The Tablet to the Nineteenth Temple

Abstract: This work presents a provisional English rendering of a luminous Tablet revealed by the Báb for the “Nineteenth Temple” — a designation which He, the Primal Point, conferred upon His own sacred Person within the First Vahid of His Dispensation. The first eighteen souls who, in the earliest days, hastened to acknowledge His divine Mission, were exalted with the title “Letters of the Living,” emanations from that mystic “Point” round which revolve the realities of all created things. Together with the Báb, they constitute the number nineteen, the symbol of unity and wholeness in the Bábí Revelation. Central to this Tablet is the exalted conception of the Haykal — the Temple of God — signifying His physical frame, His perfect spiritual reality, and the archetypal form of His Revelation. Accompanied by a rich introduction and extensive annotations, this study situates the Tablet as the consummation of the first cycle of the Bábí Dispensation and as a herald of the advent of the Bahá’í Revelation. The original text is published in Muḥammad Labīb, توقيعات مباركه حضرت باب خطاب به حروف حيّ بخطّ آن حضرت و بخطّ كاتبّ (Tawqīʿāt Mubārakah Ḥaḍrat al-Bāb Khiṭāb biḥ Ḥurūf-i-Ḥayy bi-Khaṭṭ-i-Ān Ḥaz̤rat wa bi-Khaṭṭ-i-Kātib).