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QA. 54A

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.

ADD