It is a rather mediocre text and does not remotely fulfill the hype the Baha'is have erected around it. Much better istidlaliyat (defenses of the cause) were written by the witnesses Mulla Muhammad Ja'far Niraqi and Mulla Rajab 'Ali Qahir during the 1850s, not to mention several anonymous defenses of the cause penned in that era that also surpass the Kitab-i-Iqan in depth (and have survived as texts). Without overtly coming out and mentioning the Bab or the Bayan by name, IMHO, Shaykh Hadi Najmabadi's Tahrir al-'Uqala stands as one of the best theological tracts defending the Bayanic notion of progressive revelation probably ever written: a text the Kitab-i-Iqan could not remotely hold a candle too. But this text is not an overt istidlaliyah but rather an implied one.
Kitab-i-Iqan was originally known as the Khaluiyah (for the maternal uncle) as Subh-i-Azal requested his older brother to write to Hajji Mirza Siyyid Muḥammad Afnan (the senior Afnan of the time whom earlier the Bab had had a falling out with and had even once denounced as the "return" of 'Abu Jahl') in defense of the cause of the Bayan, given that after years of shunning their great nephew, His cause and supporters, the Afnan family started gravitating towards the Bayani community of the time during the late 1850s due to largely self-interested reasons (i.e. they had lost status and prestige in Shiraz, which in turn affected their commercial interests, in the aftermath of the events of the early 1850s).
-N. Wahid Azal
Source : https://www.reddit.com/r/BAYAN/comments/gugx5x/kitab_iiqan/
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