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.
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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