This wine, Rúmí says elsewhere, comes from the jar of “Yea verily.” That is, it symbolizes the Primal Covenant established between God and man on the day of “Am I not your Lord?” On that day, the Creator summoned posterity out of the loins of Adam and said to the generations unborn, “Am I not your Lord?” Whereupon they answered, “Yea, verily, Thou art.” Cf. Qur’án 7:171.
The Turkish para was one-ninth of a cent. Cf. Webster, New International Dictionary.
Nabíl, author of The Dawn-Breakers, is Bahá’u’lláh’s “Poet-Laureate, His chronicler and His indefatigable disciple.” Cf. God Passes By, p. 130.
Mírzá Yaḥyá, the community’s “nominal head,” was the “center provisionally appointed pending the manifestation of the Promised One.” Ibid., p. 127–28.
A reference to Islámic symbolism, according to which good is protected from evil: the angels repel such evil spirits as attempt to spy on Paradise, by hurling shooting stars at them. Cf. Qur’án 15:18, 37:10 and 67:5.
A reference to the declaration of Bahá’u’lláh’s advent in 1863, as the Promised One of the Báb. The Báb’s own advent had taken place in the “year sixty”—1844.
Bahá’í writings emphasize that the “divinity attributed to so great a Being and the complete incarnation of the names and attributes of God in so exalted a Person should, under no circumstances, be misconceived or misinterpreted ... that invisible yet rational God ... however much we extol the divinity of His Manifestations on earth, can in no wise incarnate His infinite, His unknowable, His incorruptible and all-embracing Reality in ... a mortal being.” Cf. Shoghi Effendi, The Dispensation of Bahá’u’lláh.
According to the abjad reckoning, the letters of “shidád” total 309. 1892, the date of Bahá’u’lláh’s ascension, was 1309 A.H.
Gharíq. The letters composing this word total 1310, which Hijra year began July 26, 1892.
Terms used by the Súfís.