Bahá'í Writings in Electronic Formats

Prepared by Darren Hiebert

Background | Contact | Notes | Formats | Download | FAQ

Background

This project is a labor of love and dedicated to Habib Riazati, a truly inspiring servant of Bahá'u'lláh. It was during a talk he gave in 1990, shortly after I embraced the Faith of Bahá'u'lláh, that Habib said something like this (according to my recollection):

"It won't be long before you will be able to carry all of the Bahá'í Writings in your pocket. At that time, it will no longer matter how great a scholar you are, or how good a memory you have, as everyone will have access to the same information and be able to call up whatever the Writings have to say on any topic. Then, what will distinguish us from one another is what we do with that knowledge."

It took ten years for technology to progress to the point where this has become possible. Hopefully, this project brings us closer to that goal of making the ocean of knowledge contained in the Bahá'í Writings available anywhere, anytime. I am pleased that I have the opportunity to utilize my talents in the pursuit of that goal.


Contact

You can reach me via email at ebahai @ DarrenHiebert . com
or visit me at my web site.


Notes

These texts were prepared from the raw ASCII texts made available from the Bahá'í World Centre. I have applied numerous corrections to, formatted, and hyper-linked those texts to provide them here in their current form. Further, I have added paragraph numbers where these have been approved by the Universal House of Justice.

In order to permit reference back to printed editions of the texts, page breaks in the original printed edition used as the source for each electronic text (usually the U.S. pocket size edition) are retained in the electronic text and displayed in bold type and enclosed by square brackets (e.g. [42]).

If you discover any problems or typographical errors in these electronic texts, or have any suggestions as to how they could be improved, please let me know and I will correct them. You can find my email address above, and in the electronic files, themselves. I have also included a revision date in the files to allow tracking of updates to the files.


Formats

HTML

Viewing these will give you an idea of the overall appearance of a given text and how it is linked. Good use of hyper-text linking is provided in the texts. The best example of hyper-linking is The Kitáb-i-Aqdas (this link takes you to the HTML version).

iSilo [PalmOS, Pocket PC]

This is an excellent reader providing excellent link navigation features, with the ability to define custom bookmarks. It also provides the capability to store its books onto secure digital (SD) and compact flash (CF) cards on supporting devices. It currently costs $20 to license this program.

Microsoft Reader [Pocket PC, Windows]

Provides an extremely nice looking presentation. However, it is very slow and link navigation is crude.


Download

New texts will appear as they become available.

Textual updates (content or formatting) will be reflected by the Revision Date.

Title Revision
Date
Format
HTML iSilo
Reader
Microsoft
Reader
All titles below 26 Sep 2006 html.zip isilo.zip lit.zip
Bahá'u'lláh
Epistle to the Son of the Wolf 08 Jun 2003 esw.html esw-isilo.pdb esw.lit
Gems of Divine Mysteries 08 Jul 2006 HTML iSilo Reader
Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá'u'lláh 08 Jun 2003 gwb.html gwb-isilo.pdb gwb.lit
The Hidden Words 08 Jul 2006 hw.html hw-isilo.pdb hw.lit
The Kitáb-i-Aqdas (The Most Holy Book) 08 Jun 2003 aqd.html aqd-isilo.pdb aqd.lit
The Kitáb-i-Íqán (The Book of Certitude) 08 Jun 2003 iqa.html iqa-isilo.pdb iqa.lit
Prayers and Meditations 08 Jun 2003 pm.html pm-isilo.pdb pm.lit
The Proclamation of Bahá'u'lláh 08 Jun 2003 pb.html pb-isilo.pdb pb.lit
The Seven Valleys and The Four Valleys 08 Jun 2003 svfv.html svfv-isilo.pdb svfv.lit
The Summons of the Lord of Hosts 08 Jul 2006 HTML iSilo Reader
Tablets of Bahá'u'lláh 08 Jun 2003 tb.html tb-isilo.pdb tb.lit
The Báb
Selections from the Writings of The Báb 08 Jun 2003 swb.html swb-isilo.pdb swb.lit
`Abdu'l-Bahá
The Secret of Divine Civilization 08 Jun 2003 sdc.html sdc-isilo.pdb sdc.lit
Selections from the Writings of `Abdu'l-Bahá 08 Jun 2003 sab.html sab-isilo.pdb sab.lit
Some Answered Questions 08 Jun 2003 saq.html saq-isilo.pdb saq.lit
Will and Testament of `Abdu'l-Bahá 08 Jun 2003 wt.html wt-isilo.pdb wt.lit
Shoghi Effendi
The Advent of Divine Justice 08 Jun 2003 adj.html adj-isilo.pdb adj.lit
The Promised Day is Come 08 Jun 2003 pdc.html pdc-isilo.pdb pdc.lit
Universal House of Justice
Century of Light 08 Jun 2003 cl.html cl-isilo.pdb cl.lit
The Promise of World Peace 08 Jun 2003 pwp.html pwp-isilo.pdb pwp.lit
Compilations
Bahá'í Prayers (1st edition) 26 Sep 2006 bp.html bp-isilo.pdb bp.lit


Frequently Asked Questions

  1. How did you do all of this?

    I did not convert the texts by hand. I wrote pattern-matching conversion scripts in Perl tailored to the peculiarities of each text and wrote a transliteration table, which automates the conversion of the diacritically marked words (these two tasks are where the labor is). Then I run the scripts on the original texts to convert the files automatically.

  2. How much space do I need on my device to hold these files?

    Currently, all available files will together occupy approximately 6 MB on a PalmOS device, and 8.4 MB on a PocketPC. If you don't have enough available space, you can select just those texts which you really want.

  3. Why didn't you choose to support a free PalmOS reader?

    I selected the iSilo reader because it has the best support for hyper-links that I have found, in addition to more compact storage of its files (allowing you to hold more books).

    I have also done some work preparing the writings in Palm Reader (formerly Peanut Reader) format, since the Palm Reader is available freely. Unfortunately, I am having some problems with the hyperlinks in some of the documents working correctly (they lock up the device when selected). When and if I get things working with this reader, I will make files formatted for it available. However, the markup language for the Palm Reader is fairly crude and doesn't permit as nice a visual presentation.

    I am also looking into formatting the writings for use in Plucker, a free reader for PalmOS.

  4. Why are there no page numbers in The Kitáb-i-Aqdas?

    The bidirectional links generated between the text of the Aqdas and the Notes were done by using the passages quoted in the notes as a pattern with which to match the corresponding text of the Aqdas. It was not possible for the note passages to match the text of the Aqdas if page numbers appear in the middle of the Aqdas text being matched. Therefore, I had to strip out page number information from the text in order for the pattern matches to operate successfully. I am still searching for a way to work around this problem.


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