Bahá'í in Malta

[pne]

I wonder whether Bahá'í in Malta use Persian, Arabic, or Maltese for Bahá'í terminology.

It would seem to me that since Maltese is related to Arabic, that they might use cognates in Maltese rather than "importing" Arabic or Persian words the way it seems to happen in English.

For example, would they use "Kitáb-i-Aqdas", "Al-Kitab al-Aqdas", or "Il-Ktieb l-Iqdes"? (Might have the last word wrong.)

If they do use Maltese terms, I wonder what they do for Arabic terms (a) which have no cognate in Maltese or (b) where the cognate is old-fashioned or out of current use. Use the "straight" Arabic term? Make up a cognate by sound changes? Use the cognate that exists but isn't in current use?

That's assuming there are Bahá'í on Malta in the first place.

(Edit: apparently so.)

*reads* What's the significance of the term "tablet" in the Bahá'í faith? And what's a Haziratu'l-Quds?

Comments

[pthalo]

not really. ljbahai might be a better place to ask (and you'll get more input). I'm not sure what you mean by the questions actually. What do you mean what is the significance of a tablet? (to me this seems like asking the significance of the word "letter" or the word "paper", could you elaborate?)

and I have never heard the word "Haziratu'l-Quds" before.

On tablets

[pne.livejournal.com]

What do you mean what is the significance of a tablet?

I mean, usually for me "tablet" refers either to medicine or to the tablets on which Moses brought down the Ten Commandments; however, looking around at Bahá'í information, it seems to be used more frequently.

Does "tablet" mean, for example, that the contents is holy scripture? That it comes from a prophet? What distinguishes a tablet from a book, for example, or what qualifies a work to be called a tablet -- rather than, say, book or letter or work or proclamation or whatever?

Re: On tablets

[pthalo]

ah, I see. I /think/ that tablets are generally letters that a prophet wrote to a certain person which can be read as prayers but they are generally longer than prayers and shorter than books. For example, the Tablet of Ahmad was written to Ahmad. The Fire Tablet was written by Bahá'u'lláh to God (and the end of it is written by God to Bahá'u'lláh) but it can be read as if it were a prayer. Books are much longer and they aren't addressed to anyone in particular. But these are just guesses. In ljbahai you can get a lot of other people's guesses too and possibly a more official answer. Letters, generally, are written by the Universal House of Justice or Shoghi Effendi. They have authority and any laws outlined in them are binding, but they are not written by a Manifestation of God so they are not tablets. Prayers are written by manifestations of God, never by Shoghi Effendi or the House of Justice and they are rarely tablets, I think, though tablets can be read like prayers. It might also have something to do with the manner in which they were written originally in farsi or arabic... I know one tablet was written on a very large leaf which is preserved in the archives in Israel.

Books are just that. Very long texts with lots of little parts or sections and generally covering one or two subjects or areas of things (The Kitab-i-Aqdas is a book of laws. There's also the Kitab-i-Iqan, the book of Certitude, which I've never quite managed to read but I imagine it's about certitude...) Tablets are too short to be books.