A more significant light, however, is shed on this episode,
marking the Declaration of the Mission of the Báb, by the perusal of that
“first, greatest and mightiest” of all books in the Bábí Dispensation, the
celebrated commentary on the Súrih of Joseph, the first chapter of which, we
are assured, proceeded, in its entirety, in the course of that night of nights
from the pen of its divine Revealer. The description of this episode by Mullá
Husayn, as well as the opening pages of that Book attest the magnitude and
force of that weighty Declaration. A claim to be no less than the mouthpiece of
God Himself, promised by the Prophets of bygone ages; the assertion that He
was, at the same time, the Herald of One immeasurably greater than Himself; the
summons which He trumpeted forth to the kings and princes of the earth; the
dire warnings directed to the Chief Magistrate of the realm, Muhammad Sháh; the
counsel imparted to Hájí Mírzá Áqásí to fear God, and the peremptory command to
abdicate his authority as grand vizir of the Sháh and submit to the One Who is
the “Inheritor of the earth and all that is therein”; the challenge issued to
the rulers of the world proclaiming the self-sufficiency of His Cause,
denouncing the vanity of their ephemeral power, and calling upon them to “lay
aside, one and all, their dominion,” and deliver His Message to “lands in both
the East and the West”—these constitute the dominant features of that initial
contact that marked the birth, and fixed the date, of the inception of the most
glorious era in the spiritual life of mankind.
- Shoghi Effendi (Chapter 1, ‘God Passes By)