The Secret of Divine Civilization

The earliest of the works by Abduʾl-Bahā included here is the Resāleh-ye madaniyyeh (Treatise on Civilization), also known in Arabic as Asrār algheybiyya le asbāb al-madaniyyah (Heavenly secrets as to the means of civilization), and known in English as The Secret of Divine Civilization. Composed in 1875, it supports the administrative and broader social reforms of Mirzā Hosayn Khān, but looks mainly for organic reform from below, and especially through the efforts of Iranian intellectuals to waken and educate the masses. Abduʾl-Bahā gives virtuous and progressive Islamic clerics a leading role among these intellectuals; indeed most of his appeals are directed specifically to them. This is an important counter to a commonly expressed view that the Bahāʾi Faith, which has no clergy itself, is anti-clerical in principle. Relatively innovative elements in Abduʾl-Bahā's programme include the need for a system of global collective security based on law and backed by force, and the suggestion that public officials should be chosen in periodic elections, rather than being appointed by the Shah, so as to give the public a supervisory role and inhibit corruption. Abduʾl-Bahā not only has definite reforms in mind, he also brings a sociological perspective regarding what makes reform possible without fragmenting society, and a comparative historical perspective. This perspective ranges from observations on the shape of society in medieval Europe to seeing what lessons can be learned from the Paris commune and the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian war.

This was the second reformist treatise in Persian to be printed and distributed in Iran, after Mostashār al-Dowleh's Yek Kalameh. Mirzā Fath ʿAli Ākhundzādeh's Letters of Kamāl al-Dawleh was a few years earlier, and circulated in manuscript from the late 1860s.

E.G. Browne has noted its wide dissemination, although I do not know of any evidence of how its message was received outside the Bahāʾi community. Its importance to Bahāʾuʾllāh's project is indicated by the fact that, when the Hasani Zivar Press became available in Bombay, this was the second printed publication Bahāʾuʾllāh commissioned (the first being his Kitāb-e Iqān, or Book of Certitude).