubt familiar with the interpretation of the term 'sun' and 'moon' mentioned in this verse; no need therefore to refer unto it." I have not located the source of the interpretation to which Bahá'u'lláh alludes.¹⁴² ) This interpretation could have been generally Shí'í, or specifically Sufi, Shaykhi, or Bábí. An anti-clerical bias is clearly evident in this line of interpretation, however.

One thing is clear: Bahá'u'lláh has read husban as "hell." The word husban is a verbal noun derived from hasba, "to compute, reckon, calculate."¹⁴³ In Arabic, husban means "calculation, reckoning, accounting, computation."¹⁴⁴ This lexical denotation is borne out in the translations cited above. In Persian, the word husban takes on a particular connotation as well. Lexically, the definition of husban in Persian is U calculation; severe punishment; a short arrow."¹⁴⁵ "Severe punishment" is the relevant sense here. Colloquially, many Iranians will say that husban signifies "hell."¹⁴⁶ This is because of the word's eschatological associations. A standard Islamic designation is yawn al-hisab, the "Day of Reckoning" or "Judgment Day. "¹⁴⁷ The cognate term muhtasab is "that for which one can expect reward in the hereafter (e.g., suffering, loss, etc.)."¹⁴⁸ There is a tie-in with "reckoning" here. "Reckoning" in this sense is judgment under the laws of reward and retribution, not the laws of nature. When 4usban is read as "hell," the verse would literally read, as a nominal sentence in Arabic:

al-shamsu wa al-qamaru bi-husban'n
The sun and the moon [are] in hell.

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Probably because the application of this verse to Bahá'u'lláh's argument might have been lost on the reader, Shoghi Effendi supplied the missing conceptual elements in his translation. These supplements to the actual quranic text are bracketed below.

[Verily,] the sun and moon [are both condemned]
to [the torment of] infernal fire.

Bahá'u'lláh's citation of Qur'án 55:5 as a proof-text is enriched by Shoghi Effendi, who provides a periphrastic rendering of the verse in translation. Bahá'u'lláh's use of the sun and moon as an analogy is seen to have quranic precedence. Symbolic interpretation is already warranted in Shí'í exegesis.

Bahá'u'lláh employs the analogy of the sun to explain what is meant by the "return" of a prophet, such as the eschatological return of Jesus. Recall that in Sunni tradition Jesus is expected to return at the eschaton to break crosses and kill swine. In The Book of Certitude, Bahá'u'lláh disregards such Islamic traditions in favor of the biblical tradition.

Another verse construed as symbolic runs thus: "He let forth the two seas that meet together, between them is a barrier which they do not overpass. O which of your Lord's bounties will you and you deny?" From them come forth the pearl and the coral" (Qur'án 55:19-22, Arberry). The "two seas" are taken by Ibn Bábúya (one of the first exponents of Shí'í orthodoxy) as 'Ali and Fatima, while the "coral" and "pearls" are the Imams Hasan and Husayn.¹⁴⁹

The Qur'án, after all, has little to say about the eschatological "return" of ancient figures. But Shí'í tradition does. Prominent in Shí'í speculation is the return of the Twelfth Imam, the Qá'im. Not so prominent, but still part of the apocalyptic drama, is the return of Imam gusayn, the third

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Imam. It appears that the Mahdi in Sunni tradition is specified as the Qá'im in Shí'í tradition. (No Sunni Muslim would accept that the Mahdi is the Twelfth Imam!) Similarly, although Shí'í tradition still expects the return of Jesus, it appears that the figure of the martyred Husayn displaces in importance the Sunni attention given to Jesus's Islamicized Second Coming.

Returning to analogy as a procedural device, Bahá'u'lláh attempts to solve the problem of what exactly Jesus had meant when he spoke of his own return. The solution is simple. It is the reality of the prophet, and not his personality or physicality that is intended. Here the analogy of the sun comes into play. Note how that in the passage below, for the purposes of analogy, the sun is personified:

As to the matter of names, Muhammad, Himself, declared: "I am Jesus."... In this sense, neither the person of Jesus nor His writings hath differed from that of Muhammad and of His holy Book, inasmuch as both have championed the Cause of God, uttered His praise, and revealed His commandments. Thus it is that Jesus, Himself, declared: "I go away and come again unto you." (John 14:28.) Consider the sun. Were it to say now, "I am the sun of yesterday," it would speak the truth. And should it, bearing the sequence of time in mind, claim to be other than that sun, it would still speak the truth.... For though they are the same, yet one doth recognize in each a separate designation, a specific attribute, a particular character.

Conceive accordingly the distinction, variation, and unity characteristic of the various Manifestations of holiness, that thou mayest comprehend the allusions made by the Creator of all names and attributes to the mysteries of distinction and unity, and discover the answer to thy question as to why that everlasting Beauty should have, at sundry and different times, called Himself by different names and titles.¹⁵⁰

It would be a mistake to read reincarnation into Bahá'u'lláh's analogy. The theme of return is purely typological.

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But what of the various "mysteries of distinction and unity" that eschatological traditions attach to different prophetic personalities? As to scripture, Bahá'u'lláh discusses the problem of what Lawson refers to as "voice"¹⁵¹ and frame of reference, with respect to theophanic locutions ascribed to various prophets. Each Manifestation of God has three voices, according to The Book of Certitude, according to frame of reference:

(1) "The Voice of Divinity, the Call of God Himself":¹⁵²

Were any of the all-embracing Manifestations of God to declare: "I am God!" He verily speaketh the truth, and no doubt attacheth thereto. For it hath been repeatedly demonstrated that through their Revelation, their attributes and names, the Revelation of God, His name and His attributes, are made manifest in the world. Thus, He hath revealed: "Those shafts were God's, not Thine!" (Qur'án 8:17) And also He saith: "In truth, they who plighted fealty unto thee, really plighted fealty unto God." (Qur'án 48:10.)¹⁵³

2) The Voice of the Manifestation of God:

And were any of them to voice the utterance: "I am the Messenger of God," He also speaketh the truth, the indubitable truth. Even as He saith: 'Muhammad is not the father of any man among you, but He is the Messenger of God." (Qur'án 33:40.) Viewed in this light, they are all but Messengers of that ideal King, that unchangeable Essence. And were they all to proclaim: "I am the Seal of the Prophets," (Qur'án 33:40) they verily utter but the truth, beyond the faintest shadow of doubt. For they are all but one person, one soul, one spirit, one being, one revelation. They are all the Manifestation of the "Beginning" and the "End," the "First" and the "Last," the "Seen" and the "Hidden"-all of which pertain to Him Who is the innermost Spirit of Spirits and eternal Essence of Essences.¹⁵⁴

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(3) The Voice of the Servant of God:

And were they to say: "We are the servants of God," this is also a manifest and indisputable fact. For they have been made manifest in the uttermost state of servitude, a servitude the like of which no man can possibly attain. Thus in moments in which these Essences of being were deeply immersed beneath the oceans of ancient and everlasting holiness, or when they soared to the loftiest summits of divine mysteries, they claimed their utterance to be the Voice of divinity, the Call of God Himself.

Were the eye of discernment to be opened, it would recognize that in this very state, they have considered themselves utterly effaced and non-existent in the face of Him Who is the All-Pervading, the Incorruptible. Methinks, they have regarded themselves as utter nothingness, and deemed their mention in that Court an act of blasphemy. For the slightest whisperings of self, within such a Court, is an evidence of self-assertion and independent existence.¹⁵⁵

This is one of the most important passages in The Book of Certitude. This explanation resolves the problem of "voice" in scripture and in the theophanic locutions of the prophets of,God. The passage is self-explanatory. The reader may wish to note the frequent references to Qur'án 33:40 throughout The Book of Certitude, direct or oblique.

The Islamic doctrine of revelatory finality is firmly predicated on verse 33:40. This is the most crucial verse Bahá'u'lláh has to deal with. In effect, the entire Book of Certitude may be said to be an exegesis of Qur'án 33:40. The analogy of the sun is repeated later in The Book of Certitude, where it serves to reinforce the overall arguilient. Bahá'u'lláh acknowledges that this proof had been advanced previously by the Báb.¹⁵⁶

Given the aforementioned Shí'í identifications of celestial imagery with prophets and imams, this is one of the more readily accepted symbol/referents. What remains

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controversial is the interpretive destabilization of the quranic epithet "Seal of the Prophets" from an exclusivist to an inclusivist interpretation. In an Islamic context, this exegetical innovation is unacceptable, even though Bahá'u'lláh's argument is entirely Islamic in form. The traditional exegesis of verse 33:40 is too entrenched for any fresh perspective to be seriously entertained by orthodox Islam. No matter how persuasive Bahá'u'lláh's argument may have been, that argument was a dangerous one to make in a Muslim context. It still is.

ABROGATION¹⁵⁷

Change of Qibla at Qur'án 2:143-149: In theory, what God has enacted He should be at liberty to repeal. No constraints should be placed on this divine prerogative. Or should there be? Will the eschaton validate Islam and vindicate the sharia? This is open to question. Amanat has remarked on the abrogatory implications of the eschaton for Islam. He states:

The Resurrection comes after a series of apocalyptic events that terminate historic time and put an end to the decaying terrestrial world, of which the Islamic sharia is also a part. According to the prophetic tradition, what is lawful and unlawful in the Muhammadan revelation is valid only until the Day of Judgment. Thus, Islamic sharia ceases its purpose once the Qiyama occurs. The purpose of religion, according to Islam, is to prepare the way in this world for man's ultimate salvation. After the Day of Judgment, the redeemed will live eternally in Paradise (a non-sharia world). The theological obstacles thus reduce the chances of the Qiyama being perceived as an allegory by seekers of the Resurrection achievable in the material world. Accordingly, the obstacles to the occurrence of the QiyaFtma also remove the contingency for a new prophetic revelation.

The finality of Islam and its endurance are guaranteed

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until the Day of Judgment, and any attempt to initiate a new phase of prophecy must be considered illegitimate. As the Qur'án itself points out, Islam is the final revelation and Muhammad the "seal of the prophets." This claim, consistently upheld by Islamic orthodoxy, not only militates against the notion of prophetic continuity but also hinders any attempt at the renovation of doctrine.... But when a claimant went so far as to declare the abrogation of the accepted sharia, he would be compelled to provide a symbolic interpretation for the occurrence, or the near occurrence, of the Qiya'ima without which the previous sharia could not be nullified.¹⁵⁸

The problem could scarcely have been better articulated. Already the precedent for such an abrogation—along with a symbolic legitimation of it—had been effected by the Báb. He had established a new sharl'a by the revelation of the Arabic Bayán, and he had elaborated on it in the unfinished Persian Bayán—which the Kitáb-i Íqán is said to have mystically completed.

As to the question of whether Wansbrough's category of "abrogation" operates as a procedural device here, it should be made clear that, rather than analyzing a quranic verse in terms of its abrogating or being abrogated by another verse, Bahá'u'lláh uses concepts of abrogation drawn from scripture and tradition to establish precedents for abrogation as part of the legislative prerogative of the prophet. This line of argument points to one of the major consequences of the claim to a new revelation, that is, the power to effect a new sharia.

One such argument advanced by Bahá'u'lláh concerns altering of the sacred direction of prayer:

And likewise, reflect upon the revealed verse concerning the "Qiblih." When Muhammad, the Sun of Prophethood, had fled from the dayspring of Batba [Mecca] unto Yathrib [Medina], He continued to turn His face, while praying, unto Jerusalem, the holy city, until the time when the Jews began to utter

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unseemly words against Him.... Muhammad strongly resented these words. Whilst, wrapt in meditation and wonder, He was gazing toward heaven, He heard the kindly Voice of Gabriel, saying: "We behold Thee from above, turning Thy face to heaven; but We will have Thee turn to a Qiblih which shall please Thee." (Qur'án 2:144.) On a subsequent day, when the Prophet, together with His companions, was offering the noontide prayer, and had already performed two of the prescribed Rik'ats [prostrations], the Voice of Gabriel was heard again: "Turn Thou Thy face towards the sacred Mosque." (Qur'án 2:149-Mecca.)

In the midst of that same prayer, Muhammad suddenly turned His face away from Jerusalem and faced the Kabih. Whereupon a profound dismay seized suddenly the companions of the Prophet. Their faith was shaken severely. So great was their alarm, that many of them, discontinuing their prayer, apostasized their faith. Verily, God caused not this turmoil, but to test and prove His servants.¹⁵⁹

Bahá'u'lláh establishes the reason for God's command to change the sacred direction of prayer: "Verily, God caused not this turmoil, but to test and prove His servants."¹⁶⁰ This is a traditional interpretation and an early one as well. Al-Tabari relates on the authority of Ibn'Abbas that the alteration of the Qibla was effected "so that we may distinguish the people of certainty from the people of association (shirk) and doubt."¹⁶¹ Though al-Tabaris point is made in a different context, the test of faith is presented as an important issue.

