Abduʾl-Bahā (Abbās Effendi, 1844-1921) was the son of Bahāʾuʾllāh (Mirzā Hosayn ʿAli Nuri, 1817-1892), the founder of the Bahāʾi Faith. His ideas cannot be separated from that framework. The network of Bahāʾi communities willing to practise and spread Abduʾl-Bahā's ideas has also been a major factor in his influence and effectiveness. Moreover the Bahāʾi community was a precocious model for some of the reforms that Iranian modernists wanted to see in Iranian society: modern forms of education, the education and social participation of women and reliance on consultation among the people.

From about 1867, Bahāʾuʾllāh sent letters to prominent world leaders that addressed the inadequacy of national and international governance. He also instructed Abduʾl-Bahā to write the first of the works translated here, The Secret of Divine Civilization, in support of the reforms that the Prime Minister, Mirzā Hosayn Khān, known as Moshir al-Dawleh and Sepahsālār, had initiated in Iran. Abduʾl-Bahā did so in 1875.

Abduʾl-Bahā lived in tumultuous times: Iran, along with the wider area in which Persian was the language of culture, was feeling the impact of modernity and the influence of European (especially Russian) colonial and commercial expansion, as well as being under pressure from its Sunni neighbour and rival, the Ottoman Empire. The need for modernisation was felt earlier in the Ottoman Empire, where a larger modernising intellectual network was connected with more diverse European influences than was the case in Iran at that time. The first Ottoman Constitution was promulgated in 1876. As Abbas Amanat notes:

It should be noted that modernisation in 1850 did not entail democratisation, or many of the features we associate today with the modern state. The Russian Empire was an absolute monarchy; the Ottoman Empire was only slightly more progressive.