“In the first of his books he was, above all, pious and
mystical; in the second, polemics and dialectics held an important place, and
his listeners noticed that he unfolded, from a chapter in the Book of God which
he had chosen, a new meaning which no one had heretofore perceived and
especially that he drew from it doctrines and information wholly unexpected.
That which one never tired of admiring was the elegance and beauty of the
Arabic style used in those writings. They soon had enthusiastic admirers who
did not fear to prefer them to the finest passages in the Qur’án.” (Comte de
Gobineau’s “Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l’Asie Centrale,” p. 120.)
(Footnotes to chapter 3 provided by Shoghi Effendi)
