THE QAYYŪM AL-ASMĀ' OF THE BĀB
Part LIV
[54]
سورة الغلام
Sūrat al-Ghulām,
(The Surah of the Youth)
on
Qur'ān 12:53
IN PROGRESS 2007-8
There follows the fifty-fourth part of my provisional translation of the Qayyūm al-asmā’ (= QA) of the Bāb (mid. 1844/1260) with selected notes, the Sūrat al-Ghulam (The Surah of the Youth). I began these translations in the early 1980s though I have not translated from a critical edition but consulted several good mss. The versification of the surahs of the QA is often uncertain. though in QA54 I tentatively count XX verses and retain versification for the sake of reference and commentary.
The qur'anic Arabic word غلام is derived from the triliteral root gh-l-m which can have the following basic verbal senses, ADD As a verbal noun ADD
From the beginning the qur'anic Arabic word غلام ghulam has been an important item within the extensive Arabic-Persian Babi-Baha'i vocabulary. That this is so is evident within the text of the QA itself.
In the Sūrat al-ghulām (Surah of the Youth, QA 54) the Bāb refers to himself as the al-bāb al-akbar (Greatest Gate) and al-ghulām al-`arabī the Arabian Youth to whom reference is made in the Tawrāt (Torah. Hebrew Bible), the Injīl (Evangel, New Testament), the Zabūr (Psalms attributed to David) and the Qur'an. as well as in the umm al-kitāb, the Archetypal Book (QA 54:214). This is in line with the Shī`ī notion that pre-Islamic prophets (anbiyā’) predicted the identity of the future advent of Muhammad before his being born in this world. The same is said of the Bāb as the eschatological Joseph-like “youth”. Both the Bāb and BA* believed their advent was specifically predicted in all past sacred books (Ibn Bābūya, Risāla fī’l-ghayba, IV [CD]).[225]
Baha'-Allah often used the word ghulam of Himself. In for example, his early Edirne Lawḥ-i [`Alī Muhammad] Sayyah he writes:
Say O people!
This is the Youth of God (ghulām Allāh), His servant (`abd) and His attendant [assistant] (khādim), His Proof (ḥujjat) and His Sovereign (sulṭān); His Beauty (jamāl) and His Might (`izzat); His Grandeur (kibriyā') and His Demonstration (burhān); His Evidence and His Bounty (faḍl) upon the inhabitants of the heavens and of the earth.
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