It was this composite work which, shortly after its completion,
Bahá’u’lláh instructed be written in the form of a pentacle, symbolizing
the human temple. To it He added, as a conclusion, what Shoghi Effendi has
described as “words which reveal the importance He attached to those
Messages, and indicate their direct association with the prophecies of the
Old Testament”:


Thus have We built the Temple with the hands of power and might,
could ye but know it. This is the Temple promised unto you in the
Book. Draw ye nigh unto it. This is that which profiteth you,
could ye but comprehend it. Be fair, O peoples of the earth! Which
is preferable, this, or a temple which is built of clay? Set your
faces towards it. Thus have ye been commanded by God, the Help in
Peril, the Self-Subsisting.


During the last years of His ministry Bahá’u’lláh Himself arranged for the
publication for the first time of definitive versions of some of His
principal works, and the Súriy-i-Haykal was awarded a prominent position
among them.

Of the various writings that make up the Súriy-i-Haykal, one requires
particular mention. The Lawḥ-i-Sulṭán, the Tablet to Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh,
Bahá’u’lláh’s lengthiest epistle to any single sovereign, was revealed in
the weeks immediately preceding His final banishment to ‘Akká. It was
eventually delivered to the monarch by Badí‘, a youth of seventeen, who
had entreated Bahá’u’lláh for the honour of rendering some service. His
efforts won him the crown of martyrdom and immortalized his name. The
Tablet contains the celebrated passage describing the circumstances in