The Mother Who Went Out by Night

A retelling based on The Chosen Highway by Lady Blomfield, drawn from the recollections of the Greatest Holy Leaf, Bahíyyih Khánum, of her childhood in Tihrán. Read the full text for the original account.

In August 1852 Bahá'u'lláh was arrested and cast into a dungeon in Tihrán. His daughter remembered it as a terrible place, seven steps below the ground, "ankle-deep in filth, infested with horrible vermin," with no glimmer of light. About forty Bábís were crowded there with murderers and highway robbers. Bahá'u'lláh was loaded with heavy chains, and five other Bábís were chained to Him night and day. Any movement made the chains cut deeper into the flesh of all of them. He remained there four months.

His family went into hiding. Relations, friends and servants had fled their house in terror, and it had been stripped of everything. His wife, Ásíyih Khánum, sold the few marriage treasures she had saved to pay the gaolers to take food to her husband.

Every morning one or more of the Bábís were taken out to be tortured and killed before a crowd, while a drum was loudly beaten. The children clung to their mother, and she did not know whether the victim was her own husband. She could not find out whether He was still alive until late at night or very early in the morning, when she went out in defiance of the danger to herself and to them, for neither women nor children were spared. Her son 'Abbás, then eight years old, usually went with her on these errands.

Bahíyyih Khánum, then six, stayed at home. Many years later she remembered it:

How well I remember cowering in the dark, with my little brother, Mirza Mihdi, the Purest Branch, at that time two years old, in my arms, which were not very strong, as I was only six. I was shivering with terror, for I knew of some of the horrible things that were happening, and was aware that they might have seized even my mother. So I waited and waited until she should come back.

Then their uncle, Mírzá Músá, who was also in hiding, would come in to hear what news Ásíyih Khánum had gathered, and the children listened eagerly.

After four months the Russian Consul intervened, and Bahá'u'lláh was released and banished with His family to Baghdád. His daughter recalled that He spoke very little of what He had suffered, but that He "had a marvellous divine experience whilst in that prison," and that the family saw "a new radiance seeming to enfold him like a shining vesture," whose meaning they understood only years later.

A retelling based on The Chosen Highway (Lady Blomfield). See the book for the complete account.

Blomfield, L.. (1940). *The Chosen Highway*. George Ronald. https://bahai-library.com/blomfield_chosen_highway