A Partial Inventory of the Works of the Central Figures of the Baha'i Faith Compiled from public domain sources

The following is an unofficial catalog of some 650 works attributed to the Báb, 11,600 works attributed to Bahá’u’lláh, and again over 11,600 works attributed to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá which are accessible to the public, either in published form, in manuscripts held in national or institutional archives, or in digital images, texts and translations found on the Internet. The holdings of the Bahá’í World Centre Archives in Haifa, Israel, which are not open to the public, are not included.
The primary goals of this catalog are to compile all publicly available sources of the works of the Central Figures of the Bahá’í Faith both in the original languages and in English translation, and where possible to facilitate online access to these sources via hyperlinks to digitized page images or typed texts. The intended audience is primarily an academic one with exposure to source criticism: As the goal is maximal inclusion, works of unknown authentication status, oral statements and provisional translations are all included; and as a consequence this resource may not be suitable for the general Bahá’í reader or for those seeking an introduction to the Bahá’í teachings. The Bahá’í Reference Library website at www.bahai.org/library is the sole official online repository of fully authenticated Bahá’í scriptures and their translations.

As the surviving works of the Báb are known to comprise around 2,000 items, those of Bahá’u’lláh nearly 20,000 items, and those of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá over 30,000 items,1 the present catalog represents substantially less than half of the known total. A similar conclusion applies in relation to word counts, as seen in the charts below, although the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh are better represented here.