Khadíjih Bagum

c. 1822 to 1882. Wife of the Báb. His first disciple. Keeper of His house in Shíráz for thirty-two years after His martyrdom. The "first believer" whom He had told, in private, of His Mission before His public Declaration to Mullá Ḥusayn.

Early life

Khadíjih Bagum was born in Shíráz around 1822, into a respected merchant family of the city. Her father — Ḥájí Mírzá Siyyid 'Alí — was a cloth merchant of Siyyid lineage. The family of the Báb and the family of Khadíjih Bagum were related; the Báb's mother and Khadíjih's mother were sisters.

She and the Báb knew each other from childhood — they were cousins, playing in the same household compounds, raised in the same close Shíráz family network. There was, between them, an unusually deep early friendship.

The marriage

In August 1842 — Khadíjih Bagum was about twenty, the Báb was twenty-two, both still living in their respective family homes — they were married. The marriage had been arranged by the family elders with the consent of both. They moved into a small house in Shíráz near the family compound. They lived there together quietly, as a merchant couple of the city.

The Declaration to her

Khadíjih Bagum was, in her own later accounts, aware in the years following her marriage that her husband was different from other men. She noticed His extended periods of prayer, the unusual peace of His presence, the way He spoke when He spoke at all of spiritual matters. She said nothing of this to anyone outside the household.

At some point in late 1843 or early 1844 — before the Báb's public Declaration to Mullá Ḥusayn on 22 May 1844 — He told her, in private in their home, what He was about to declare. He told her that He was the Promised One that the prophecies had foretold; that His Mission would soon become public; that He would suffer for it; that she herself would be tested. He asked for her recognition. She gave it.

She is, in this sense, the first believer in the Báb — the first to recognise Him, before Mullá Ḥusayn arrived in Shíráz a few months later and received the public Declaration that began the Bahá'í Era. She was twenty-two.

The years of His ministry

For the brief six years of the Báb's public ministry, Khadíjih Bagum lived in Shíráz while He was, increasingly, separated from her — by His pilgrimage to Mecca, by His house arrest in Shíráz, by His imprisonment in Iṣfahán, by His banishment to the fortress of Máh-Kú in the northwest, by His later transfer to Chihríq. She saw Him only intermittently after 1844. She bore Him one son, Aḥmad, who died in infancy; they had no other children.

She kept the house in Shíráz. She received the Bábís who came to the city and presented themselves as believers. She was one of the principal points of contact between the scattered Bábí community and the household of the Báb during the years of His imprisonment.

The martyrdom

On 9 July 1850 the Báb was executed in Tabríz. Khadíjih Bagum, in Shíráz, received the news within days. She was twenty-eight. She would live another thirty-two years a widow.

Her grief was overwhelming. She had loved Him from childhood; she had recognised Him before any other; she had borne thirty months of marriage and six years of separation without complaint; and now she had lost Him in the public square of a city she had never seen. She retreated into a long mourning.

The keeping of the House

Khadíjih Bagum continued to live in the house in Shíráz where she and the Báb had been married — the house in which He had received Mullá Ḥusayn on the night of the Declaration. She kept the house as a place of remembrance for the believers. Pilgrims came secretly, through the years of intermittent persecution, to pray in the upstairs room where the Declaration had taken place. She received them. She had become, by middle age, a venerated figure among the Bahá'ís of Persia.

Bahá'u'lláh, in His Tablets, designated the House of the Báb in Shíráz as one of the two principal sites of Bahá'í pilgrimage (the other being His own house in Baghdád). Khadíjih Bagum was, in effect, the keeper of one of the two holiest sites in the Bahá'í world.

The recognition of Bahá'u'lláh

In the late 1860s Khadíjih Bagum recognised Bahá'u'lláh as the Promised One whom the Báb had foretold — the One whose Declaration the Báb's own Mission had been preparing humanity for. She continued to live as a Bahá'í, in deep devotion to Bahá'u'lláh from a distance, for the remaining years of her life.

Her death

Khadíjih Bagum died in Shíráz in September 1882 at the age of about sixty. She had lived in the same house for fifty years. She had been the wife of the Báb, His first believer, and — for thirty-two years after His martyrdom — the quiet keeper of His memory in His own city. The Bahá'í community of Shíráz buried her with deep reverence.

Her legacy

Khadíjih Bagum is, in Bahá'í history, one of the great early women of the Faith — alongside Ásíyih Khánum (the wife of Bahá'u'lláh), Bahíyyih Khánum (the Greatest Holy Leaf), Munírih Khánum (the wife of 'Abdu'l-Bahá), and Ṭáhirih (the Letter of the Living). Her witness — her early recognition, her lifelong faithfulness, her keeping of the House — is an essential part of the early Bábí story.

The House of the Báb that she kept was destroyed by Revolutionary Guards in 1979. The Universal House of Justice has stated that it will, in time, be rebuilt. When it is rebuilt, the room in which Khadíjih Bagum lived for fifty years will be there.