Bahá'u'lláh then adduces the figurative verse, descriptive of those who failed the test: "Affrighted asses fleeing from a lion." (Qur'án 74:50.)¹⁶² In concert with the commonplace trope for courage (i.e., lion), Bahá'u'lláh adduces the same kind of figure in the Qur'án, which employs the metonym "asses" for cowards. This verse is not interpreted. It is exclamatory.

Abrogation always involves a test of faith. Any alteration of the shari'a poses a problem. The wholesale abrogation of

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the Islamic law code would provoke a crisis, which is why Bahá'ís in Middle Eastern countries have had to exercise prudence in their contacts with Muslims. Sacred direction is an important part of piety: One's whole devotional orientation in Judaism or Islam (as well as in early Jewish Christianity) is expressed by it. The tafsír master al-Nisábúri has written a meditation on the notion of sacred direction:

It is that the servant must turn his face toward the king and serve him. It is also in order that unity and harmony among the people of faith may be established.... The Jews faced the west, which is the direction of the setting of lights.... The Christians faced the east, which is the direction of the rising of the lights . . . but the people of faith faced the manifestation of lights, which is Mecca.... The Throne is the qiblah of its bearers, the kursi [footstool] is the qiblah of the righteous ones.... and the Kaaba is the qiblah of the people of faith.¹⁶³

In relating the story of the abrogation of the Qibla at the time of Muhammad, Bahá'u'lláh recounts the circumstances of revelation pertaining to two verses having to do with that event (Qur'án 2:144, 149). Where Bahá'u'lláh is perhaps untraditional here is in adducing Qur'án 2:115 as pertaining to the Qibla:

None of the many Prophets sent down, since Moses was manifest, as Messengers of the Word of God, such as David, Jesus, and others among the more exalted Manifestations who have appeared during the intervening period between the Revelations of Moses and Muhammad, ever altered the law of the Qiblah. These Messengers of the Lord of creation have, one and all, directed their peoples to turn unto the same direction. In the eyes of God, the ideal King, all the places of the earth are one and the same, excepting that place which, in the days of His Manifestations, He doth appoint for a particular purpose. Even as He hath revealed: "The East and West are God's: therefore whichever way ye turn, there is the face of God." (Quran 2:115.)

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Notwithstanding the truth of these facts, why should the Qiblih have been changed, thus casting such dismay amongst the people, causing the companions of the Prophet to waver, and throwing so great a confusion into their midst? Yea, such things as throw consternation into the hearts of all men come to pass only that each soul may be tested by the touchstone of God, that the true may be known and distinguished from the false.¹⁶⁴

On Qur'án 2:115, which Bahá'u'lláh cites, Rippin states: "One thing unites all the asbab reports adduced for this verse: virtually all of the material is constructed such that the verse is not to be included as part of the Qibla controversy."¹⁶⁵ That is to say, no legal meaning was extracted from this text regarding the problem of the Qibla. (This verse did, however, have legal bearing on the direction of prayer when foggy or dark.) Bahá'u'lláh runs counter to the Islamic legal precedent in relating verse 2:115 to the Qibla controversy, in both a legal as well as spiritually edifying context. Bahá'u'lláh makes clear that abrogation poses a clear test of faith. There is, in fact, no symbolic exegesis here, except for the analogy which will be drawn elsewhere in The Book of Certitude between the unfaithful of yore and those who will be tested by whatever God desires to abrogate or confirm in the course of a new revelation.

So Bahá'u'lláh, after citing Qur'án 13:41 ("What He pleaseth will God abrogate or confirm"), implies the imminence of a new revelator (and thus a new abrogator):

Say: O people of the earth! Behold this flamelike-Youth that speedeth across the limitless profound of the Spirit, heralding unto you the tidings: 'Lo: the Lamp of God is shining,' and summoning you to heed His Cause which, though hidden beneath the veils of ancient splendour, shineth in the land of 'Iraq above the day-spring of eternal holiness.¹⁶⁶

Later in the course of his ministry, Bahá'u'lláh himself

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would alter the Qibla. With this abrogation of the Meccan Qibla, it could relevantly be observed that such "use of qibla" was, indeed, a "sectarian emblem."¹⁶⁷

CIRCUMSTANCES OF REVELATION

"Circumstances of revelation" (asbab al-nuzul) refers to a sub-genre of tafsír. A classical definition of the term states that it signifies historical accounts which describe "the transmission of the sabab (occasion) of the revelation of a sura or verse and the time, place and so forth of its revelation. It is verified by the well-known principles of transmission from the pious ancestors (salaf). Its goal is the precise rendering of these matters."¹⁶⁸

This was not necessarily Bahá'u'lláh's principal objective in citing such traditions. Rather, he wished to adduce historical analogies to illustrate the principle of abrogation. Comparatively, Bahá'u'lláh's use of various sabab reports conforms to their traditional function, which was, according to Rippin, a "haggadically exegetical" one, which could "provide a narrative account in which the basic exegesis of the verse may be embodied."¹⁶⁹ Presented below are some occasions of revelation adduced in The Book of Certitude. In the first, Bahá'u'lláh wishes to resolve the metaphorical nature of Qur'án 6:122 by means of a sabab citation.¹⁷⁰

(1) Sabab on Qur'án 6:122: "Shall the dead, whom We have quickened, and for whom We have ordained a light whereby he may walk among men, be like him, whose likeness is in the darkness, whence he will not come forth?" (Qur'án 6:122.) Bahá'u'lláh establishes the metaphorical nature of this verse by reference to the circumstance of its revelation in its traditional historical context. According to the occasion (sabab) cited, Bahá'u'lláh explains:

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This verse descended from the heaven of the Primal Will at a time when Hamzih had already been invested with the sacred mantle of faith, and Abu-Jahl had waxed relentless in his opposition and unbelief. From the Wellspring of omnipotence and the Source of eternal holiness, there came the judgment that conferred everlasting life upon Hamzih, and condemned Abu-Jahl to eternal damnation. This was the signal that caused the fires of unbelief to glow with the hottest flame in the heart of the infidels, and provoked them to openly repudiate His truth. They loudly clamoured: "When did Hamzih die? When was he risen? At what hour was such a life conferred upon biM?"¹⁷¹

The figurative giveaway in this verse, of course, is mathaluhu, in which the text itself signals that a parable (mathal) has been struck: Hamza, who was spiritually lifeless before his quickening by faith, is compared explicitly to light and implicitly to life, while the reverse obtains for Abu-Jahl. It serves Bahá'u'lláh's argument to point to a hyperbolic passage in the Qur'án which, however explicit its metaphorical nature, is said to have perplexed the prophet's audience at the time of its revelation. Bahá'u'lláh has preceded this sabab with a general statement regarding scriptural concern with the life of faith, not physical longevity:

Wert thou to attain to but a dewdrop of the crystal waters of divine knowledge, thou wouldst readily realize that true life is not the life of the flesh but the life of the spirit. For the life of the flesh is common to both men and animals, whereas the life of the spirit is possessed only by the pure in heart who have quaffed from the ocean of faith and partaken of the fruit of certitude. This life knoweth no death, and this existence is crowned by immortality.¹⁷²

Bahá'u'lláh's sabab citation and subsequent exegesis of the verse allows him to interpret in such a way that, as in the case of an instance cited by Rippin, "an exemplum may be

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extracted directly from the wording of the text rather than being taken on a symbolic level."¹⁷³ If Bahá'u'lláh, in this and other acts of exegesis, can convince the reader of the figurative significance of the quranic terms "life" and "light," it follows that the quranic cluster of other eschatological symbols can be explicated in the same vein.

(2) The new moons in Qur'án 2:189: The verse reads: "They will ask thee of the new moons. Say: They are periods appointed unto men." One sabab on this verse is found in Muqatil ibn Sulayman's (d. 767 C.E.) Tafsír al-Qur'án as follows:

Mu'ah ibn Jabal and Tha'labah ibn Ghanamah said: "O Messenger! Why is it that the new moon is just visible, then it appears small like a needle, then brightens until it is strong, then levels off and becomes a circle, only to start to decrease and get smaller, until it returns just as it was? Why does it not remain at a single level?" So God revealed the verse about the new moons.¹⁷⁴

Bahá'u'lláh reserves comment until citing the verse below, which follows immediately in the text, except to comment that "they who heard him (Muhammad) denounced him as an ignorant man."¹⁷⁵

(3) The query as to "the Spirit" in Quran 17:85: Upon being asked of the "Spirit" or agent of revelation (Gabriel), Muhammad replied: "Say, 'the Spirit proceedeth at My Lord's command.'" According to the sabab Bahá'u'lláh cites: "As soon as Muhammad's answer was given, they all clamorously protested, saying: 'Lo! an ignorant man who knoweth not what the Spirit is, calleth Himself the Revealer of divine Knowledge.'"¹⁷⁶ No figurative or symbolic exegesis is performed here. The point is simply this: tension has always existed between human and divine standards of knowledge.

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Bahá'u'lláh has preceded these two edifying anecdotes with their moral. At the heart of that moral is an oblique and possibly significant self-reference:

These words uttered by the Luminaries of Truth must needs be pondered, and should their significance not be grasped, enlightenment should be sought from the Trustees of the depositories of Knowledge, that these may expound their meaning, and unravel their mystery. For it behooveth no man to interpret the holy words according to his own imperfect understanding, nor, having found them to be contrary to his inclinations and desires, to reject and repudiate their truth.

For such, today, is the manner of the divines and doctors of the age, who occupy the seats of knowledge and learning, and who have named ignorance knowledge, and called oppression justice. Were these to ask the Light of Truth concerning those images which their idle fancy hath carved, and were they to find His answer inconsistent with their own conceptions and understanding of the Book, they would assuredly denounce Him Who is the Mine and Wellhead of all Knowledge as the very negation of human understanding. Such things have happened in every age.¹⁷⁷

If the "Luminaries of Truth" are the prophets, then who is the "light of truth" and "the Mine and Wellhead of all knowledge?" In this case, we cannot rule out the Báb. But in terms of the contemporary time frame, it is doubtful that Bahá'u'lláh had the Báb in mind. The most natural reading of this passage is hypothetical: Whoever God might send would receive the same treatment by the divines of any age, whose overconfidence in their own interpretations would overrule even the challenge presented by a messenger of God.

There are a number of historical anecdotes that recount how various Bábís were drawn to Bahá'u'lláh. These stories, hagiographical though they may be, seem to be authentic attestations of Bahá'u'lláh's charismatic powers. These postBábí "conversion" narratives usually speak of some form of

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precocious "recognition of Bahá'u'lláh's "station." One obvious problem arises in that there was no explicit "station" claimed by Bahá'u'lláh for anyone to recognize. On the other hand, given passages like this ambiguous, conditional, but contemporary "Light of Truth" reference, there may have been some perceptive second-guessing going on among the Bábís.

In Bahá'u'lláh's mystical poetry during the Baghdad period, certain of his verses can be read as Sufi ecstatic circumlocutions absorbed in emotive identification with divinity. Again, if Bahá'u'lláh is keeping a secret about his prophetic vocation—from the time of his 1852 Siyah-Chal prophetic "annunciation" to his 1863 Ridvan declaration—it is one he does not completely contain. Throughout his writings during this period, there are carefully constructed passages of a highly ambiguous nature, some of which are clearly reflexive and others that are probably so. Many clues are secreted in these vague statements. Or are they? The resolution of this problem bears greatly on the reading of Bahá'u'lláh's writings during the Baghdad period, including interpretation of The Book of Certitude.

(4) Sabab on Qur'án 5:62: "Say, O people of the Book! do ye not disavow us only because we believe in God and in what He hath sent down to us, and in what He hath sent down aforetime, and because most of you are doers of ill?" (Qur'án 5:62.) Bahá'u'lláh discloses that, "this verse was revealed at a time when Islam was assailed by the infidels."¹⁷⁸ He then proceeds to elaborate on their polemic.

