Hidden Words
Bahá'í scripture, written by Bahá'u'lláh around 1858
The Hidden Words (Kalimát-i-Maknúnih, Arabic: کلمات مكنونة, Persian: کلمات مکنونه) is a book written by Baháʼu'lláh, the founder of the Baháʼí Faith, around 1858. He composed it while walking along the banks of the Tigris river during his exile in Baghdad. The book is written partly in Arabic and partly in Persian.
The Hidden Words is written in the form of a collection of 153 short aphorisms, 71 in Arabic and 82 in Persian, in which Baháʼu'lláh says he has taken the basic essence of certain spiritual truths and written them in brief form. ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, Baháʼu'lláh's son and the authorized interpreter of his teachings, advised Baháʼís to read them every day and every night and to implement their latent wisdom into their daily lives. He also said that The Hidden Words is "a treasury of divine mysteries" and that when one ponders its contents, "the doors of the mysteries will open".
History
There is a Shiʻa Muslim tradition called "Mushaf of Fatimah" (Arabic: مصحف فاطمة), which speaks of Fatimah upon the death of her father, Muhammad. There are several versions of this tradition, but common to all are that the angel Gabriel appeared to her and consoled her by telling her things that she wrote in a book. According to one tradition they were prophesies. The book, if ever physical, did not survive, and was seen to be something that the Mahdi would reveal in the last days.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hidden Words” as bahá'í scripture, written by Bahá'u'lláh around 1858. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as bahá'í scripture, written by Bahá'u'lláh around 1858. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1519440. VIAF identifies the subject as 195849318. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1858.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hidden Words” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.