Two works written in Baghdad after Bahá'u'lláh returned from Kurdistan in 1856. The Seven Valleys was revealed in reply to a letter from Shaykh Muhiyi'd-Din, the religious judge of Khaniqin, who was a Sufi. The Four Valleys was addressed to Shaykh ‘Abdu'r-Rahman, leader of the Qadiriyyih Sufi order, with whom Bahá'u'lláh had been in contact in Sulaymaniyyih.

"To these two outstanding contributions to the world's religious literature, (Shoghi Effendi had written of the Kitáb-i-Íqán and the Hidden Words) … was added, during that same period, a treatise that may well be regarded as His greatest mystical composition, designated as the "Seven Valleys,".., in which He describes the seven stages which the soul of the seeker must needs traverse ere it can attain the object of its existence." [GPB140]

In the West this was one of the earliest available books of Bahá'u'lláh, first translated directly to French in 1905, and English in 1906. [GPB140]

The Seven Valleys was translated into English by Marzieh Gail in consultation with her father, Alí-Kuli K̲h̲án Nabil-al Douleh. The publication date of the first English translation was 1945 with an introduction added in 1952. The second edition of The Seven Valleys published in 1968 and 1975 by the US Bahá'í Publishing Trust.