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During the Bab's confinement in the fortress of Chihriq, where He spent almost the whole of the two remaining years of His life, the Lawh- i- Huru'fat (Tablet of the Letters) was revealed, in honor of Dayyan-- a Tablet which, however misconstrued at first as an exposition of the science of divination, was later recognized to have unravelled, on the one hand, the mystery of the Mustaghath, and to have abstrusely alluded, on the other, to the nineteen years which must needs elapse between the Declaration of the Bab and that of Baha'u'llah. It was during these years-- years darkened throughout by the rigors of the Bab's captivity, by the severe indignities inflicted upon Him, and by the news of the disasters that overtook the heroes of Mazindaran and Nayriz-- that He revealed, soon after His return from Tabriz, His denunciatory Tablet to Haji Mirza Aqasi. Couched in bold and moving language, unsparing in its condemnation, this epistle was forwarded to the intrepid Hujjat who, as corroborated by Baha'u'llah, delivered it to that wicked minister. (27:1) To this period of incarceration in the fortresses of Mah- Ku and Chihriq-- a period of unsurpassed fecundity, yet bitter in its humiliations and ever- deepening sorrows-- belong almost all the written references, whether in the form of warnings, appeals or exhortations, which the Bab, in anticipation of the approaching hour of His supreme affliction, felt it necessary to make to the Author of a Revelation that was soon to supersede His own. Conscious from the very beginning of His twofold mission, as the Bearer of a wholly independent Revelation and the Herald of One still greater than His own, He could not content Himself with the vast number of commentaries, of prayers, of laws and ordinances, of dissertations and epistles, of homilies and orations that had incessantly streamed from His pen. The Greater Covenant into which, as affirmed in His writings, God had, from time immemorial, entered, through the Prophets of all ages, with the whole of mankind, regarding the newborn Revelation, had already been fulfilled. It had now to be supplemented by a Lesser Covenant which He felt bound to make with the entire body of His followers concerning the One Whose advent He characterized as the fruit and ultimate purpose of His Dispensation. Such a Covenant had invariably been the feature of every previous religion. It had existed, under various forms, with varying degrees of emphasis, had always been couched in veiled language, and had been alluded to in cryptic prophecies, in abstruse allegories, in unauthenticated traditions, and in the fragmentary and obscure passages of the sacred Scriptures. In the Babi Dispensation, however, it was destined to be established in clear and unequivocal language, though not embodied in a separate document. Unlike the Prophets gone before Him, Whose Covenants were shrouded in mystery, unlike Baha'u'llah, Whose clearly defined Covenant was incorporated in a specially written Testament, and designated by Him as "the Book of My Covenant," the Bab chose to intersperse His Book of Laws, the Persian Bayan, with unnumbered passages, some designedly obscure, mostly indubitably clear and conclusive, in which He fixes the date of the promised Revelation, extols its virtues, asserts its pre- eminent character, assigns to it unlimited powers and prerogatives, and tears down every barrier that might be an obstacle to its recognition. "He, verily," Baha'u'llah, referring to the Bab in His Kitab- i- Badi', has stated, "hath not fallen short of His duty to exhort the people of the Bayan and to deliver unto them His Message. In no age or dispensation hath any Manifestation made mention, in such detail and in such explicit language, of the Manifestation destined to succeed Him."
(27:2)
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