The sabab citation is nonspecific, and it is not Bahá'u'lláh's intention to write history. It is his purpose, however, to draw an explicit parallel here: "In view of this, is it fair for this people to repudiate these newly-revealed verses which have encompassed both the East and the West.¹⁷⁹ There may be a deliberate ambiguity here. Bahá'u'lláh, having as yet advanced

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no messianic claim, would not have been open about any revelatory prerogative. It is clear that "these newly-revealed verses" formally refer to the Báb's revelation.

The symbolic significance here is purely typological: the Báb is a new prophet for whom Muhammad provides the typological symbol. Of course, Bahá'u'lláh's employment of asbab al-nuzul for contemporizing purposes is really the inverse of the use for which the genre was intended.¹⁸⁰ Rather than focus on the quranic verse, which the sabab is supposed to illuminate, both the verse and the sabab are used to point to a contemporary situation.

A little further in the text Bahá'u'lláh once again paints a picture of what would happen were God to send another prophet:

Therefore, should a person arise and bring forth a myriad verses, discourses, epistles, and prayers, none of which have ever been acquired through learning, what conceivable excuse could justify those that reject them, and deprive themselves of the potency of their grace? What answer could they give when once their soul hath ascended and departed from its gloomy temple? Could they seek to justify themselves by saying: "We have clung to a certain tradition, and not having beheld the literal fulfillment thereof, we have therefore raised such cavils against the Embodiments of divine Revelation, and kept remote from the law of God?" Hast thou not heard that among the reasons why certain Prophets have been designated as "endowed with constancy" was the revelation of a Book unto them? And yet, how could this people be justified in rejecting the Revealer and Author of so many volumes of verses . . .?

. . . Aside from these things, if these people shun and reject such a divine Soul, such holy Breath, to whom, We wonder, could they cling, to whose face besides His Face could they turn? Yea-"All have a quarter of the Heavens to which they turn" (Qur'án 2:148).¹⁸¹

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One of the proofs of prophecy Bahá'u'lláh would adduce within a year of writing The Book of Certitude related to his own ability to "reveal" spontaneously a substantial number of "verses," thus confronting the Qur'án's challenge of inimitability.

IDENTIFICATION OF THE VAGUE AND AMBIGUOUS

Having established the presence of eschatological symbolism in ways which informally recall rhetorical approaches to quranic figuration, Bahá'u'lláh proceeds to the task of purely symbolic exegesis.

Explicating symbols by means of what Wansbrough calls "straight-forward substitution/transfer," Bahá'u'lláh uses "identification of the vague and ambiguous" as a procedural device. Typically, in symbolic exegesis, a symbol is obvious in the sense that it is something identifiable, like a sun or a cloud or a mountain. The reader has no difficulty comprehending a common object named in the Qur'án. Interpretation comes into play when the exegete suggests that the sun or the cloud or the mountain represents something else, like an idea or a person. In the case of identification of the vague and ambiguous, the term itself is equivocal, apart from its interpretation.

In this section, Bahá'u'lláh's identification of the term presence" (liqa)—which is abstract and not concrete—will prove to be the single most important identification made in The Book of Certitude. Such use of identification is not theologically freighted in classical tafsír, but is nonetheless the same kind of procedure. The exegetical process is similar. In The Book of Certitude, this kind of exegesis is decisive.

(1) "Presence" and "Manifestation": Around one third of the Qur'án is eschatological. Perhaps the ultimate prophecy in

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the Qur'án—the most compelling of all of its promises—is that of "meeting" God. God comes on the Day of Judgment. Believers will see God. Or will they? The problem of beatific vision is a vexed one. Nevertheless, the encounter with God is a pivotal event in the apocalyptic drama. Using this procedural device, Bahá'u'lláh identifies the "Presence" of God with the"Manifestation" of God. How Bahá'u'lláh works this identification into the structure of his argument against revelatory finality is of interest here, for it is brilliant and effective.

Central to The Book of Certitude is the argument that thequranic promise of "attainment unto the Presence of God" is an allusion to the appearance of another Manifestation of God at the eschaton. Identification of the encounter with God (Qur'án 33:44, 10:45, 6:31, 2:249, 2:46, 11:29, 69:20, 132, 6:154, 18:111, 29:23) with the advent of the Qaim (Riser/Resurrector) had already been established by Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa'i (d. 1825 C.E.), founder of the Shaykhi School, the immediate ideological forebear of Bábí/Bahá'í thought.¹⁸² His approach to eschatological verses—those classified as ambiguous (mutashabihat)¹⁸³ —was "rational" (interpreting away anthropomorphisms) and allegorical. Rafati states:

As for seeing God on the Day of Judgment, Shaykh Ahmad has another interpretation. As previously stated, on the basis of Islamic Traditions, Shaykh Ahmad interprets the Day of Judgment as the Day of the advent of the expected Qa'im. This interpretation, although based on Traditions, is radically different from the common Muslim belief. In the usual Muslim concept of the Day of Judgment, this Day is expected to alter the entire universe, bringing drastic revolutions, changes, and the transformation of the very phenomenon of life on earth. In the Day of Judgment as understood by Shaykh Ahmad, revolutions, changes, and transformations will take place, but not in the way people literally understand from the text.

In this interpretation of the Day of Judgment, Shaykh Ahmad attempts to reconcile intellect and revelation. The

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universe will not come to an end on the Day of Judgment; it has always existed and will continue to exist forever. What the Day of Judgment truly means is the Day of advent of a new manifestation of God which puts an end to the course of its previous dispensation and opens up a new cycle for human beings. As to the Day of the advent of the expected Qá'im, the Day of Judgment will bring about changes in the social, moral, and religious life of the people.¹⁸⁴

Taking the identification a step further, the Báb devotes an entire chapter in the Persian Bayán (3:7) to the question of the encounter with God (the "presence of God" [liqa' Alláh]). The Báb teaches that to "behold God" is to behold His prophet. The substance of the Báb's commentary is epitomized by Browne (who often directly paraphrases the Báb) as follows:

Concerning this, that what God hath revealed touching the Meeting with Him, or the Meeting with the Lord, means naught else than Meeting Him whom God shall manifest, since God in His Essence cannot be seen. The Eternal Essence cannot be comprehended, or described, or qualified, or seen, though by It all things are comprehended, described, qualified or seen; and therefore what is meant in the Heavenly Books by 'Meeting with the Lord' is meeting with the Manifestation of the Point of Truth, which is the Primal Will. Thus in the Qur'án by'Meeting with the Lord'is meant meeting with the Apostle of God, even as it is said of the true believer, 'To behold him is to behold the Prophet of God, and to behold the Prophet of God is to behold God.' . . . He is as the Sun, and all else than Him is as a mirror in which reflections of the sun appear. Whoever attains to the Meeting with Him whom God shall manifest, attains to the Meeting with God.¹⁸⁵

The reference to "Him whom God shall manifest" marks the salient leitmotiv of the Báb's extant writings, nearly all of which are in manuscript archives or private hands. The imminence of this Bábí eschatological figure has been a matter

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of some controversy.¹⁸⁶ In any event, it was the Báb's sacred mission to prepare the world for the advent of this figure. Many Bábís advanced such messianic claims, but it was Bahá'u'lláh who made the identification most tenable, owing in no small part to the argument he sets forth in The Book of Certitude.

Only by diverting the focus of prophetological attention from the "Seal" proof-text to several quranic "Presence" verses could Bahá'u'lláh make a quranic case for post-islamic revelation. From a certain point of view, his entire line of argument in The Book of Certitude is calculated to establish the priority of Qur'án 33:44 over Qur'án 33:40.

This one single verse, Qur'án 33:40, is at the heart of Muslim theology. Carved in exegetical stone, the sense of ultimacy behind the "Seal of the Prophets" cannot be overruled. At most, it can only be reinterpreted. Bahá'u'lláh does just that. His exegesis is dramatic: he points his finger just four verses further to Qur'án 33:44, a relatively overlooked verse. Suddenly, the reader is transported from the last prophet to the Last Day, from the end of prophecy to the end of time. Within a few lines of revealed Arabic, the vision of Muhammad dissolves into the vision of God. But since God cannot be seen, the promise of entering into the presence of God requires interpretation:

Even as the Lord of being hath in His unerring Book, after speaking of the "Seal" in His exalted utterance: "Muhammad is the Apostle of God and the Seal of the Prophets," [Qur'án 33:40] hath revealed unto all people the promise of "attainment unto the divine Presence" [Qur'án 33:44]. To this attainment to the presence of the immortal King testify the verses of the Book, some of which We have already mentioned. The one true God is My witness! Nothing more exalted or more explicit than "attainment unto the divine Presence hath been revealed in the Qur'án.... And yet, through the mystery of the former verse, they have turned away from the grace promised

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by the latter, despite the fact that "attainment unto the divine Presence" in the "Day of Resurrection" is explicitly stated in the Book. It hath been demonstrated and definitely established, through clear evidences, that by "Resurrection" is meant the rise of the Manifestation of God to proclaim His Cause, and by "attainment unto the divine Presence" is meant attainment unto the presence of His Beauty in the person of His Manifestation. For verily, "No vision taketh in Him, but He taketh in all vision" (Qur'án 6:103).¹⁸⁷

This is an interesting argument. Two verses are juxtaposed here, two titles, two theophanies of God, according to Bahá'u'lláh's exegesis. Their prophetic code names are: (1) the "Seal of the Prophets"; and (2) the "Presence of God." (Although Qur'an 33:44 simply speaks of the "Day of Meeting," Bahá'u'lláh also adduces Quran 2:46,2:249,13:2, 18:111, 29:23 to extract the relevant term, liqa' Alláh). The interpretation of "Seal of the Prophets" has traditionally meant the "last of the prophets." The "presence of God," in Bahá'u'lláh's exegesis, signifies, in effect, the "prophet of the Last Day." The "last of the the prophets" and the "prophet of the Last Day" are two theophanies in two different Dispensations. Muhammad ends the prophetic cycle. The Báb inaugurates the cycle of fulfillment.

The concept of the "presence of God" as theophany is predicated on an anti-anthropomorphist recourse to Qur'án 6:103. Bahá'u'lláh adduces this verse to reject the possibility of beatific vision. God cannot be seen. The "Presence of God" must be "seen" in the absence of of a visible God. The "Presence" is visible; God is not. The "Presence of God" is not God in person but rather the "Person of God." The Báb is such a "Presence." Correspondingly, Quilan 33:40 is Muhammad; Qur'án 33:44 is the Báb.

Exegetically, Qur'án 33:44 is therefore the most crucial of all the verses in Bahá'u'lláh's argument. Let us take a look at the verse in question:

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Their greeting on the day when they shall meet Him shall be "Peace!" And He hath got ready for them a noble recompense.¹⁸⁸

From an Islamic perspective, such an exegesis is problematic, for it suggests that at the eschaton a particular man will be thought of as God. This is tantamount to heretical "extremism" (ghuluww / gháliyya). The idea that a man can be "God" is one extreme. At the other interpretive extreme is the idea that God is as man or is manlike (anthropomorphism). In either extreme God can, theoretically, be "met."

In popular Islam, there is no risk of extremism in granting that God would be seen at the eschaton. In all such scenarios, it would be conceded that God could be "seen" because the Qur'án says so. The faithful accept this "without (asking) how" (bila kayfa), as Ahmad ibn Hanbal's formula requires. But, on the surface, it would seem that this would mean that God becomes sensible and phenomenal and, therefore, limited. This, however, is irreconcilable with other Islamic tenets. Bahá'u'lláh's doctrine of "Manifestation" tries to deal with both horns of the dilemma: God is represented by a deputy; a vicegerent; a theophany; a messenger who, as the chosen representative, "manifests" God, for all practical purposes, by proxy.

