Here is a translation of a Baghdad-era work by Bahá'u'lláh entitled
Sahífih-'i Shattiyyih (online at bahai-library.com/provisionals/river.html). Sahífih means scroll and is used in the Qur'an to
refer to the books of the biblical patriarchs (a reference to the Torah
scroll no doubt). Shatt can mean river but also can refer directly to the
Tigris river upon which Baghdad is situated. Since there are other more
common words for "river" and we know Bahá'u'lláh was speaking of the Tigris,
I think he is using it in the latter sense, and so have translated it as
"The Book of the Tigris." The text is from `Abdu'l-Hamid Ishraq-Khavari,
ed., Ma'idih-i Asmani, 4:142-149.
It is not a book, of course, but a short letter. It quotes a Hidden Word,
No. 1 of the Arabic (but with the grammatical difference that the plural
imperative is used, whereas in the text of the Hidden Words we now have the
grammar is singular). My guess is therefore that it was written around 1857
shortly before Bahá'u'lláh put the Hidden Words into final shape.
This work is the clearest indication I know of Bahá'u'lláh's self-conception
before about 1859, when he appears to have begun telling people like Fitnih
and Nabíl-i Akbar that he was the promised one. Denis MacEoin pointed out
in his 1989 BRISMES article that Bahá'u'lláh in this work disclaims having
any "Cause" at that point, and my rereading it now in conjunction with my
translation convinces me that Denis is right. He has no iqbal bar amri,
is making no claim to have a divine Cause.
This work gives us a humanist Bahá'u'lláh, who sternly denies being able to
work any miracles, who defers humbly to the Mirrors of the Bábí
dispensation, who gives us a catechism that includes belief in God, the Báb,
Quddus, and the "Living Countenance" (MacEoin thinks this is Azal; I don't
know Bábí terminology well enough to have an opinion). Indeed, the argument
seems to be made that just as plagues no longer break out in Iraq every 30
years as they had in past centuries (owing to Ottoman quarantines, by the
way), that after the Báb's death the age of miracles is over with. This is
in turn an announcement of a profound secularization of sorts, isn't it?
This brief letter seems to me proof that Bahá'u'lláh's "messianic secret"
(for which I have argued) probably should not be dated further back than
about 1859, from which time we begin getting independent eyewitness accounts
of his having privately put forth a claim. In short, it raises the most
acute questions about the nature of the "intimation" Bahá'u'lláh is said to
have experienced in the Siyah Chal. If one reads the account in Epistle to
the Son of the Wolf carefully, it appears that it consisted more of ilham or
inspiration than of wahy or revelation, and that Bahá'u'lláh began thinking
of islah or reform of Babism rather than of making any claim of his own. If
in fact the Book of the Tigris post-dates the poetry of the Sulaymaniyyah
period, I probably should retract my messianic reading of the Ode of the
Dove in favor of seeing it as an example of Sufi effusion or ecstatic
enthusiasm (shath).
On the other hand, Bahá'u'lláh is after all in this letter speaking rather
authoritatively and handing out spiritual advice. If the title "Sahífih"
goes back to the Baghdad period then he is using a word normally employed
for scripture. Is he claiming to be some sort of Bábí
Sufi shaykh? A manifestation of the attributes of Imám Husayn alongside
other Bábí manifestations? What is clear is that his self-conception
changed between the early 1850s and the later 1850s.
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