This project is intended to present a textual analysis of the central book of the Baha'i Dispensation, Baha'u'llah's Kitab-i-Aqdas. It is currently being updated by Eden Golshani, golshani@wam.umd.edu; please write if you can help. Because of the project's scale and complexity and my lack of time, we don't expect to complete the project until 2002, so help in finishing the project would be greatly appreciated! Verses will gradually be posted as they are finished. This project is no more than a supplement to the authorized text of the Kitab-i-Aqdas, published 1992. This publication, available in an online edition, includes extensive notes and commentary, and should be consulted in conjunction with this multilinear translation project. See also the Kitab-i-Aqdas Windows Help File. Please send any comments, suggestions, or additions to the correspondence sections to Jonah Winters.
The schema of the multilinear translations, complete with brief notations, is given below. More detailed comments can be found in some of the "Notes" and "Correspondence" sections. A few individuals have been instrumental in bringing this project together: Robert Stauffer keyboarded the Haddad and Elder translations, Steve Cooney also keyboarded the Haddad, Iskandar Hai helped transliterate, and Ahang Rabbani proofread the Arabic .gif files.
| Authorized translation (ca. 1953-1992) | Authorized Arabic text (1995) |
| This translation, by Shoghi Effendi and others, is the official translation of the Kitab-i-Aqdas. As Shoghi Effendi was the authorized Interpreter of the Baha'i Revelation, those sections of this text he translated are considered, not just official translation, but official Interpretation. See the full online version. | This cell contains the Arabic in Unicode format, from the first authorized (critical edition) Arabic publication of the Aqdas (Haifa: Baha'i World Center, 1995). The sentence breaks in this text, rather than the verses in the English, form the basis of the multilinear series. I have included all diacritics included in print - the only discrepency between the printed text is in final yá' where I have opted to differ between dotted and dotless. I'd be interested to hear comments on this and also whether you can view the text correctly or not. |
| Haddad translation (1900-01) | Provisional Arabic transliteration (1997) |
| Anton Haddad's translation of the Aqdas, from 1900 or 1901, was
circulated widely in the early American Baha'i community. As it was copied
and re-copied by hand, this online text will contain scribal errors;
comparison with other manuscript copies is needed to check the accuracy of
this online version. In The Baha'i Faith in America vols. 1 & 2,
Robert Stockman offers much information on Haddad. This brief bio of him
is from vol. 2: "Anton Haddad (1862-1924) was taught the Baha'i Faith by [Ibramim] Kheiralla. Haddad came to the United States in the summer of 1892 and later played one of the most important roles in keeping the American Baha'i community loyal to 'Abdu'l-Baha when Kheiralla became disaffected." (footnote, page 10) |
This transliteration is grammatical, not oral. I have consulted other Arabists on it, so it is likely to be fully correct. However, transliteration can be tricky (for example, even a native speaker might occasionally not be sure whether a verb is active or passive), so it should be considered merely provisional. Accents were not used (e.g. alif is rendered "A" instead of "á") because current html cannot render the full diacriticial set. |
| Provisional Literal translation (1997) | Earl E. Elder translation (1961) |
| The meaning of the Aqdas may in places require extensive interpretation and its full significance may never be known, but a simple translation of the words of the Aqdas is relatively straightforward. In this translation I sought merely to render the text in English in as literal a manner as possible. While the resulting translation occasionally will not make sense, it provides a valuable foil for understanding the style and meaning of the authorized translation. | William Miller was a Prebyterian missionary in Iran in the early part of this century. He had a considerable interest in the Baha'is and wrote two books on the Faith, both somewhat well-informed but thoroughly biased and methodologically unsound. For an appendix to the second book, The Baha'i Faith: Its History and Teachings (South Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1974), he asked fellow Christian missionary Earl Elder, who knew fairly good Arabic, to produce this translation of the Aqdas. It, too, has not yet been proofread against the original hardcopy, and may contain errors. |
| Notes to Translations: these brief notes address a few points of each sentence that I happened to find interesting. Notes and footnotes from the other translations are also included here. Due to shortness of time, diacritics have not been entered in notes from the authorized text; consulting its hard co py version, and the online version, is recommended. |
Correspondence on Literal trans: This rather random correspondence from a variety of individuals was occasioned by my posting the ongoing translation project to the listservs Irfan and Bahai-studies. All posts are here by permission. The first few sections of correspondence contain considerable information and useful discussion. New commentary for these sections will be welcomed. |
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