According to Bahá'í theophanology, God "appears" in the person of the "Manifestation of God (zuhur-i ilahi). In his Tablet of the Manifestation (Lawh al-zuhur).¹⁸⁹ Bahá'u'lláh explains with disarming simplicity: "Consider a goldsmith: verilY, he makes a ring, and although he is its maker, yet he adorns his finger with it. Likewise God, the Exalted, appears in the clothing of the creatures."¹⁹⁰ In a mystical work written during the Baghdad period, Bahá'u'lláh distances his theophanology from any taint of anthropomorphism:

However, let none construe these utterances to be anthropomorphisms, nor see in them the descent of the worlds of God

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into the grades of the creatures.... for God is, in His Essence, holy above ascent and descent, entrance and exit; He hath through all eternity been free of the attributes of human creatures, and ever will remain so.¹⁹¹

It is important to note that Bahá'u'lláh does not deny Muhammad's station as the Seal of the Prophets in its traditional sense. He does, however, relativize it within a salvation history that, far from ending with Muhammad, undergoes a paradigm shift at the eschaton. In one of his devotions, Bahá'u'lláh in fact exalts Muhammad beyond the latter's quranic dignity: "Glorified art Thou, O Lord my God! I beseech Thee by Thy Chosen Ones, and by the Bearers of Thy Trust, and by Him Whom Thou hast ordained to be the Seal of Thy Prophets and of Thy Messengers."¹⁹²

The implication of Bahá'u'lláh's exegesis for verse 33:44, therefore, is that whomever God sends as a representative at the eschaton transcends both categories of "Prophet" and "Messenger." Cole suggests that "the prophet, and the messenger, was a more primitive form of theophany which came to an end with Muhammad. With the Báb and Bahá'u'lláh, in the Bahá'í view, humankind has entered a new religious cycle characterized by a fuller theophany."¹⁹³

The theophanic term "Presence of God" (liqa' Alláh) in The Book of Certitude is distributed to all prophets and messengers, but at the same time, the realized eschaton will be of a different order altogether. Islamic orthodoxy is quite correct in concluding that Muhammad did end the cycle of prophecy. Now, however, the world has entered into the cycle of fulfillment, inaugurated by the Báb:

It is evident that every age in which a Manifestation of God hath lived is divinely-ordained, and may, in a sense, be characterized as God's appointed Day. This Day, however, is unique, and is to be distinguished from those that have preceded it. The designation "Seal of the Prophets" fully revealeth its high

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station. The Prophetic Cycle hath, verily, ended. The Eternal Truth is now come. He hath lifted up the Ensign of Power, and is now shedding upon the world the unclouded splendor of His Revelation.¹⁹⁴

The cycle of fulfillment has been inaugurated by the Báb, according to Bahá'í theophanology. Since this new cycle entails a realized eschaton, the "Presence of God" is realized as well. The one who "unseals" the scriptures and who is their fulfiller (i.e., "He Whom God Shall Make Manifest") has a greater importance than the "Seal" in the sense that the mission of the former was to prepare the world for the advent of the latter. Hence, Bahá'u'lláh's conclusion:

Notwithstanding all these indubitable facts and lucid statements, they have foolishly clung to the term "Seal," and remained utterly deprived of the recognition of Him Who is the Revealer of both the Seal and the Beginning, in the Day of His Presence.¹⁹⁵

Later Bahá'u'lláh would crystallize his theophanic salvation history such that Muhammad not only remains the "Seal of the Prophets" but is, moreover, accorded the distinction of being the "Seal of the Messengers." Beyond this, the Báb is designated as the "King of the Messengers" (sultán al-rusul) while Bahá'u'lláh himself is now the "Sender of the Messengers" (mursil al-rusul).

(2) Against Sufism's "Most Holy Outpouring" as the Divine Presence: In further developing the "Presence of God/Manifestation of God" identification, Bahá'u'lláh addresses some Sufi interpretations related to the divine presence. His two-year sojourn (1854-56) as a wandering dervish in the mountains surrounding Sulaymaniyyih in Iraqi Kurdistan had brought him into contact with the local Naqshbandi Sufis there. The reason for his return to Baghdad is stated in the

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Kitáb-i Íqán.¹⁹⁶ Bahá'u'lláh's interest in Sufi doctrine was no doubt sustained by the vividness of his recent Sufi experience.¹⁹⁷ The mystical path, however, has certain exegetical detours. Bahá'u'lláh takes pains to distance his exegesis of "divine Presence" from Sufi doctrines of a hierarchy of descending "Presences."¹⁹⁸

According to Ibn al-'Arabi, the "Most Holy Emanation" or "Outpouring" (fayd al-aqdas) is the first decisive stage in the "Self-Manifestation of the Absolute," a movement from the state of God's being a "hidden treasure" to the state of God Who "desired to be known," referring to the famous "divine saying" (hadíth qudsi) to that effect. Bahá'u'lláh points out the impossibility of access to God at this level:

And were they to maintain that by "divine Presence" is meant the "Specific Revelation of God," expressed by certain Sufis as the "Most Holy Outpouring," if this be the Essence Itself, it is evident that it hath been eternally in the divine Knowledge. Assuming the truth of this hypothesis, "attainment unto the divine Presence" is in this sense obviously possible to no one.¹⁹⁹

The essence/attribute distinction is maintained here. In whatever way divine encounter is conceived, contact with the essence of God must be excluded from any consideration. If God's attributes could somehow be apprehended and experienced, one would see their perfect reflection in the person of the Manifestation of God, according to Bahá'u'lláh's theophanology. As to mystically accessible "Presences," Bahá'u'lláh remarks:

And were they to say that by "divine Presence" is meant ... the "Holy Outpouring" (fayd al-muqaddas), this is admittedly applicable to the world of creation, that is, in the realm of the primal and original manifestation of God. Such revelation is confined to His Prophets and chosen Ones, inasmuch as none mightier than they have come to exist in the world of being...

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These Prophets and chosen Ones of God are the recipients and revealers of all the unchangeable attributes and names of God .... Whatsoever is applicable to them is in reality applicable to God, Himself, Who is both the Visible and the Invisible.... By attaining, therefore, to the presence of these holy Luminaries, the "Presence of God" Himself is attained.²⁰⁰

Realized eschatologies are typically "vertical." In distancing himself from any notion of the imminence of God's essence, Bahá'u'lláh defines the "Presence of God" as a quranic symbol for prophets, not as a badge of mystic experience.

PROPHETIC TRADITION

Here Wansbrough's category has to be adapted to a Shí'í context. The traditions of the holy Imams are really equivalent in function and in importance to the Sunni prophetic tradition. Drawing from Shí'í tradition rather than Sunni, Bahá'u'lláh nonetheless employs the same exegetical technique: appeal to tradition.

(1) The Tradition of Kumayl: Given his immediate audience, Bahá'u'lláh's most persuasive method of exegesis is appeal to figurative traditions. The citing of Shí'í tradition becomes a procedural device by transferred exegesis. Bahá'u'lláh will find it expedient to interpret a tradition, and then to transfer the substance as well as method of exegesis to quranic scripture. The tradition of Kumayl²⁰¹ lends itself ideally to symbolic exegesis:

Kumeyl ibn Ziyad, one of 'Alfs chosen disciples, once demanded of his Master, behind whom he was seated on a dromedary, "What is Truth?" "What hast thou to do with the Truth?" answered 'Ali, "for verily it is one of God's mysteries, and a jewel out of His treasure-house." Then said Kumeyl, "O my Master, am I not worthy to share thy secret?"

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"Yes," answered 'Ali, "but the matter is a great one." "O my Master," said Kumeyl, "dost thou desire those who beg at the door of thy bounty to be turned away?" "Nay, verily," answered 'Ali, "I will answer the call of such as are troubled, and will sprinkle upon thee somewhat of the overflowing fullness of the Station of the Truth; receive it from me according to thy capacity, and conceal it from such as are unworthy to share it.

"O Kumeyl, the Truth is the revelation of the splendours of Divine Majesty without a sign. '"O my Master," said Kumeyl, "I understand not thy meaning; explain it to me further." "The effacement of the conjectured, and the clearing of the known," continued 'Ali. "Explain more fully," demanded Kumeyl. "The rending of the veil by the triumph of the mystery," said 'Ali. "O my beloved Master," rejoined Kumeyl, "tell me more." "The attraction of the Divine Unity through the nature of the apprehension of its Oneness," added'Ali.

"Tell me more clearly," repeated Kumeyl. Then said 'Ali, "'A light shining forth from the Morning of Eternity and irradiating the temples of the unity."²⁰²

Browne rightly observes that the tradition of Kumayl had great significance for the Báb. In one application of this tradition, "each of these five utterances" served the Purpose of "typifying one of the first five years of the Báb's 'Manifestation.'"²⁰³

In The Book of Certitude, Bahá'u'lláh directly invokes (as well as alludes to) the hadíth of Kumayl.²⁰⁴ Bahá'u'lláh attaches a different signficance to two of the definitions of truth. One of the five "answers" in the tradition of Kumayl defines truth as: "Unfolding the veils of glory without allusion" (kashfu subuhat al-jalál min ghayri isharatin)."²⁰⁵ Shoghi Effendi translates: "Piercing the veils of glory, unaided."²⁰⁶ The importance of this tradition for Bahá'u'lláh may be seen in a probable allusion to it at the outset of The Book of Certitude evident in Khan's translation:

The quintessence of this chapter is that travellers in the Path

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of Faith and seekers for the Cup of Assurance must sanctify and purify themselves from all material things; that is, the ear from hearing statements, the heart from doubts which pertain to the veils of glory (sabahat-i jalal [sic]).²⁰⁷

The Bahá'í scholar Ishraq-Kh�varí explains this tradition:

It is contemplation of God, the power, majesty and attributes of beauty and might (ialdliyya andjamaliyya) of Truth (haqq) performed without contemplating the Divine Essence of God (haqq) because if the Divine Essence is conceptualized then it becomes limited and encompassed and every limited thing is susceptible of sensory reference. It is only possible to think of the traces (áthar) of the Divinity [as opposed to the essence] which are in the world and one must search the traces, as in the verse: "We shall show them Our signs in the horizons and in their souls until it is clear to them that it is the truth" (Qur'án 41:53j²⁰⁸

This is more of a commentary on Bahá'u'lláh's metaphysics than on the tradition itself, which requires interpretation. Essencelattribute distinctions trace back to Aristotle and are consistently maintained in Bahá'í metaphysics (but not always in Bahá'u'lláh's theophanic locutions). In The Book of Certitude, "veils of glory" are incarnated in those who, in positions of glory or renown, misguide their followers:

And now, strive to comprehend the meaning of this saying of 'Ali, the Commander of the Faithful: "Piercing the veils of glory, unaided." Among these "veils of glory" are the divines and doctors living in the days of the Manifestation of God, who, because of their want of discernment and their love and eagerness for leadership, have failed to submit to the Cause of God, nay, have even refused to incline their ears to the divine Melody. "They have thrust their fingers into their ears." (Qur'án 2:19)²⁰⁹

Bahá'u'lláh's Qur'án citations are often exclamatory. Ill this particular case, he aims a quranic indictment at contemporary

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divines. Such a charge clearly undermines clerical authority. This attitude was sure to exacerbate the policies of the ulama against Bábís and, later, against Bahá'ís. In effect, the Báb had previously said the same thing.²¹⁰

Elsewhere in The Book of Certitude, Bahá'u'lláh cites part of the hadith of Kumayl, and follows with an interpretation which reinforces his exegesis of celestial imagery in the Qur'án-especially that of the sun-as symbolic of the Manifestations of God, by virtue of their exalted position:

Also in the tradition of Kumayl it is written: "Behold, a light hath shone forth out of the Morn of eternity, and lo! its waves have penetrated the inmost reality of all men." Man, the noblest and most perfect of all created things, excelleth them in the intensity of this revelation, and is a fuller expression of its glory. And of all men, the most accomplished, the most distinguished and the most excellent are the Manifestations of the Sun of Truth. Nay, all else besides these Manifestations, live by the operation of their Will, and move and have their being through the outpourings of their grace. "But for Thee, I would not have created the heavens.". . . These Tabernacles of Holiness, these primal Mirrors which reflect the light of unfading glory, are but expressions of Him Who is the Invisible of the Invisibles.²¹¹

The expression "morn of eternity" is highly figurative and is treated as part of an extended metaphor. The citation of another tradition underscoring the importance of Muhammad introduces the "heavens," implying that the Prophet is the "morn of eternity' in heavenly exaltation. By adducing this enigmatic tradition, Bahá'u'lláh extends the 13aabi usage of it, and uses it for explicative purposes for a readership familiar with that tradition.

(2) Ali's Lamentation: In a sense, Shí'í traditions provide as rich an interpretive fund for Bahá'u'lláh as the corpus of so-called "pre-islamic" poetry had for early exegetes of the

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Qur'án. From this sacred poetry of Shí'í tradition, the Prayer of Nudbih—a "Lamentation" composed by 'Ali²¹²—is adduced by Bahá'u'lláh for its obvious metaphorical expression:

The term "suns" hath many a time been applied in the writings of the "immaculate Souls" unto the Prophets of God, those luminous Emblems of Detachment. Among those writings are the following words recorded in the "Prayer of Nudbih": "Whither are gone the resplendent Suns? Whereunto have departed those shining Moons and sparkling Stars?" Thus, it hath become evident that the terms "sun," "moon," and "stars" primarily signify the Prophets of God, the saints, and their companions, those Luminaries, the light of Whose knowledge hath shed illumination upon the worlds of the visible and the invisible.²¹³

The personification of the tradition is self-evident. Bahá'u'lláh's reference to the Prayer of Nudbili, an appeal to tradition, has rhetorical force, rendering the symbolic exegesis of similar terms in the Qur'án all the more plausible. But this kind of transferred exegesis derives its authority from Shí'í tradition.

