The Day Bahá'u'lláh Was Arrested

*A retelling based on **The Chosen Highway** by Lady Blomfield, who wrote down the recollections of Bahíyyih Khánum, the Greatest Holy Leaf.*

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Bahíyyih Khánum was six years old in 1852, when an attempt was made on the life of the Sháh by a young Bábí. Her father, Mírzá Ḥusayn-'Alí, Bahá'u'lláh, was away at His country house in the village of Niyávarán. Suddenly a servant came rushing in to her mother in great distress. Her father had been arrested. He had walked many miles; they had beaten Him and put Him to the bastinado; His feet were bleeding, His shoes and turban were gone, His clothes were torn, and there were chains upon His neck.

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> My poor mother's face grew whiter and whiter. We children were terribly > frightened and could only weep bitterly.

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At once relations, friends and servants fled the house in terror. Only one man-servant, Isfandiyár, and one woman remained. The family's house and the smaller houses belonging to it were soon stripped of everything by the people. Mírzá Músá, Bahá'u'lláh's brother, helped Ásíyih Khánum and her three children escape into hiding in a little house not far from the prison. She had saved a few of her marriage treasures, and sold them to pay the gaolers to take food to her husband.

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The prison was seven steps below the ground, without a glimmer of light. Bahá'u'lláh lay there loaded with heavy chains for four months. Every morning Bábís were taken out to be tortured and killed, while a drum was loudly beaten.

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> These horrible sounds I well remember, as we three children clung to our > mother, she not knowing whether the victim was her own adored husband.

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Ásíyih Khánum could learn nothing until late at night or very early in the morning, when she went out in spite of the danger, usually taking her son 'Abbás, the future 'Abdu'l-Bahá, with her. Bahíyyih Khánum stayed behind, cowering in the dark with her two-year-old brother Mírzá Mihdí in her arms, shivering with terror, waiting for her mother to come back. Then Mírzá Músá, himself in hiding, would slip in to hear what she had learned.

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The news came through Mírzá Yúsif, a Russian subject married to an aunt of Bahá'u'lláh, who attended the courts to learn who had been chosen for execution each day. He helped get food to the prisoner, and moved the family to two little rooms near the prison. Of all their friends and relations, only his wife dared to visit Ásíyih Khánum in those days. Her daughter learned only later that Ásíyih Khánum was expecting another child through all of it.

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At length the Russian Consul intervened, and word came that Bahá'u'lláh would be allowed to leave the prison with His life, and that He and His family were banished to Baghdád. He came to the two little rooms. "Oh, the joy of his presence!" Bahíyyih Khánum remembered. When they saw where the chains had cut into His neck, and His wounded feet, they wept with their mother.

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*A retelling based on **The Chosen Highway** (Lady Blomfield). For the fuller account, see the original.*

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