Kitáb-i-Aqdas - Translations

Translations

The Kitáb-i-Aqdas was written in 1873. Around 1900 an English translation was made by Baha'i Anton Haddad, which circulated among the early American Bahá'í community in a typewritten form. In 1961 an English scholar of Arabic Dr. E. E. Elder and William M. Miller, an openly hostile Christian minister, published a second English translation, Al-Kitab Al-Aqdas, through the Royal Asiatic Society. In 1973 a Synopsis and Codification of the book was published the Universal House of Justice, and then in 1992 an authorized Bahá'í translation was made available. Earl Elder, in the preface to his independent 1961 translation, remarked on the curiosity of this long publishing delay in his 1961 preface:

"Anyone who studies Bahá'ísm learns very soon of the volume sacred to those who profess this religion and known as "The Most Holy Book...Yet, strange to say, although the teachings of Bahá have been widely proclaimed in Great Britain and America, only fragments of al-Kitab al-Aqdas have been translated previously into English."

In 1973, on the occasion of the centenary of the revelation of the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Universal House of Justice released a Synopsis and Codification of the text, which was supplemented by 21 passages of the Aqdas that had already been translated by Shoghi Effendi. The "Codification" consisted of terse lists of assorted laws and ordinances contained in the book outside of any contextual prose. Only in 1992 a complete official Bahá'í translation was published, which includes several supplements like Questions and Answers and notes. This translation is used for translations into other languages.