(3) "Fasting is illumination": The tradition, "Fasting is illumination, prayer is light," permits exegesis of the symbolic sun and moon as prayer and fasting.²¹⁴ Bahá'u'lláh likewise adduces the tradition: "Islam is heaven; fasting is its sun, prayer its moon."²¹⁵ After citing these traditions, Bahá'u'lláh comments on his method of interpretation:

This is the purpose underlying the symbolic words (talvihat) of the Manifestations of God. Consequently, the application of the terms "sun" and "moon" to the things already mentioned hath been demonstrated and justified by the text of the sacred verses and the recorded traditions. Hence, it is clear and manifest that by the words "the sun shall be darkened, the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall

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from heaven" is intended the waywardness of the divines, and the annulment of laws firmly established by divine Revelation, all of which, in symbolic language (talvihat), have been foreshadowed by the Manifestation of God [Jesus]. None except the righteous shall partake of this cup, none but the godly can share therein. "The righteous shall drink of a cup tempered at the camphor fountain." (Qur'án 76:5)²¹⁶

Bahá'u'lláh appeals to scripture and tradition. Not solely "Qur'án and tradition," since he does not limit his scripture citations to the Qur'án. This exegetical interplay between two traditions—Christian and Islamic-is one of the salient features of The Book of Certitude. Also significant is the deliberate invocation here of paradise imagery. Its use is inverted. If eschatology is realized in the person of the Manifestation of God, then all the concomitant imagery is realized as well. Bahá'u'lláh refers to his own interpretation here as "this cup," that is, the eschatological draught of camphor that the righteous savor in paradise. Now the interpretation itself has become eschatological!

(4) "Behind the Throne" and "The Philosopher's Stone": Bahá'u'lláh cites two traditions from the sixth Shí'í Imam, Jafar al-Sadiq, to interpret the eschatological descent of the angelic host at Qur'án 3:119:

And now, concerning His words: "And He shall send His angels. . . ." By "angels" is meant those who, reinforced by the power of the spirit, have consumed, with the fire of the love of God, all human traits and limitations, and have clothed themselves with the attributes of the most exalted Beings and of the Cherubim. That holy man Sadiq, in his eulogy of the Cherubim, saith: "There stand a company of our fellow-Shí'íhs behind the Throne." Divers and manifold are the interpretations of the words "behind the Throne." In one sense, they indicate that no true Shí'íhs exist. Even as he hath said in another passage: "A true believer is likened unto the

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philosopher's stone." Addressing subsequently his listener, he saith: "Hast thou ever seen the philosopher's stone?" Reflect, how this symbolic language, more eloquent than any speech, however direct, testifieth to the non-existence of a true believer.²¹⁷

The use of traditions here illustrates Bahá'u'lláh's rhetorical rationale for symbolism. In this passage, three sayings from the sixth Imam are adduced. Those who stand "behind the Throne" are said to be Cherubim. But who are the Cherubim? Who are the angels? Bahá'u'lláh's identification of them is quite interesting. The reader should follow his methodology closely. It epitomizes the interpretive strategy used throughout The Book of Certitude.

Of the three traditions, the first—the "Throne" saying—is explicated by means of the two other sayings. In the second saying, Jafar al-Sadiq's comparison of a true believer to the philosopher's stone is an obvious tashbih (simile). The third saying is not so obvious. "Hast thou ever seen the philosopher's stone?" is a rhetorical question. Its surface reading is literal. In fact, it is not marked for figuration. Comprehension of the last saying is entirely context-dependent. Its interpretation requires knowledge of the underlying comparison of believer and philosopher's stone. Bahá'u'lláh calls this latter kind of discourse "symbolic language" (talvi4at). And so it is. The "philosopher's stone" represents, or symbolizes, the true believer.

Bahá'u'lláh's use of technical terminology is not technical, but referential. The designation talvihat is quite sound. The "Throne" saying aside, Ja'far al-Sadiq's second saying is a simile; the third is a symbol. Bahá'u'lláh does not press any hard and fast distinctions between figure and symbol. But he does predicate symbolism on an underlying substratum of figuration. There is a certain beauty in this kind of language. Its value is more than aesthetic. It is spiritual. It comprehension is a kind of test of discernment.

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From Bahá'u'lláh's perspective, it seems, spiritual perceptiveness is dependent on a kind of metaphorical competence with respect to scripture. The ability to apprehend the meaning of scripture indicates one's readiness to perceive a new revelation from God. Slavish literal reading is indicative of a dogmatic, closed-minded mentality. Bahá'u'lláh praises symbolic language as "more eloquent than any speech, however direct." Figurative and symbolic discourse is, of course, oblique and indirect. Bahá'u'lláh considers such language to be more expressive, more information rich than literal discourse, and more spiritually evocative. In the passage which follows, Bahá'u'lláh concludes with a symbolic interpretation of "angels." He answers the question as to the identity of the Cherubim "behind the Throne." He indicates his methodology as well:

And now, inasmuch as these holy beings have sanctified themselves from every human limitation, have become endowed with the attributes of the spiritual, and have been adorned with the noble traits of the blessed, they therefore have been designated as "angels." Such is the meaning of these verses, every word of which hath been expounded by the aid of the most lucid texts, the most convincing arguments, and the best evidences.²¹⁸

(5) "I am Jesus," etc.: Islamic traditions tend to be quite literal. They are often more elaborative than scripture. They are useful for interpretation when it is allowed that the Qur'án may be interpreted through recourse to traditions. One of the important features of Bahá'u'lláh's argument is that of spiritual equality among prophets. The oneness of God's Messengers rests securely on quranic bedrock. From an Islamic as well as Bahá'í perspective, the similarity of the prophets is more profound than their differences, irrespective of personality, or the age in which each Messenger appeared, or the character of their respective revelations.

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There exist several Islamic traditions in which Muhammad closely identifies himself with Jesus. One such tradition, presented early in The Book of Certitude, represents the Prophet as having exclaimed: "I am Jesus."²¹⁹

The "I am Jesus" tradition Bahá'u'lláh cites is attested primarily in Isma'ili circles. Lawson translates one such tradition as transmitted in the Kitáb al-Kashf, in a sermon of 'Ali known as the Khutbat al-Bayán:

"I am the Christ who heals the blind and the leprous, creating birds and dispersing clouds." Meaning [says the commentator]: "I am the second Christ (al-masih al-thani)—I am he and he is I." At this a man stood up and asked: "O Commander of the Faithful, was the Torah written in a foreign language or in Arabic?"'Ali said: "[In a] foreign language, but its meaning is Arabic, namely that Christ is the Qaim bi'l-haqq, and the king of this world and of the next. The Qur'án itself confirms this in the verse: 'Peace be upon me the day that I am raised up alive.' (Qur'án 19:33.) Thus 'Isa ibn Maryam is of me and I of him, and he is the Most Great Word of God (kalimat alláh alkubr(i) and he is the witness and I am the one testified to."²²⁰

The question of the authenticity of such a saying is not the issue here, since, at any rate, the tradition represented a sentiment in Shí'í consciousness.²²¹ For Bahá'u'lláh, this tradition provided a hermeneutical key to Jesus' Farewell Discourse²²² and was instructive as to the real meaning of prophetic "return."

This type of discussion is not scholastic. It is apologetic, and opens up the possibility for a sort of reciprocity of attributes among the Prophets of God. In the course of Bahá'u'lláh's argument, he draws a series of equivalences from the implications of the statement, "I am Jesus":

Muhammad is Jesus.
Jesus is thus Muhammad.
Muhammad is the "Seal of the Prophets."

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Jesus is thus the "Seal of the Prophets."
Jesus is the "Seal of the Prophets," but not the last prophet.
Ergo, although Muhammad is the "Seal of the Prophets," he was not the last prophet.

The fact that Bahá'u'lláh made a saying of Jesus the exegetical centerpiece of Part One of The Book of Certitude has, in effect, already established a degree of scriptural equivalence between the New Testament and the Qur'án. This is one of the exegetical outcomes of defending the sayings of Jesus against the charge of tahríf.

With Bahá'u'lláh's countercharge that by tahríf (corrupt scripture) is meant bad tafsír (corrupt interpretation), the pronouncements of Muslim authorities (as well as Christian) are rendered all the more suspect. If Muslim interpreters were wrong about the textual integrity of the Christian witness, they may be wrong on other counts as well. Bahá'u'lláh's readers will be tempted to think along these lines.

ANECDOTE

Bahá'u'lláh uses anecdotes for exegesis, although in a different context from Wansbrough's use of the category. Some of the anecdotes present deliberate figuration. Metaphorical or otherwise, the answer to the figurative riddles posed by each of the anecdotes will be immediately generalized to the Qur'án. Profane incidents are adduced, involving holy individuals. These are exegetically poignant anecdotes. Bahá'u'lláh rarely, if ever, adduces exemplars from secular literature.

(1) 'Ali's real estate transaction: An anecdotal tradition regarding 'Ali and two Kufans concerns the owner of a house and a prospective buyer. Both men approach 'Ali to

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witness the transaction. Addressing the scribe present, the "Commander of the Faithful" gave instructions:

Write thou: "A dead man hath bought from another dead man a house. That house is bounded by four limits. One extendeth toward the tomb, the other to the vault of the grave, the third to the Sirat, the fourth to either Paradise or hell."²²³

On this tradition, Bahá'u'lláh remarks: "Reflect, had these two souls been quickened by the trumpet-call of 'Ali, had they risen from the grave of error by the power of his love, the judgment would certainly have not been pronounced against them."²²⁴

This anecdote supports Bahá'u'lláh's contention that: "If one will ponder ... this utterance of 'Ali in his heart, one will surely discover all the mysteries hidden in the terms 'grave, ' 'tomb, ' 'Sirat,' 'paradise, ' and 'hell.' " With rhetorical common sense, Bahá'u'lláh can logically point out that "the life of the flesh is common to both men and animals, whereas the life of the spirit is possessed only by the pure in heart who have ... partaken of the fruit of certitude."²²⁵

The economy of such an anecdote—pressed into service to explain quranic eschatological terminology—is worth noting. Another example of exegetical economy is Bahá'u'lláh's interpretation of the verse in which Muhammad is supposed to have cleft the moon, giving rise to the Islamic symbol of the crescent:

The following is an evidence of the sovereignty exercised by Muhammad, the Day-Star of Truth. Hast thou not heard how with one single verse He hath sundered light from darkness, the righteous from the ungodly, and the believing from the infidel? All the signs and allusions concerning the Day of Judgment, which thou hast heard, such as the raising of the dead, the Day of Reckoning, the Last Judgment, and others have been made manifest through the revelation of that verse.²²⁶

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This is Bahá'u'lláh's interpretive strategy in a nutshell: demonstrate that a Christian eschaton was ushered in by Muhammad, relativize all eschatology as cyclical and spiritual in nature, argue for its realization in the advent of the Báb and, implicitly, in the impending Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh. This line of reasoning could appeal to such a verse as Qur'án 13:31: "If there were a Koran by which the mountains could be set in motion, or the earth cleft, or the dead be made to speak,"²²⁷ completed by al-Rummani thus, "it would be this Qur'án."²²⁸

(2) "Islam is heaven; fasting is its sun, prayer, its moon": The anecdote presented in this section is of a personal nature, drawn from Bahá'u'lláh's own life. This story gives us a rare glimpse into Bahá'u'lláh's interactions with the Muslims of his day on a one-to-one basis. Bahá'u'lláh records a conversation that took place between himself and an unnamed cleric. The conversation that transpired was over possible interpretations of the tradition: "Islam is heaven; fasting is its sun, prayer, its moon." The informal character of conversation is at a considerable remove from the formality of writing. In this anecdote, Bahá'u'lláh takes us step by step through his own interpretive rationale. No matter that this interpretation is of a tradition. It would be the same for a verse from the Qur'án. The sequence of exegetical logic is based on a rhetorical analysis of figurative discourse. It is as if Bahá'u'lláh assumes the role of a rhetorician.

