13 This wine, Rumi says elsewhere, comes from the jar of "Yea verily."
That is, it symbolizes the Primal Covenant established between God
and man on the day of "Am I not your Lord?" On that day, the Creator
summoned posterity out of the loins of Adam and said to the
generations unborn, "Am I not your Lord?" Whereupon they answered,
"Yea, verily, Thou art." Cf. Qur'an 7:171.
14 The Turkish para was one-ninth of a cent. Cf. Webster, New
International Dictionary.
15 Nabil, author of The Dawn-Breakers, is Baha'u'llah's "Poet-Laureate,
His chronicler and His indefatigable disciple." Cf. God Passes By,
p. 130.
16 Mirza Yahya, the community's "nominal head," was the "center
provisionally appointed pending the manifestation of the Promised
One." Ibid., p. 127-28.
17 A reference to Islamic symbolism, according to which good is
protected from evil: the angels repel such evil spirits as attempt
to spy on Paradise, by hurling shooting stars at them. Cf. Qur'an
15:18, 37:10 and 67:5.
18 A reference to the declaration of Baha'u'llah's advent in 1863, as
the Promised One of the Bab. The Bab's own advent had taken place in
the "year sixty"--1844.
19 Baha'i writings emphasize that the "divinity attributed to so great
a Being and the complete incarnation of the names and attributes of
God in so exalted a Person should, under no circumstances, be
misconceived or misinterpreted ... that invisible yet rational God
... however much we extol the divinity of His Manifestations on
earth, can in no wise incarnate His infinite, His unknowable, His
incorruptible and all-embracing Reality in ... a mortal being." Cf.
Shoghi Effendi, The Dispensation of Baha'u'llah.
20 According to the abjad reckoning, the letters of "_sh_idad" total
309. 1892, the date of Baha'u'llah's ascension, was 1309 A.H.
_ 21 Gh_ariq. The letters composing this word total 1310, which Hijra
year began July 26, 1892.