The First English Iqán: Ali-Kuli Khan's Translation

In its issue dated the seventeenth of August 1916 the Star of the West announced the publication, by the Bahai Publishing Society of Chicago, of the first complete English translation of The Book of Assurance — the Persian text known to the Bahá'í community as the Kitáb-i-Íqán, the principal doctrinal work revealed by Bahá'u'lláh in Baghdád in 1862. The translator was Ali-Kuli Khan, the Iranian diplomat who had served at the Master's elbow in 'Akká as a young man and had then, by the Master's direction, accepted appointment as chargé d'affaires of the Iranian Legation in Washington.

The translation had occupied Khan, at intervals, for nearly fifteen years. He had begun on the work in 'Akká, under the Master's daily oversight. He had brought the unfinished manuscript with him to America in 1901. He had continued working on it through his diplomatic career, often through the long evenings after the consular day was done. His wife, Florence Breed Khan — the daughter of a Boston Brahmin family, herself a believer, and a careful editor — had worked alongside him on the polishing of the English prose.

This Book is the foundation of the doctrine of our Faith.

The phrase, lifted by the Star's editors from one of the Master's Tablets to Khan, set the proper measure of the work's importance. The Iqán was the book Bahá'u'lláh had specifically named as the principal proof, by argument, of the truth of His own claim and of the unity of the prophetic dispensations. Without it, the doctrinal foundation of the Faith could not be presented to a Western audience. With it — and now in English — that foundation could be put into every American believer's hand.

The Khan-Breed translation would serve the American Bahá'í community for the next half century. It would be revised more than once and would in time be superseded, in the 1930s, by Shoghi Effendi's own definitive English translation. But for fifteen years — through the decisive period in which the American Bahá'í community moved from a small inquiring circle into an established religious body — the Iqán in English was the Khan translation. Many of the careful early American teachers learned the doctrine of the Faith from the sentences Ali-Kuli and Florence had laboured over.

The Star of the West's notice in August 1916 closed with a thanks to the translators and a recommendation that every believer order a copy. The price was modest. The book had been long awaited. The American Bahá'í community had now been given, in its own language, the central doctrinal proof of the Cause it had been gathering around.

Source: Star of the West, Volume 7, Issue 9 (August 17, 1916), notice on the publication of the English Kitáb-i-Íqán translated by Ali-Kuli Khan. Public domain text from bahai-library.com.

Editors, S. O. T. W.. (1916). *Star of the West*. Bahai News Service. https://bahai-library.com/star_of_the_west_volume_7