One day, a well-known divine came to visit Us. While We were conversing with him, he referred to the above-quoted tradition. He said: "Inasmuch as fasting causeth the heat of the body to increase, it hath therefore been likened unto the light of the sun; and as the prayer of the night-season refresheth man, it hath been compared unto the radiance of the moon." Thereupon We realized that that poor man has not

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been favoured with a single drop of the ocean of true understanding, and hath strayed far from the burning Bush of divine wisdom.

We then politely observed to him saying: "The interpretation your honour hath given to this tradition is the one current among the people. Could it not be interpreted differently?" He asked Us: "What could it be?" We made reply: "Muhammad, the Seal of the Prophets, and the most distinguished of God's chosen Ones, hath likened the Dispensation of the Qur'án unto heaven, by reason of its loftiness, its paramount influence, its majesty, and the fact that it comprehendeth all religions. And as the sun and moon constitute the brightest and most prominent luminaries in the heavens, similarly in the heaven of the religion of God two shining orbs have been ordained-fasting and prayer. 'Islam is heaven; fasting is its sun, prayer, its moon.'"²²⁹

This is certainly rhetorical reasoning. There is no symbolism here, because the comparisons are explicit. But there is every reason to think that this same kind of rationale enters into Bahá'u'lláh's exegeses of similar imagery in the Qur'án, where one end of the simile disappears.

OBSERVATIONS

This study has demonstrated (as Calder puts it) the "acquisitive" nature of the quranic exegetical tradition.²³⁰ Bahá'u'lláh employs ten of the twelve procedural devices which Wansbrough has identified within the Islamic interpretative tradition.²³¹ The special hypothesis of this study, tested within Wansbrough's theoretical framework, was that a rhetorical line of reasoning in The Book of Certitude establishes rationale for recognizing figurative language in the Qur'án. In many of the exegeses cited, figuration precedes symbolism. For Bahá'u'lláh, an appreciation of quranic figuration opens one's eyes to the Qur'án's rich symbolism,

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the most significant of which is the quranic promise of divine encounter. "Meeting God" is figurative, and it symbolizes the Manifestation of God to be encountered at the eschaton.

The equivalence Bahá'u'lláh draws between "Manifestation of God" (mazhar-i ilahi) and "Presence of God or "Face of God or "Meeting God" (liqa' Alláh) may be said to be the thematic heart of The Book of Certitude. Since God cannot otherwise be "seen," or even "known," in God's stead stands the theophany referred to by the Bahá'í technical term "Manifestation of God." Thus understood, the Qur'án's reiterative threat of encounter with God on the Judgment Day must refer not to God as a person but to a Person (or "Manifestation") of God. God's immediacy resides in the Mediator. Just as Muhammad and the preceding Messengers Of God are said to "manifest" the deity, so must the quranic eschatological "God" or "Presence of God" represent a mediated deity.

This chapter has presented an overview of Bahá'u'lláh's exegetical techniques. Those techniques serve a purpose, which is thematic. The thematic elements will be taken up in the next chapter. In fine, Bahá'u'lláh's overall objective is to prepare the reader for "a new Faith, a new Law, and a new Revelation (shar' va hukm-i jadid va 'amr-i badi')."²³² He adjures those who "have foolishly clung to the term 'seal, ' and remained utterly deprived of the recognition of Him Who is the Revealer of both the Seal and the Beginning, in the day of His Presence (mujid-i khalm va bad-dar liqay-i u)."²³³ To perceive a new revelation, the seeker must be endowed with a "new life" and "a new eye, a new ear, a new heart, and a new mind."²³⁴ For those who have rent asunder the "veils of glory" (subuhat-i jalal), there has already appeared "the New Beloved (mahbub-i tazih)," the Báb.²³⁵ Those souls who can perceive a yet another revelation are "even as the jeweller who knoweth the gem from

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the stone (chunánchih ahl-i lu'lu' lu'-rá [sic: emended text should read lu'lu'l-rá] az hajar)."²³⁶

So, what is Bahá'u'lláh's exegetical procedure? To oversimplify, it is a two-stage process: (1) the use of informal rhetorical criticism to establish the presence of figurative language in the eschatological verses of the Qur'án, accentuating the need for symbolic interpretation; and (2) symbolic exegesis itself (ta'wil), accomplished stylistically through extensive use of genitive metaphors, marking correspondences between symbol and referent.

Not every verse is symbolic in its primary application. The "clear" verses of the Qur'án are typically "historical" or ethical or legal or any combination thereof. The Book of Certitude principally concerns the apocalyptic verses of the Qur'án, which, literal or not, are of a different order of discourse. To term Bahá'u'lláh's interpretations as batini would be a misnomer: symbolic interpretation is never used to overrule patently literal texts. Bahá'u'lláh states that the "outward language" (gahir) of the Qur'án is "devoid of allusions" (bi ramz).²³⁷ On the basis of this distinction, it is clear that Bahá'u'lláh's repeated criticisms of those who adhere to literalism is not criticism of all literal interpretation of verses, but of the literal interpretation of all verses. The two are easily confused.

Bahá'u'lláh's hermeneutical approach provided a foundation for his specific exegetical activity. As noted above, Bahá'u'lláh advanced a figuration-based rationale to demonstratively establish quranic symbolism. In so doing, he overrules the literal reading of most eschatological passages of the Qur'án, effectively excluding traditional interpretations. Upon demonstrating the absurdity of unwarranted literal readings, he adduces quranic passages of an anomalous ' nonliteral, or patently metaphorical character to attest the presence of figurative language in the Qur'án.

Bahá'u'lláh shows that figurative language elliptically

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underlies quranic symbolism. Tradition has largely ignored the opacity of such verses, and has succumbed to literalist entrapments. The reader is led to understand that such oblique language, even if unmarked for figuration, is entailed in the eschatological symbolism of the Minor Apocalypse of Matthew 24, and in the phantastic and surreal apocalyptic imagery of the Qur'án. Such non-transparent texts, which are in some sense "dark," may be intertextually interpreted in light of openly metaphorical texts.

One example of a rhetorical-style argument is appeal to absurdity. This kind of demonstration points to a logical or phenomenological implausibility were a literal reading of a given text allowed. Following this, the case is made for a figurative reading. The test for absurdity is an attested procedure of Islamic rhetoric, as instanced in the definition of figuration (majáz) formulated by the rhetorician Ibn Rashiq (d. 1063 C.E. or 1070 C.E.): "Whatever goes beyond the proper meaning in [the] case of each word, without then becoming absolutely absurd, that is majáz, because it admits of the different ways of interpretation: thus the comparison (tashbíh) and 'borrowing' (isti`ara) and other beauties of speech have come to fall under the category of majáz."²³⁸ Here, the figurative reading of a verse must not lead to absurdity. Nor should a literal reading.

Such an interpretive move often involves the verdict of absurdity after having disqualified the surface meaning of anthropomorphisms in scripture. Hence, Bahá'u'lláh's exegetiical procedure at Qur'án 39:67 overrules a literal reading of the eschatological hand of God, as it entails both impossibility and anthropomorphist entrapment:

And now, comprehend the meaning of this verse: "The whole earth shall on the Resurrection Day be but His handful, and in His right hand shall the heavens be folded together. . ." . . . And now, be fair in thy judgment. Were this verse to have the meaning which men suppose it to have, of what profit, one

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may ask, could it be to man? Moreover, it is evident and manifest that no such hand as could be seen by human eye could accomplish such deeds, or could possibly be ascribed to the exalted Essence of the one true God. Nay, to acknowledge such a thing is naught but sheer blasphemy, an utter perversion of the truth.²³⁹

So far, Bahá'u'lláh's reading of this verse is supported by al-Zamakhshari.²⁴⁰ The point of adducing this passage is to show that, not infrequently, Bahá'u'lláh first dispenses with received interpretations. Literal interpretations having thus been overruled, a positive interpretation follows:

On the contrary, by the term "earth" is meant the earth of understanding and knowledge, and by the "heavens" the heavens of divine Revelation. Reflect thou how, in one hand, He hath, by His mighty grasp, turned the earth of knowledge and understanding, previously unfolded, into a mere handful, and, on the other, spread out a new and highly exalted earth in the hearts of men, thus causing the freshest and loveliest blossoms, and the mightiest and loftiest trees to spring forth in the illumined bosom of man.²⁴¹

Bahá'u'lláh then states the reason why such recondite language has been revealed in the first place:

Know verily that the purpose underlying all these symbolic terms (kalimat-i marmulzih) and abstruse illusions (isharat-i mulghazih), which emanate from the Revealers of God's holy Cause, hath been to test and prove the peoples of the world; that thereby the earth of the pure and illuminated hearts may be known from the perishable and barren Soil.²⁴²

On the surface, this would seem to suggest that anyone with metaphoric competence is spiritually pure. But at the level of received interpretation, such symbolic exegesis must first disencumber itself of the preponderant weight of centuries of traditional reading and of clerical authority. The act of

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replacing miracle with symbol and anthropomorphism with metaphor divests the interpreter of a magical worldview. Instead, such a reading places emphasis on ethics and interiority rather than on the miraculous. The reading Bahá'u'lláh rejects requires the suspension of natural law. The reading he offers is an engagement of spiritual law, portrayed as vivifying the visionary landscape of the heart. The reader, open to a new interpretation, will be open to a fresh source of authority.

One might ask: If this is so, why does Bahá'u'lláh not use the technical terminology of Arabic rhetoric? The answer lies in the fact that The Book of Certitude is a theological treatise which performs symbolic—not strictly rhetorical—interpretation. Demonstration of quranic figuration enhances the plausibility of the symbolic approach.

Bahá'u'lláh, possibly alluding to his divinely invested authority to interpret, is not authoritarian about such prerogative. He distances himself from the pretensions and authority of the clerics, of whom he is critical. On a popular level, nothing short of a claim to a higher source of authority could have overridden the entrenched-and at times coercive-islamic exegetical consensus.

The Book of Certitude is a revolutionary work of exegesis. The argument for post-quranic revelation and supersession of Islamic law, though rare, is not new. But the synthesis of exegetical prowess, accessible and alluring writing style, and versatile argumentation gives The Book of Certitude a force of argument sufficiently persuasive to convince many of its readers that the sun of revelation had risen and would rise again.

Bahá'u'lláh should be viewed within the framework of quranic exegetical tradition, but not subsumed within it. His work stands out as having a paradigmatic and charismatic originality, daring not only exegesis of the most recondite of quranic verses, but taking on Islam's most ossified dogma as well. The objective was not simply to establish the possibility of revelation after Muhammad, nor to vindicate

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the authenticity of the Báb. If the hypothesis of messianic secrecy is valid, Bahá'u'lláh's hidden agenda can be seen in a new light. The Book of Certitude was written to prepare the Bábí community for an imminent eschatological moment. That moment would effect a transition-from Bahá'u'lláh the interpreter to Bahá'u'lláh the revelator.

