This dramatic, this
unqualified and formal declaration of the Báb’s prophetic mission was not the
sole consequence of the foolish act which condemned the Author of so weighty a
Revelation to a three years’ confinement in the mountains of Ádhirbayján. This
period of captivity, in a remote corner of the realm, far removed from the
storm centers of Shíráz, Iṣfáhán, and Ṭihrán, afforded Him the necessary leisure to launch upon His most
monumental work, as well as to engage on other subsidiary compositions designed
to unfold the whole range, and impart the full force, of His short-lived yet
momentous Dispensation. Alike in the magnitude of the writings emanating from
His pen, and in the diversity of the subjects treated in those writings, His
Revelation stands wholly unparalleled in the annals of any previous religion.
He Himself affirms, while confined in Máh-Kú, that up to that time His
writings, embracing highly diversified subjects, had amounted to more than five
hundred thousand verses.
- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)
