Glossary
‘Abá: Cloak, mantle
Abhá: Superlative of Bahá; Most Glorious; All-Glorious
Abjad reckoning: Numerical value of letters in the Arabic-Per-
sian alphabet
Afnán: The Báb’s kindred. Cf. God Passes By, 239; 328
The Ancient Beauty: A title of Bahá’u’lláh
The Blessed Beauty: A title of Bahá’u’lláh
Dawlih: State; government
Farmán: Order; command; royal decree
Farrásh: Attendant; footman
Farsakh: Same as parsang; a unit of measurement, varying from
three to four miles, according to the terrain
Fatvá: Judgment pronounced by a muftí
Ḥájí: Title of a Muslim who has made the pilgrimage to Mecca
Ḥaẓíratu’l-Quds: The Sacred Fold; Bahá’í administrative center
Imám: Title of the twelve Shí‘ih successors of Muḥammad.
Unlike the Caliph of the Sunní Muslims—an elected, out-
ward and visible head—the vicegerency of the Prophet is
to Shí‘ihs a purely spiritual matter, conferred by Muḥam-
mad and each of His successors until the twelfth. The
Imám is the “divinely ordained successor of the Prophet,
one endowed with all perfections and spiritual gifts, one
whom all the faithful must obey, whose decision is abso-
lute and final, whose wisdom is superhuman, and whose
words are authoritative.”
Imám: Prayer-leader
Imám-Jum‘ih: Prayer-leader in the Friday or cathedral mosque
Jináb: Courtesy title, varying in emphasis; somewhat equiva-
lent to Your Honor, His Honor
Kad-Khudá: Borough head; village head
Kalántar: Mayor
Lote-Tree: Refers to the Manifestation of God
Mashriqu’l-Adhkár: Dawning-place of the praise of God; Bahá’í
House of Worship
Muftí: Expounder of Muslim law
Mujtahid: Doctor of the law; cleric whose rank entitles him to
practice religious jurisprudence. Most Persian mujtahids
have received their diplomas from the leading jurists of
Karbilá and Najaf
Mullá: Muslim priest
Nabíl: Learned; noble. The Báb and Bahá’u’lláh sometimes re-
ferred to a person by a title whose letters, in the abjad
reckoning, had the same numerical value as the individual’s
name. E.g., the numerical value of the letters in Muḥam-
mad is 92, and that of the letters in Nabíl is also 92.
Qá’im: He Who Ariseth: a title of the Báb
Shaykhí School: A sect of Shí‘ih Islám. The Shí‘ihs were di-
vided into two main branches, the “Sect of the Seven”
and the “Sect of the Twelve.”. Sprung from the latter
branch, the Shaykhí School was founded by Shaykh
Aḥmad and Siyyid Káẓim, forerunners of the Báb. The
Guardian writes in God Passes By, his history of the first
hundred years of the Bábí-Bahá’í Faith, p. xii: “I shall seek
to represent and correlate … those momentous happen-
ings which have insensibly, relentlessly, and under the very
eyes of successive generations, perverse, indifferent or hos-
tile, transformed a heterodox and seemingly negligible off-
shoot of the Shaykhí school … into a world religion …”
Ṣiráṭ: Bridge or path; denotes the religion of God
Siyyid: Title of the Prophet Muhammad’s descendants
‘Ulamá: Divines, scholars
