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Unfolding Destiny
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Page 424
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Letter of 9 February 1930
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| 1 |
The subject you had raised with regard to the date of the
publication of the writings of Bahá'u'lláh is interesting as it is
important. If I remember correctly the same issue was raised as
an open challenge in India by some spokesman of the Ahmadiyya
sect. The earliest published writings of Bahá'u'lláh date from the
nineties of the last century. Over forty years ago the Aqdas, a
volume of general Tablets including Tarazát, Ishráqát, and others
were published in Ishqábád (Russia) and Bombay respectively
and copies of these though rare are still procurable. Simultaneously
with these, if not earlier, some of the writings of
Bahá'u'lláh were published by the Oriental Department of the
Imperial Russian University at St. Petersburgh under the
supervision of its director Baron Rosen (and more particulars
about these could be found in the books of E. G. Browne) and
these of course are not undated like some of those published in
Bombay.
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| 2 |
The main bulk of the writings of Bahá'u'lláh however are to
be found in manuscript form written by noted scribes after the
fashion of orientals. These scribes did not leave all their
manuscripts undated and Jinábí Zain, a very noted Bahá'í scribe,
always dated his copies of the writings of Bahá'u'lláh at the end
of the volume in what E. G. Browne calls `colophenes' and the
description of some of these colophenes could be found in the
works of the Cambridge Professor.
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| 3 |
The son of the above-mentioned scribe is still living in Haifa
and does very much the same work as his father. He claims that
as early as 1868 his father used to write copies of the Íqán for the
Bahá'ís in Persia as a source of livelihood, and that after 1885
when he went to Akká to join Bahá'u'lláh's party his entire work
and time was devoted to copying the sacred writings for sale
among Bahá'ís. These copies are to be found all throughout the
East and are almost invariably dated.
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