y of the laws and precepts of the new Dispensation and
the treasury enshrining most of the Bab's references and tributes to, as
well as His warning regarding, "Him Whom God will make manifest"--was
revealed. Peerless among the doctrinal works of the Founder of the Babi
Dispensation; consisting of nine Vahids (Unities) of nineteen chapters
each, except the last Vahid comprising only ten chapters; not to be
confounded with the smaller and less weighty Arabic Bayan, revealed during
the same period; fulfilling the Muhammadan prophecy that "a Youth from
Bani-Ha_sh_im ... will reveal a new Book and promulgate a new Law;" wholly
safeguarded from the interpolation and corruption which has been the fate
of so many of the Bab's lesser works, this Book, of about eight thousand
verses, occupying a pivotal position in Babi literature, should be
regarded primarily as a eulogy of the Promised One rather than a code of
laws and ordinances designed to be a permanent guide to future
generations. This Book at once abrogated the laws and ceremonials enjoined
by the Qur'an regarding prayer, fasting, marriage, divorce and
inheritance, and upheld, in its integrity, the belief in the prophetic
mission of Muhammad, even as the Prophet of Islam before Him had annulled
the ordinances of the Gospel and yet recognized the Divine origin of the
Faith of Jesus Christ. It moreover interpreted in a masterly fashion the
meaning of certain terms frequently occurring in the sacred Books of
previous Dispensations such as Paradise, Hell, Death, Resurrection, the
Return, the Balance, the Hour, the Last Judgment, and the like. Designedly
severe in the rules and regulations it imposed, revolutionizing in the
principles it instilled, calculated to awaken from their age-long torpor
the clergy and the people, and to administer a sudden and fatal blow to
obsolete and corrupt institutions, it proclaimed, through its drastic
provisions, the advent of the anticipated Day, the Day when "the Summoner
shall summon to a stern business," when He will "demolish whatever hath
been before Him, even as the Apostle of God demolished the ways of those
that preceded Him."

It should be noted, in this connection, that in the third Vahid of this
Book there occurs a passage which, alike in its explicit reference to the
name of the Promised One, and in its anticipation of the Order which, in a
later age, was to be identified with His Revelation, deserves to rank as
one of the most sig