Bahá'u'lláh Reveals the Tablet of Wisdom

*A retelling based on the chapter on the Lawḥ-i-Ḥikmat in **The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh**, volume 4, by Adib Taherzadeh. Words of the Tablet are quoted from its authorized English translation in Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh Revealed after the Kitáb-i-Aqdas.*

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Áqá Muḥammad-i-Qá'iní, known as Nabíl-i-Akbar, first met Bahá'u'lláh in Baghdád. Some years later, around AH 1290 (1873–74), he came on pilgrimage to 'Akká and was received by Bahá'u'lláh in the House of 'Abbúd. It was on this pilgrimage, Adib Taherzadeh writes, that Bahá'u'lláh revealed the *Lawḥ-i-Ḥikmat*, the Tablet of Wisdom, in his honour.

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Nabíl-i-Akbar was known throughout Persia as a theologian and philosopher. 'Abdu'l-Bahá, remembering him in *Memorials of the Faithful*, called him "at once a mujtahid, a philosopher, a mystic, and gifted with intuitive sight," and added: "He had a great and universal mind." Taherzadeh notes that it is not surprising that the Tablet revealed for such a man, written in Arabic, uses the terms of philosophy and speaks of the philosophers of ancient Greece.

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The Tablet begins with the condition of the world. Bahá'u'lláh exhorts mankind "in these days when the countenance of Justice is soiled with dust, when the flames of unbelief are burning high and the robe of wisdom rent asunder." Then come counsels addressed to all people: "Be united in counsel, be one in thought. Let each morn be better than its eve and each morrow richer than its yesterday. Man's merit lieth in service and virtue and not in the pageantry of wealth and riches."

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Nabíl had asked about the beginning of creation. Bahá'u'lláh answered that on this matter "conceptions vary by reason of the divergences in men's thoughts and opinions," and that "there was God, and His creation had ever existed beneath His shelter from the beginning that hath no beginning." Elsewhere in the Tablet He writes: "That which hath been in existence had existed before, but not in the form thou seest today." Taherzadeh explains that Bahá'u'lláh here distinguishes the eternity of God, which has no cause, from the eternity of creation, which comes into being through a cause.

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Bahá'u'lláh then sets Himself, in His words, "the task of mentioning in this Tablet some accounts of the sages." He writes: "The sages aforetime acquired their knowledge from the Prophets, inasmuch as the latter were the Exponents of divine philosophy and the Revealers of heavenly mysteries." Empedocles, He says, was a contemporary of David, and Pythagoras lived in the days of Solomon and "acquired Wisdom from the treasury of prophethood." And He states plainly: "The essence and the fundamentals of philosophy have emanated from the Prophets."

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He names Hippocrates as one who "believed in God and acknowledged His sovereignty." Of Socrates He writes: "He is the most distinguished of all philosophers and was highly versed in wisdom." He mentions "the divine Plato" and Aristotle, "the well-known man of knowledge," and says that these men "one and all acknowledged their belief in the immortal Being Who holdeth in His grasp the reins of all sciences."

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Taherzadeh observes that some of these details are not found in history books. When Ethel Rosenberg, an early British Bahá'í, asked 'Abdu'l-Bahá about the differences, He replied in a long Tablet that records of the times before Alexander the Great are not reliable, having been compiled later, mainly from oral tradition.

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In the same Tablet Bahá'u'lláh speaks of His own knowledge: "Thou knowest full well that We perused not the books which men possess and We acquired not the learning current amongst them, and yet whenever We desire to quote the sayings of the learned and of the wise, presently there will appear before the face of thy Lord in the form of a tablet all that which hath appeared in the world and is revealed in the Holy Books and Scriptures."

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Nabíl-i-Akbar was one of the great teachers of the Faith, and the Tablet gives him counsel for that work: "Teach thou the Cause of God with an utterance which will cause the bushes to be enkindled." Bahá'u'lláh adds that "human utterance is an essence which aspireth to exert its influence and needeth moderation," and that its moderation "hath to be combined with tact and wisdom as prescribed in the Holy Scriptures and Tablets."

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Nabíl-i-Akbar served the Faith until the end of his life, and after his passing 'Abdu'l-Bahá named him a Hand of the Cause of God. "The Tablet of Hikmat is like an ocean," Taherzadeh writes. "Nabil-i-Akbar immersed himself in it and obtained a great many of the pearls of wisdom hidden in its depths."

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh**, volume 4, chapter 3, by Adib Taherzadeh, and the Tablet of Wisdom itself in **Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh**.*

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