Baha'u'llah was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1817, the son of a wealthy nobleman and landowner. Like the founders of other religions before him, he suffered relentless persecution at the hands of both the clergy and the state in the land of his birth. In 1853 he was exiled to Iraq, and from there, the penal colony of Acre in Palestine where he died in 1892, still a prisoner.

Despite almost forty years of imprisonment and exile, Baha'u'llah wrote extensively in Persian and Arabic on a broad range of subjects, from theological and philosophical themes to social and ethical issues such as equality of the sexes, harmony of science and religion, and the need for unity and a global order. Only a proportion of his works have so far been translated into English, of which The Hidden Words is the best known.