As allusions in The Book of Certitude to the revelatory authority of Bahá'u'lláh attest, it was necessary to challenge the doctrine of revelatory finality in order to prepare receptive Bábís, Muslims, Christians, Jews and (in principle as well as in practice) Zoroastrians for the advent of a new religious figure on the revelatory horizon.²⁴³

NOTES

^1. Bahá'u'lláh, untitled Persian Tablet cited in Ishraq Khavari, Qamus-i Íqán, Vol. 4, p. 1791. He confirms that Bahá'u'lláh's reference to his "Persian Tablets known as istidlaliyya" is a definite reference to the Kitáb-i Íqán. Further on the definition of istidlal, see Wehr/Cowan, Arabic-English Dictionary, p. 290.
^2. To invoke Matthew 28:20.
^3. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 237.
^4. Ibid. pp., 24-81/Persian, 19-63.
^5. Rippin, "Tafsír," Encyclopedia of Religion, Vol. 14, p. 237. Rippin elsewhere cites Susan Sontag to the same effect as to the act of interpretation generally: "Interpretation is a radical strategy for conserving an old text, which is thought too precious to repudiate, by revamping it. The interpreter without actually erasing or rewriting the text, is altering it. But he can't admit to doing this. He claims to be making it intelligible, by disclosing its true meaning." (Sontag cited in Lawson, The Qur'án Commentary of... the Báb, p. xii)
^6. Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal, p. 410.
^7. 'Abdu'l-Bahá, cited by Shoghi Effendi, God Passes By, p. 125.
^8. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 75/Persian, p. 58. For various interpretations of this verse, see Ayoub, The Qur'án

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and Its Interpreters, pp. 211-13.
^9. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 3-20.
^10. Rippin, "Muslim Interpretation," p. 473.
^11. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 89.
^12.
I bid., p. 86.
^13. Parallel drawn by Rippin, personal communication, November 28, 1990.
^14. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 20.
^15. D. Woll, Johannine Christianity in Conflict: Authority, Rank and Succession in the First Farewell Discourse, pp. 69-70.
^16. English translation: H. Windisch, The Spirit-Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel, trans. by J. Cox (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1968).
^17. Woll, Johannine Christianity, p. 71.
^18. Windisch, The Spirit-Paraclete, p. 5; Woll, Johannine Christianity, p. 71.
^19. Windisch, The Spirit-Paraclete, p. 13; Woll, Johannine Christianity, p. 71.
^20. M. Isaacs, "The Prophetic Spirit in the Fourth Gospel," Heythrop Journal, Vol. 24 (1983) pp. 391-407. In the section, "Prophetic Functions Ascribed to the Paraclete" (pp. 393-99), the Spirit of Truth serves as: 1) Divine Messenger; 2) One who glorifies Jesus; 3) Teacher; 4) Witness; 5) Predictor; 6) One who is rejected; 7) The Abiding Spirit. Isaacs's extended parallelism is brought into bolder relief in the section, "Jesus as the Model for the Paraclete-Prophet" (pp. 402-404).
^21. Bornkamm, on John 16:7 and 12, observes that "the departing Jesus appears here, astonishingly enough, as a sort of 'forerunner' and 'precursor, ' while the Paraclete appears as a Tulfiller'who brings the consummation." Cited in Woll, Johannine Christianity, p. 73.
^22. H. Riesenfeld, "A Probable Background to the Johannine Paraclete," in Ex Orbe Religionern: Studia Geo Widengren Oblata, Vol. 1 (1972) pp. 266-76.
^23. Ibid., p. 273.
^24. Windisch, The Spirit-Paraclete, p. 10; Woll, Johannine Christianity, 73.
^25. Windisch, The Spirit-Paraclete, p. 20, cited in Woll, Johannine Christianity, p. 73.

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^26. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 20-21.
^27. The only important Christian tradition which accepts Adam as a prophet is Ebionite Christianity. See the discussion in H.-J. Schoeps, Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church (1969).
^28. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 162.
^29. B. Todd Lawson, personal communication, October 23, 1990.
^30. Y. Friedmann, Prophecy Continuous (1989), p. 52. Cf. Idem, "Finality of Prophethood in Sunni Islam," p. 179.
^31. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 81/Persian, p. 63.
^32. See Anawati, "'Isa," Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd edition), Vol. 4, p. 83, where, unfortunately, there are two errors in the Greek spellings of the terms under discussion: irapagkiycoq (sic) and nccptgX-ocoq (sic). Cf. J. McAuliffe, Qurdnic Christians, p. 183, n. 10, and the literature cited.
^33. See Guthrie and Bishop, "The Paraclete, Almunhamanna and Ahmad," Muslirn World, Vol. 41 (1951) pp. 251-52.
^34. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 20, where the reference to "another will come" clearly has in view John 14:16 where there is the promise of "another Comforter."
^35. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 21-22.
^36. King James Version.
^37. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 62 and 64.
^38. See A. Hilhorst, "Biblical Metaphors Taken Literally," in Text and Testimony. Essays on New Testament and Apocryphal Literature in Honour of A.F.J. Klijn, pp. 124-25.
^39. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 58.
^40. Ibid., pp. 59-61.
^41. Bruijn, "Madiaz," Encyclopaedia of Islam (2nd edition), Vol. 5, p. 1027, giving the example, "the sword of death." Cf. A. Schippers, "The Genitive-Metaphor in the Poetry of 'Abu-Tammam," in Proceedings of the Ninth Congress of the Union Europgen des Arabisants et Islamisants, ed. by R. Peters (Leiden: Brill, 1981) pp. 248-60. On tropes in Persian stylistics generally, see E. G. Browne's discussion of the first extant qasida used for presentations of figures of speech, in idem, Literary History of Persia, Vol. 2, pp. 46-76,

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^42. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 24/Persian, p. 19. The King James Version reads: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give its light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken."
^43. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 46-47/Persian, pp. 35-36.
^44. Ibid., pp. 47-49.
^45. The rich tradition behind this line of interpretation has been documented by H. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth.
^46. See J. Meisami, "Allegorical Gardens in the Persian Poetic Tradition: Nezami, Rumi, Hafez," International Journal of Middle East Studies, Vol. 17 (1985) pp. 229-60.
^47. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 60-61/Persian, pp. 46-47.
^48. Ibid., p. 37/Persian, p. 29.
^49. Ibid., p. 43/Persian, p. 33.
^50. Ibid., p. 44/Persian, p. 34.
^51. Ibid., p. 47/Persian, p. 36.
^52. Ibid., p. 68/Persian, p. 52.
^53. Ibid., p. 71/Persian, p. 55.
^54. Ibid., p. 72/Persian, p. 55.
^55. Ibid., p. 72/Persian, p. 56. On this verse, Origen (Commentary on Matthew, Sermon 50) interprets "clouds" as "holy and divine powers" or as "the most blessed prophets." (Hanson, Allegory and Event, p. 343.)
^56. M. Fishbane, The Garments of Torah, p. 117.
^57. B. Todd Lawson, "Akhbari Shí'í Approaches to tafsír," in Approaches to the Qur'án, ed. by G. Hawting and A.-K. Shareef (London and New York: Routledge, 1993) pp. 173-210.
^58. Ibid., p. 175.
^59. Ibid., p. 203.
^60. Ibid.
^61. A. Bausani, "Some Aspects of the Bahá'! Expressive Style," 1World Order, Vol. 13 (1978-79) p. 43. 1
^62. M. Momen, "Relativism: A Basis for Bahá'í Metaphysics," in Studies in Honor of the Late Hasan M. Balyuzi, p. 192.
^63. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 11/Persian, pp. 8-9.

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See also S. Lambden, "The Sinaitic Mysteries: Notes on Moses/ Sinai Motifs in Bábí and Bahá'í Scripture," in Studies in Honor of the Late Hasan M. Balyuzi, pp. 122-23.
^64. See P. Stambovsky, "Metaphor and Historical Understanding," History and Theory, Vol. 27 (1988) pp. 125-34; H. White, "Historicism, History, and the Figurative Imagination," Beiheft, Vol. 14 (1975) pp. 60ff.; see also S. Mailloux, "Rhetorical Hen-neneutics," Critical Inquiry, Vol. 11 (1985) pp. 620-41.
^65. H. Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, pp. 53-54. On the opposition of ishdra (figurative discourse) and ibara (plain speech) in relation to ta'wíl, see A. Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions of Islam, p. 59, and P. Nwyia, Ex6&se coranique et langue mystique, pp. 174-75.
^66. For techniques of literary analysis, it appears that Wansbrough drew heavily on the work of W. Richter, Exegese als Literaturwissenschaft (Gottingen, 1971). John Wansbrough, Quranic Studies: Sources and Methods of Scriptural Interpretation (Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 126, n. 8. Wansbrougb makes a few observations on the limitations of historical method (ibid.).
^67. Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, p. 141.
^68. Ibid., p. 119.
^69. Ibid.
^70. Ibid.
^71. A. Rippin, "Tafsír," in The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1987), Vol. 14, p. 238. Cf. idem, "Literary Analysis of Qur',an, Tafsfr, and Sfra: The Methodologies of John Wansbrough," in Approaches to Islam in Religious Studies, pp. 151-63. Rippin is an advocate of the study of Islamic texts as literature. See idem, "The Qur'án as Literature: Perils, Pitfalls and Prospects," in Bulletin of the British Society of Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 10 (1983) pp. 38-47.
^72. Wansbrough, Quranic Studies, p. 141.
^73. S. Kemal, "Philosophy and Theory in Arabic Poetics," Journal of Arabic Literature, Vol. 20 (1989) p. 129.
^74. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, 205.
^75. Ibid., p. 134.
^76. K. Younger, "The Figurative Aspect and the Contextual

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Method in the Evaluation of the Solomonic Empire (1 Kings 111)," in The Bible in Three Dimensions, p. 164.
^77. Bahá'ís do not, as a rule, try to analyze Bahá'u'lláh from the perspective of influences brought to bear on him. There is, after all, the claim to revelation, and no one dares to psychoanalyze a revelator. If Bahá'u'lláh's claims are granted, there still seems to be no reason for not taking him at his word when he speaks of his own thoughts and feelings. Bahá'ís can be expected to object to the kind of psycho-history scholars try to construct, and here we are in dogmatic territory of another stripe. I would like to pursue a methodological course which veers away from both extremes: (1) that in which Bahá'u'lláh cannot be spoken of in terms of his human psyche at all (and is seen only as a passive vehicle for revelation); or (2) that in which Bahá'u'lláh's outlook can be entirely reduced to a psycho-history of events which present him as the composite of influences, Shí'í, Christian and Western.
^78. E. Kohlberg, "Some notes on the Imami attitude to the Qur'án," in Islamic Philosophy and the Classical Tradition, pp. 209-224.
^79. A. Jeffery, "A Variant Text of the Fdtiha," Muslim World, Vol. 29 (1939) p. 162.
^80. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 200-201.
^81. Wansbrough, "Arabic Rhetoric and Qur'ánic Exegesis," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 31 (1968) p. 32.
^82. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 209.
^83. Bahá'u'lláh, Kitáb-i Íqán, Persian, p. 162.
^84. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Assurance, p. 149.
^85. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 208.
^86. Ibid., p. 208.
^87. Ibid., pp. 208-209.
^88. See Rippin, "Lexicographical Texts and the Qur'án," in Approaches to the History of the Interpretation of the Qur'án. pp. 158-174.
^89. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 24-25.
^90. Bahá'u'lláh, Kitáb-i Íqán, Persian, p. 20.
^91. See A.K.S. Lambton, Persian Grammar, p. 125.
^92. The Greek New Testament, p. 94.

[page 224]

^93. Shoghi Effendi in Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 24, no. 1.
^94. Ibid., p. 72.
^95. Ibid., pp. 71-72.
^96. Described in some detail by O'Shaughnessy in his chapter, "The Splitting of Heaven Heralding the Last Judgment," in idem, Eschatological Themes in the Qur'án, pp. 35-42.
^97. Ibid., p. 42.
^98. S. Beggiani, Early Syriac Theology, p. 133.
^99. Beeston, The Arabic Language, p. 79.
^100. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 115-16/Persian, pp. 87-88).
^101. For a history of the term majáz, see Wansbrough, "Majaz al-Qurlan: Periphrastic Exegesis," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 33 (1970) pp. 247-66. See rejoinder by Almagor, "The Early Meaning of majaz and the Nature of Abu 'Ubayda's Exegesis," in Studia Orientalia Memoriae D.H. Baneth, pp. 307-26; Heinrichs, "On the Genesis of the haqiqa-majáz Dichotomy," Studia Islamica, Vol. 59 (1984) pp. 111-410.
^102. N. Kinberg, "Future Time without Future Tense: A Study of Figurative Participles in Arabic" (paper presented March 20, 1990, Department of Linguistics, University of Calgary) pp. 4-5. See now N. Kinberg, "Figurative uses, polysemy and homonymy in systems of Tense, Mood and Aspect," Lingua, Vol. 83 (1991) pp. 319-38 (esp. p. 331); and idem,"Senn-imperfectives and imperfectives: A case study of aspect and tense in Arabic participial clauses," Lingua, Vol. 86 (1992) pp. 301-330 (esp. p. 325, n. 43).
^103. Itqan, Vol. 3, p. 119. The foregoing analysis is based on a communication from N. Kinberg.
^104. Kinberg, "Future Time without Future Tense," p. 4.
^105. On prophetic perfect, see B. Waltke and M. O'Connor, An Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax. My thanks to A. Rippin for this reference.
^106. A.F.L. Beeston, The Arabic Language Today, p. 76.
^107. Beeston, The Arabic Language, p. 79.
^108. Ibid., p. 79.
^109. Pointed out by Rippin, personal communication.
^110. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p.117.

