Verses Like a Copious Rain

*A retelling based on **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi (chapters VIII, X and XII), which quotes the testimony of Nabíl and other eyewitnesses. Words in quotation marks are quoted from that book.*

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In 1856 Bahá'u'lláh returned to Baghdád from two years of retirement in the mountains of Sulaymáníyyih. Shoghi Effendi notes that one mark of the years that followed was "the enormous expansion in the scope and volume" of His writings. Bahá'u'lláh Himself described that period in these words: "We revealed, as a copious rain, Our verses, and sent them to various parts of the world."

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Nabíl, who was then living in Baghdád, testified that during the first two years after Bahá'u'lláh's return, the unrecorded verses that came from His lips averaged, in a single day and night, the equivalent of the Qur'án.

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Much of what was revealed was never kept. Bahá'u'lláh's amanuensis told Nabíl that, by Bahá'u'lláh's express order, hundreds of thousands of verses, mostly written in His own hand, were obliterated and cast into the river. When the amanuensis hesitated, Bahá'u'lláh reassured him: "None is to be found at this time worthy to hear these melodies." This happened, the amanuensis said, "not once, or twice, but innumerable times."

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A certain Muḥammad Karím of Shíráz had once watched the Báb write down His verses. When he came into Bahá'u'lláh's presence in Baghdád and saw Him reveal, he left this testimony: "I bear witness that the verses revealed by Bahá'u'lláh were superior, in the rapidity with which they were penned, in the ease with which they flowed, in their lucidity, their profundity and sweetness to those which I, myself saw pour from the pen of the Báb when in His presence."

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In Adrianople the outpouring grew still greater. "Day and night," an eyewitness wrote, "the Divine verses were raining down in such number that it was impossible to record them." 'Abdu'l-Bahá was continually occupied in transcribing them, and "there was not a moment to spare." Nabíl recorded that a number of secretaries worked day and night and still could not keep up. One of them, Mírzá Báqir-i-Shírází, transcribed no less than two thousand verses a day for six or seven months, and left behind about twenty volumes in his own fine hand.

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Of His verses Bahá'u'lláh Himself wrote: "Such are the outpourings ... from the clouds of Divine Bounty that within the space of an hour the equivalent of a thousand verses hath been revealed." And of Adrianople He said: "That which hath already been revealed in this land, secretaries are incapable of transcribing. It has, therefore, remained for the most part untranscribed."

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By the end of His life, Shoghi Effendi writes, Bahá'u'lláh was the author of "a hundred volumes, repositories of the priceless pearls of His Revelation."

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi.*

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