Today marks the 129th year since the Kitáb-i-‘Ahd, Bahá’u’lláh’s Will and Testament, was unsealed and made public, nine days after His passing.
To honor this occasion, we are reposting our publication of an excerpt from the Kitáb-i-‘Ahd, more specifically, paragraph 9, where Bahá’u’lláh categorically names ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as the Center of the Covenant. We are accompanying this repost with two graphics.
The first is a short chronology of the Kitáb-i-‘Ahd.
Written entirely in His own hand; unsealed, on the ninth day after His ascension in the presence of nine witnesses chosen from amongst His companions and members of His Family; read subsequently, on the afternoon of that same day, before a large company assembled in His Most Holy Tomb, including His sons, some of the Báb’s kinsmen, pilgrims and resident believers, this unique and epoch-making Document, designated by Bahá’u’lláh as His “Most Great Tablet,” and alluded to by Him as the “Crimson Book” in His “Epistle to the Son of the Wolf,” can find no parallel in the Scriptures of any previous Dispensation, not excluding that of the Báb Himself. For nowhere in the books pertaining to any of the world’s religious systems, not even among the writings of the Author of the Bábí Revelation, do we find any single document establishing a Covenant endowed with an authority comparable to the Covenant which Bahá’u’lláh had Himself instituted.
Shoghi Effendi – God Passes By
