“It is always in the same line of thought that when
imprisoned in Máh-Kú he addressed a long letter to the Sháh (Muhammad Sháh)
which we are about to analyze here. The document begins like nearly all the
literary documents of the Báb with exalted praise of Divine Unity. The Báb
continues in praising, as is fitting, Muḥammad,
the twelve Imáms, who, as we shall see in the second volume of this work, are
cornerstones of the Bayán edifice. ‘I affirm,’ he exclaims, ‘that everything
which is in this world of possibilities other than they, is, in comparison, as
absolute nothingness, and if one could express it at all, all that is but a
shadow of a shadow. I ask God to pardon me for assigning to them such limits.
In truth, the highest degree of praise which one can confer upon them is to
confess in their very presence that it is impossible to praise them....
“‘This is why God has created me out of a clay from which no
one else has been created. And God has given me what the learned, with all
their science, are unable to understand, what no one can know unless he be
completely humbled before my revelation.... Know then in truth, I am a pillar
of the first word; whosoever knows that first word has known God wholly, and
has entered into the universal good. Whosoever has refused to know it has
remained in ignorance of God and has entered into the universal evil.
“‘I take God as witness, the Master of the two worlds, he
who here below lives as long as nature permits and remains all his life the
servant of God in all the works prescribed by true religion, if he entertains
in his heart any enmity towards me, even so little that God alone might be
aware of it, he is useless and God will prepare for him a punishment; he will
be among those destined to die. God has determined the good which is implied in
obedience to me, and all the evil which follows disobedience to my commands. In
truth, today I see all that I have just said; I see the children of my love,
the obedient ones in the highest heaven, while my enemies are thrust into the
depths of eternal fire!