[page 225]

^111. Ibid., pp. 116-17.
^112. Ibid., pp. 22-23, Persian, p. 18.
^113. Ibid.
^114. Hilhorst, "Biblical Metaphors Taken Literally," in Text and Testimony, p. 123.
^115. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 90/Persian, p. 70.
^116. Mírzá Abu'l-Fadl Gulpaygani, Kitáb al-Faraid, pp. 438f.
^117. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 143/Persian, p. 111.
^118. Ibid., pp. 148-49.
^119. Footnote in Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 149, off by one verse.
^120. Ibid., p. 150.
^121. Arberry's translation.
^122. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 151-52.
^123. Ibid., pp. 202-203.
^124. Ayoub, The Qur'án and its Interpreters, pp. 58-59.
^125. B. Tood Lawson, "The Qur'án Commentary of Sayyid'Ali Muhammad, the Báb," (unpublished Ph.D. thesis; McGill University, 1987) pp. 60-61.
^126. Abu Deeb, Al-Jurjdnis Theory of Poetic Imagery, p. 83.
^127. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 136-37.
^128. Ibid., p. 137.
^129. Ibid., p. 137
^130. Ibid., p. 137.
^131. Ibid., p. 213/Persian, pp. 165-66.
^132. Ibid., pp. 156-57.
^133. Ibid., p. 189. 1
¹34. Shaykh Ahmad al-Ahsa'i, "Alchemy and the Resurrection Body," in Corbin, Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth, pp. 197-210.
^135. The style of Bahá'u'lláh's Tablets on alchemy is similar to the work translated by Ebied and Young, "An Anonymous Arabic Treatise on Alchemy," Der Islam, Vol. 53 (1976), pp. 100-109, where a useful glossary of alchemical terms is provided.
^136. Bahá'u'lláh went so far as to reveal talismans (in effect, unvocations inscribed in the form of pentacles for men and circles for women) for those Bábís who requested them. This practice gradually ended later in his ministry. See MacEoin, "Nineteenth Century Bábí Talismans," Studia Iranica, Vol. 14 (1985) pp. 77-98.

[page 226]

^137. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p.159: "Consider the rose: whether it blossometh in the East or in the West, it is none the less a rose. For what mattereth in this respect is not the outward shape and form of the rose, but rather the smell and fragrance which it doth impart."
^138. Momen, Shí'í Islam, p. 153.
^139. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 37.
^140. Bahá'u'lláh, The Kitáb-i Íqán, Persian, p. 29.
^141. On the use of this device in the Near East, van Gelder remarks: "The fictio personae, prosopopkia, [is] frequent in the literary debate from the time of the Sumerians.... In pre- and early Islamic Arabic literature, objects and concepts are rarely presented as speaking. Indeed, one may discern an aversion to it. ... In the Koran, mountains, thunder, skins, Heaven and Earth, even 'everything' is said to speak in one way or another." Van Gelder then cites as examples: "Qur'án 41:10; 99:4 (heaven and earth); 21:79; 34:10; 38:17 (mountains); 13:14 (thunder); 41:19-20 (skins); 17:46 (everything). . . . Later writers explain that the imaginative portrayal of objects as speaking was another of the 'habits of the Arabs' in their speech. But, far from being characteristic, it was a marginal element in early Arabic literature." G. van Gelder, "The Conceit of Pen and Sword: On an Arabic Literary Debate," Journal of Semitic Studies, Vol. 32 (1987) pp. 331-32.
^142. Ishraq-Khavari, Qamzus-i Íqán, Vol. 2, P. 911.
^143. Wehr/Cowan, Arabic-English Dictionary, p. 175.
^144. Wehr/Cowan, Arabic-English Dictionary, p. 176.
^145. Steingass, Persian-English Dictionary, p. 419.
^146. This is borne out by R. Ghadimi, An Arabic-Persian Dictionary of Selected Words (University of Toronto Press, 1986) p. 256.
^147. Wehr/Cowan, Arabic-English Dictionary, p. 176.
^148. Ibid.
^149. Momen, Shí'í Islam, p. 153.
^150. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 20-22.
^151. B. Todd Lawson, "The Terms 'Remembrance' (dhikr) and 'Gate' (bdb) in the Báb's Commentary on the Siura of Joseph," in Studies in Honor of the Late Hasan M. Balyuzi, p. 1.
^152. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 180.
^153. Ibid., pp. 178-79/Persian, p. 138.

[page 227]

^154. Ibid., p. 179/Persian, pp. 138-39.
^155. Ibid., p. 180.
^156. Ibid., p. 161.
^157. Abrogation (naskh) was a concern of early works of tafstr. See Rippin, "Al-Zuhri, Naskh al-Quran and the Problem of early Tafsír texts," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 47 (1984) pp. 22-43.
^158. Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal, pp. 6-8.
^159. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 49-51.
^160. Ibid., p. 51.
^161. Ayoub, The Quran and its Interpreters, p. 173.
^162. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 52/Persian, p. 40.
^163. Cited in Ayoub, The Qurldn and Its Interpreters, pp. 169-70.
^164. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, 51-52/Persian, 39-40.
^165. Rippin, "The Function of asbab al-nuzu1 in Qur'Anic Exegesis," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 51 (1988) p. 12.
^166. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 147. The aesthetic gifts of the translator are quite evident here.
^167. Rippin, "The Function of asbab al-nuzu1 in Qur'ánic Exegesis," p. 13.
^168. Rippin, "The Exegetical Genre asbab al-nuzu1: A Bibliographical and Terminological Survey," Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. 48 (1985) p. 1.
^169. Rippin, "The function of asbdb al-nuzul in Qur'ánic Exegesis," p. 3.
^170. For this use of such reports, see Rippin, "The Function of asbab al-nuzuil in Qur'iInic Exegesis," p. 7.
^171. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 121-22.
^172. Ibid., p. 120.
^173. Rippin, "The Function of asbab al-nuzu1 in Qur'Anic Exegesis," p.' 8.
^174. Rippin, "Tafsír," p. 239. This sabab is also cited by Ayoub, The Qur'án and Its Interpreters, Vol. 1, p. 199.
^175. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 182-83.
^176. Ibid., p. 183.
^177. Ibid., pp. 181-82.
^178. Ibid., p. 217.

[page 228]

^179. Ibid., p. 219.
^180. Pointed out by Rippin, personal communication, January 10, 1990, University of Calgary.
^181. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 220-21.
^182. V. Rafati, "The Development of Shaykhi Thought in Shí'í Islam," pp. 117-19.
^183. See L. Kinberg, "Muhkamat and Mutashabihat (Koran 3:7): Implication of a Koranic Pair of Terms in Medieval Exegesis,"Arabica, Vol. 35 (1988) pp. 143-72.
^184. V. Rafati, The Development of Shaykhi Thought in Shí'í Islam, pp. 118-19.
^185. E. G. Browne, "An Abstract and Index of the Persian Bayán," in Selections from the Writings of E. G. Browne, pp. 340-41.
^186. See MacEoin, "Hierarchy, Authority, and Eschatology in Early Bábí Thought," in In Iran: Studies in Bábí and Bahát History, pp. 95-155.
^187. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 169-70/Persian, pp. 131-32.
^188. Rodwell's translation.
^189. Bahá'u'lláh, Lawh al—7uhur, Bahá'í World Centre, manuscript catalogued as No. AB 201.
^190. Bahá'u'lláh,"Tablet of the Manifestation," in Bahá'í Scriptures, p. 206.
^191. Bahá'u'lláh, The Seven Valleys, pp. 22-23.
^192. Bahá'u'lláh, Bahá'í Prayers, p. 74. Bahá'u'lláh's addition of "Messengers" to "Prophets" at verse 33:40 invalidates a popular Bahá'í argument that the Qur'án, in stating that Muhammad is the Seal of the Prophets, keeps open the possibility of future messengers of God, since Muhammad is, strictly speaking, the last of the prophets but not the last of the messengers. The distinction between prophet (nabt) and messenger (raszil) is blurred at times. (Cf. Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur'án, pp. 82 and 104.) The nabi is defined by Rahman as "a divine envoy without a law (shari'a) and, presumably, without a revealed book" while a rasul is "one with a law and a revealed book." (Ibid., p. 82.)
^193. Cole, The Concept of Manifestation in the Bahá'í Writings, p. 18.
^194. Bahá'u'lláh, Gleanings, p. 60.

[page 229]

^195. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 170/Persian, p. 132.
^196. Ibid., p. 251.
^197. See J. Cole, "Bahá'u'lláh and the Naqshbandi Sulls in Iraq, 1854-1856," in From Iran East and West: Studies in Bábí and Bahá'í History, pp. 1-28.
^198. See W. Chittick, "The Five Divine Presences: From Al-Qunawi to al-Qushayri," Muslim World, Vol. 72 (1982) pp. 107-28.
^199. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 141.
^200. Ibid., pp. 141-42.
^201. On the Ijadith of Kumayl, see D. Donaldson, "Al-Kumayl: A Companion of the Secret," Muslim World, Vol. 28 (1938) pp. 249-57.
^202. Browne, The New History, p. 329.
^203. Ibid., p. 329.
^204. A direct reference to this tradition is found in Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 102, where Bahá'u'lláh develops his anthropology (doctrine of man).
^205. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Assurance, p. 117.
^206. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 164.
^207. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Assurance, p. 1. Khan's transliteration is included as it is in his translation, from which we may deduce that Khan thought the wording significant. In the first of very few footnotes throughout his translation, Khan, on the passage cited, explains: "Veils intervening between man and the Truth of God, which must be rent before the real light of that Truth is seen. One of these veils is literal interpretation of the Divine Texts preventing true understanding of Revelation, such as the statement of the ascent of Christ into Heaven, His descent, the Station of Mohammed as the 'Seal of the Prophets, ' etc."
For whatever reason, Shoghi Effendi's translation does not draw attention to this possible allusion to the Kumayl tradition, as Khan had done: "The essence of these words is this: they that tread the path of faith, they that thirst for the wine of certitude, Inust cleanse themselves of all that is earthly-their cars from idle talk, their minds from vain imaginings, their hearts from Worldly affections." (The Book of Certitude, p. 3).
^208. Translated by B. Todd Lawson, The Qur'án Commentary Of Sayyid 'Ali Muhammad Shtrazt, the Báb, p. 82 n. 8, from

[page 230]

Ishraq-Khavari, Qamus-i-Íqán, Vol. 2, p. 859 (not p. 851).
^209. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 164.
^210. "But those who know God know only their own selves.... Nevertheless, he knows who knows Our word, 'And none knows it except he who takes Our provisions and travels with Us.' 'Ali said: 'Pierce the veils of glory without any pointing.' This refers to those servants who see the Face of the Lord." (The Báb, translated by Lawson, The Quran Commentary of... the Báb, p. 207.)
Lawson remarks that the "Face of the Lord" is a common designation of the Imam. This passage may be a compression, as Lawson remarks further, where the intended meaning is more on the order of "in all that is seen is seen as the Face of the Lord." (My rewording of Lawson's comment).
^211. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 102-103.
^212. On this tradition, see Mírzá Abfu'l-Fadl, Kitáb al-Faraid, pp. 418-19.
^213. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 35-36/Persian, pp. 27-28.
^214. Ibid., p. 39.
^215. Ibid., p. 39.
^216. Ibid., p. 41/Persian, pp. 31-32.
^217. Ibid., Persian, p. 61.
^218. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 20-21.
^219. Ibid., pp. 79-80.
^220. Lawson, The Qur'án Commentary of... the Báb, p. 342.
^221. Ibid., p. 343.
^222. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 20-21.
^223. Ibid., p. 119.
^224. Ibid., pp. 119-20.
^225. Ibid., p. 120.
^226. Ibid., p. 111.
^227. Rodwell's translation.
^228. al-Jemaey, Al-Rummanis al-Nukat fi I'jáz al-Quran, p. 107.
^229. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 39-40.
^230. The two exegetical procedures which Bahá'u'lláh did not use were variant readings of the Qur'án (variae lectiones) and the use of exemplars from poetry (poetic loci probantes).

[page 231]

^231. N. Calder, personal communication (University of Calgary, March 28, 1990).
^232. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 239/Persian, p. 186.
^233. Ibid., p. 170/Persian, p. 132.
^234. Ibid., p. 196/Persian, p. 151
^235. Ibid., p. 199/Persian, p. 154.
^236. Ibid., p. 197/Persian, p. 152.
^237. Ibid., pp. 254-255/Persian, p. 197.
^238. Tr. Heinrichs, Hand of the Northwind, pp. 48-49.
^239. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, pp. 47-48.
^240. Cf. Bonebakker, Some Early Definitions of the Tawriya, pp. 25-26.
^241. Bahá'u'lláh, The Book of Certitude, p. 48.
^242. Ibid., p. 49.
^243. On Bahá'u'lláh's "multiple messiahship," see C. Buck, "A Unique Eschatological Interface: Bahá'u'lláh and Cross-Cultural Messianism," in In Iran: Studies in Bábí and Bahá'í History, Vol. 3, pp. 156-79.

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