TAFSĪR HUWA
[Per. TAFSĪR-I HU]
COMMENTARY ON THE "HE IS" (HUWA)
IN PROGRESS 2006
Baha'-Allah's wholly Arabic scriptural Tablet
sometimes referred to in Persian as the Tafsīr-i hu is (more correctly
Arab.) Tafsīr huwa, the "Commentary on the He is"
(
هو
= huwa = "He is"). It is a scriptural Tablet of around twenty
pages dating from the mid.-late Iraq (Baghdad) period (c. 1859?). It has the
following Arabic prescript
هذا
ما
نزل من جبروت العظمة بلسان العزة وا لرفعة في حق مراته القدسية وا لنور
الازليه
"This is that which was revealed from
the Empyrean of Grandeur (jabarūt al-`uẓmat) through the Tongue of
Power (bi-lisān al-`izzat) and, in very truth, raised up His
sanctified Mirror (mirātihi al-qudsiyya) and All-Eternal Light
(al-nūr al-azaliyya)."
In basic grammatical terms
هو
= huwa
is the Arabic third person masculine pronoun. In the Qur'ān and
in numerous other Arabic Islamic religious texts, traditions and literatures
it is often indicative of the existent
reality of the Godhead whose personal Name is Allah is presupposed. Thus
هو
in the Qur'an and elsewhere as well as in thousands of Babi-Baha'i religious
texts, indicates the reality, transcendence and absolute existence of the
Godhead. Thus also the common theological phrase
هوالله
which
also has deep theological and alphabetic or numerological
significances in Islamic mysticism as well as in a considerable number of
the writings of the Bab and other primary and secondary Babi and Baha'i sacred
literatures. Additionally, the Bab wrote several commentaries on the first
letter of theهو
huwa or several works entitled Tafsir al-hā' (Commentary upon the
letter "H"). Baha'-Allah's Tafsir-i hu or Tafsir Huwa was
writtern in a Babi universe of discourse before he had announced his own
messianic or theophanological claims in 1863 (near Baghdad) and subsequently
in 1866-7.
(from Edirne) CE.
The text of the Tafsir-i hu / Tafsir
huwa has never been officially published or translated. The text I
refer to, translate and to some extent reproduce here is based on a typed
text communicated to me by the Baha'i World Centre (Haifa, Israel) in 1982
______________________________________________________________
Baha'u'llah
Tafsir-i-hu
