The enormous expansion in the scope and volume
of Bahá’u’lláh’s writings, after His return from Sulaymáníyyih, is yet another
distinguishing feature of the period under review. The verses that streamed
during those years from His pen, described as “a copious rain” by Himself,
whether in the form of epistles, exhortations, commentaries, apologies,
dissertations, prophecies, prayers, odes or specific Tablets, contributed, to a
marked degree, to the reformation and progressive unfoldment of the Bábí
community, to the broadening of its outlook, to the expansion of its activities
and to the enlightenment of the minds of its members. So prolific was this
period, that during the first two years after His return
from His retirement, according to the testimony of Nabíl, who was at that time
living in Baghdád, the unrecorded verses that streamed from His lips
averaged, in a single day and night, the equivalent of the Qur’án! As to those
verses which He either dictated or wrote Himself, their number was no less
remarkable than either the wealth of material they contained, or the diversity
of subjects to which they referred. A vast, and indeed the greater, proportion
of these writings were, alas, lost irretrievably to posterity. No less an
authority than Mírzá Áqá Ján, Bahá’u’lláh’s amanuensis, affirms, as reported by
Nabíl, that by the express order of Bahá’u’lláh, hundreds of thousands of
verses, mostly written by His own hand, were obliterated and cast into the
river. “Finding me reluctant to execute His orders,” Mírzá Áqá Ján has related
to Nabíl, “Bahá’u’lláh would reassure me saying: ‘None is to be found at this
time worthy to hear these melodies.’ ...Not once, or twice, but innumerable
times, was I commanded to repeat this act.”
(Shoghi Effendi, ‘God Passes By’)
(Shoghi Effendi, ‘God Passes By’)