Kitáb-i-Íqán

Bahāʾ-Allāh composed the Ketāb-e iqān primarily in response to questions about the apparent non-fulfillment of messianic and related eschatological signs in the Bāb and his emergent pristine religion (al-din al-ḵāles; Bāb, Qayyum al-asmāʾ 1:5). The questions were posed by a maternal uncle of the Bāb, named Ḥājj Mirzā Sayyed Moḥammad (d. 1876), known as the Ḵāl-e Akbar (the elder/senior uncle). While visiting the shrine cities of Iraq (See ʿATABĀT) with a brother around 1278/1862, through the intermediary of Ḥājj Sayyed Jawād Karbalāʾi (d. ca. 13001882), he was able to meet Bahāʾ-Allāh in Baghdad and pose several written questions to him (Ali Kuli Khan, 1904, p. viii; Moḥammad-Jawād Qazvini, p. 15; Fāżel Māzandarāni, p. 159; Taherzadeh, pp. 157-58). Bahāʾ-Allāh’s reply to these questions was said in several Bahāʾi sources to have been very speedily “sent down,” or “revealed,” in one or two days (Rabbani, 1970, p. 138; Balyuzi, 1980, p. 164). The response of the Ketāb-e iqān persuaded the Bāb’s uncle to accept the elevated messianic claims of both the Bāb and ultimately Bahāʾ-Allāh also as his successor.

The aforementioned questions of the then skeptical uncle were largely centered upon the following Shiʿite Islamic themes which seemed to him unfulfilled or outwardly unrealized: (1) the latter-day Yawm al-qiāma (Day of Resurrection) and such associated events as “judgment,” “reward” and “punishment”; (2) the problem of the identity of the Twelfth Imam and the disparity between the Bāb’s claims and the heritage of Shiʿite traditions; (3) the contradictions between the non-literal exegesis of the Bāb and the straightforward heritage of Shiʿite doctrinal tradition; and (4) the non-fulfillment of messianic expectations associated with the expected Qāʾem and his followers engaging, for example, in eschatological jihad type activities centered at Kufa (Fayżi, pp. 40-41; MacEoin; Balyuzi, 1991, pp. 164-5). Though Sayyed Moḥammad was the primary addressee in the Ketāb-e iqān, Bahāʾ-Allāh also specifically addressed a range of other individuals and groups, including Shiʿite Muslims, Šayḵis (Shaykhis), various Bābi groups as the “people of the Bayān (Exposition),” and, in a few places, all of humankind, in a manner reminiscent of the style of the Bāb himself (KI, p. 72, tr., 1968, p. 93 ; Buck, 1995, p. 14).