The Bab's claims in the beginning of his mission

It is of particular value in helping us form a clear picture of the Bāb’s ideas at this juncture, especially since it seems to represent the first step taken to address himself to a wider audience than the Shaykhi ulama for whom his earlier works had been written. In the course of this work, he states that the Islamic legal system “shall not be abrogated”; speaks of his verses as “utter nothingness when compared with a single word of the book of God or the words of the people of the house of purity [i.e., the Imāms]”; praises Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsāʾī, but condemns his followers; refers to a vision of the head of the Imām Ḥusayn, which he appears to have regarded as instrumental in giving him his earliest inspiration; condemns the concept of the oneness of existence (waḥdat al-wujūd) as unbelief; lists the seven bases of mystical knowledge (maʿrifa) as divine oneness, concepts, the gates (abwāb), the imamate, the pillars (arkān), the nuqabāʾ, and the nujabāʾ; states that prayer through the Imām or others is unbelief, and denies that either al-Aḥsāʾī or Rashtī prayed through ʿAlī or thought him the Creator (a point on which, as we have seen, they had been attacked); regards the station of the Imāms as higher than that of the prophets; states that “most of the men and women of the Twelver Shiʿi sect, by virtue of their ignorance of this station [i.e., of the nuqabāʾ]”, shall go to hell; declares the enemies of al-Aḥsāʾī and Rashtī to be unbelievers like the Sunnis; speaks of the former as the “pure Shiʿi” (shīʿa khālis);̣ writes of the necessity of belief in a physical resurrection and the Prophet’s ascent to heaven (the miʿrāj), condemns the idea of spiritual resurrection and maintains that al-Aḥsāʾī did not speak of it; and, finally, speaks of obedience to himself, as the “servant” of the twelfth Imām, as obligatory. When compared with statements in earlier works, it is clear that the Bāb had opted for the use of taqiyya or concealment of one’s true beliefs, perhaps because this text was in Persian and more easily understood.

(The Messiah of Shiraz, p. 187)