The Qayyúmu'l-Asmá'

The Qayyúmu'l-Asmá' is the Báb's commentary on the Súrih of Joseph from the Qur'án. In *God Passes By* Shoghi Effendi writes that its first chapter "proceeded, in its entirety, in the course of that night of nights from the pen of its divine Revealer," the night of the Báb's Declaration to Mullá Ḥusayn in His house in Shíráz, 22 May 1844.

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The completed work comprises more than nine thousand three hundred verses in one hundred and eleven chapters, each a commentary on one verse of that Súrih. It opens with the Báb's summons and warnings to the "concourse of kings and of the sons of kings." Shoghi Effendi records that Bahá'u'lláh characterized it as "the first, the greatest, and mightiest of all books" in the Bábí Dispensation.

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Shoghi Effendi also records that Ṭáhirih undertook its translation for the benefit of her Persian co-religionists and "exerted her utmost to spread the knowledge and elucidate the contents of that mighty Book."

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The first of the excerpts from it given in *Selections from the Writings of the Báb* begins:

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> All praise be to God Who hath, through the power of Truth, sent > down this Book unto His servant, that it may serve as a shining > light for all mankind... Verily this is none other than the > sovereign Truth; it is the Path which God hath laid out for all > that are in heaven and on earth.

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*Selections from the Writings of the Báb* gives a number of other passages from the book in translation.

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*A retelling based on Shoghi Effendi's **God Passes By** and **Selections from the Writings of the Báb**. For the fuller account, see the original.*

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