Contents

• Baha'i Terms of Use
• Introduction
• Gems of Divine Mystery

Javáhiru’l-Asrár

Bahá’í World Centre

BAHÁ’Í WORLD CENTRE COPYRIGHT ©
2002 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Introduction

The decade-long exile of Bahá’u’lláh in ‘Iráq began under the harshest of conditions and at the lowest ebb in the fortunes of the Bábí Faith. It witnessed, however, the gradual crystallization of those potent spiritual forces which were to culminate in the declaration of His world-embracing mission in 1863. In the course of these years, and from the city of Baghdád, there radiated, Shoghi Effendi writes, “wave after wave, a power, a radiance and a glory which insensibly reanimated a languishing Faith, sorely-stricken, sinking into obscurity, threatened with oblivion. From it were diffused, day and night, and with ever-increasing energy, the first emanations of a Revelation which, in its scope, its copiousness, its driving force and the volume and variety of its literature, was destined to excel that of the Báb Himself.”1

Among these early effusions of the Pen of Glory is a lengthy Arabic epistle known as the Javáhiru’l-Asrár, meaning literally the “gems” or “essences” of mysteries. A number of themes it enunciates are also elaborated in Persian—through different revelatory modes—in the Seven Valleys and the Book of Certitude, those two immortal volumes which Shoghi