The Roses of Riḍván

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers (Nabíl's Narrative).

In the spring of 1863, in a garden on the banks of the river Tigris outside Baghdád, Bahá'u'lláh spent twelve days that Bahá'ís would forever after call Riḍván — Paradise.

He was about to be sent into a further exile. But before He left, in that garden, He told His companions the thing they had longed and waited to hear: that He was the Promised One the Báb had foretold, the One for whom the whole world had been made ready.

And the days that followed were full of an extraordinary joy. Each morning the gardener gathered roses from along the riverbank and carried them to Bahá'u'lláh's tent. There they were piled in the centre, and Bahá'u'lláh would take them up in His own hands and give them to those who came, that they might carry them to the friends on the far side of the river. So great were the heaps of roses that companions seated on one side of the tent could not see those sitting on the other.

Through the warm nights, the nightingales sang in the garden without ceasing, and the believers, hardly sleeping, moved between joy and awe. After years of hardship and waiting, here was a foretaste of paradise itself.

This is why the First Day of Riḍván is the most joyful festival of the Bahá'í year. We do not remember a prison or a battlefield, but a garden — roses heaped high, nightingales singing, and the Promised One declaring Himself at last to the friends who loved Him.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Dawn-Breakers.

Nabíl-i-A'ẓam. (1932). *The Dawn-Breakers*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/other-literature/historical/dawn-breakers/