Baha'u'llah's claims in Edirne and Acre

A full discussion of the claims eventually advanced by Bahā Allāh in Edirne and Acre would take us far beyond the dates assigned to this survey and would involve a lengthy and complex analysis of the abundant scriptural materials available. I shall instead conclude by drawing attention once more to a point I have mentioned elsewhere, namely that Bahāʾ Allāh’s developed claims represent the most extreme expression of Shīʿī and Bābī theories of theophany. With his mature writings, the themes discussed in this article and its predecessor reach their apogee in claims that come very close to assertion of out and out divinity or even incarnation.

One of the most striking references to this idea occurs in the undated (probably Acre—1868–92) Lawḥ-i mīlād-i ism-i aʿzaṃ , in which he declares that “he has been born who neither begets nor is begotten”—a direct allusion to and contradiction of Qurʾān 112. Similarly, in the Sūrat al-ḥajj, written in Edirne after the split with Azal, he declares that “the educator of all beings and their Creator has appeared in the garment of humanity, but you were not pleased with that, until he was imprisoned in this prison.”

That at least some of Bahāʾ Allāh’s followers endorsed a radical interpretation of such claims is evident from a number of sources. Ḥājī Mīrzā Haydar ʿAlī Isfahānī, a prominent Bahā ̣ ʾī missionary in late 19th-century Iran, describes a discussion he held with an Iranian ʿālim following a visit to Bahāʾ Allāh in Acre. In the course of their conversation, he stated: “He is unique by Himself. No one in the world can ever compare to Him. He is the One Whom the Qurʾān has declared to have neither father nor son [i.e. God].” The same writer also narrates an anecdote concerning Bahāʾ Allāh to the effect that, when told that Shaykh Muḥammad Bāqir Isfahānī asked for a translation of sūra 112 to be made and sent to him, ̣ retorted that “Moses had heard the call of ‘I am your God’ from a burning bush. Why not from a man?”

The authors of the Hasht bihisht quote two verses from the poetry of Mullā Muḥammad Nabīl Zarandī that indicate a strong tendency to the use of extreme hyperbole in reference to Bahāʾ Allāh:

Lordship has entered the plain of his majesty with lacerated chest. Divinity has become like a trembling willow in the garden of his exaltation.

And:

Men call you God, and I grow angry.

Draw aside the veil, and do not accept the shame of Godhood.

While in Kermān, E. G. Browne encountered a number of Bahāʾīs who entertained similarly exaggerated ideas about their prophet, among them a certain Shaykh Ibrāhīm, who told him: “God is something real, visible, tangible, definite. Go to Acre and see God!”

(The Messiah of Shiraz, Studies in Early and Middle Babism by Denis Martin MacEoin)