ds of thousands of verses, mostly written by His own
hand, were obliterated and cast into the river. "Finding me reluctant to
execute His orders," Mirza Aqa Jan has related to Nabil, "Baha'u'llah
would reassure me saying: 'None is to be found at this time worthy to hear
these melodies.' ...Not once, or twice, but innumerable times, was I
commanded to repeat this act." A certain Muhammad Karim, a native of
_Sh_iraz, who had been a witness to the rapidity and the manner in which
the Bab had penned the verses with which He was inspired, has left the
following testimony to posterity, after attaining, during those days, the
presence of Baha'u'llah, and beholding with his own eyes what he himself
had considered to be the only proof of the mission of the Promised One: "I
bear witness that the verses revealed by Baha'u'llah 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 Bab when in His presence. Had Baha'u'llah no
other claim to greatness, this were sufficient, in the eyes of the world
and its people, that He produced such verses as have streamed this day
from His pen."

Foremost among the priceless treasures cast forth from the billowing ocean
of Baha'u'llah's Revelation ranks the Kitab-i-Iqan (Book of Certitude),
revealed within the space of two days and two nights, in the closing years
of that period (1278 A.H.--1862 A.D.). It was written in fulfillment of the
prophecy of the Bab, Who had specifically stated that the Promised One
would complete the text of the unfinished Persian Bayan, and in reply to
the questions addressed to Baha'u'llah by the as yet unconverted maternal
uncle of the Bab, Haji Mirza Siyyid Muhammad, while on a visit, with his
brother, Haji Mirza Hasan-'Ali, to Karbila. A model of Persian prose, of a
style at once original, chaste and vigorous, and remarkably lucid, both
cogent in argument and matchless in its irresistible eloquence, this Book,
setting forth in outline the Grand Redemptive Scheme of God, occupies a
position unequalled by any work in the entire range of Baha'i literature,
except the Kitab-i-Aqdas, Baha'u'llah's Most Holy Book. Revealed on the
eve of the declaration of His Mission, it proffered to mankind the "Choice
Sealed Wine," whose seal is of "musk," and broke the "seals" of the "Book"
referred to by Daniel, and disclosed the meaning of t