Ṭáhirih at the Conference of Badasht

Nabíl’s Dawn-Breakers devotes a chapter to the conference at Badasht, a hamlet on the border of Mázindarán, at the beginning of the summer of 1848. Bahá’u’lláh rented three gardens there: one He assigned to Quddús, another to Ṭáhirih and her attendant, and the third He reserved for Himself. Eighty-one believers had gathered from various towns of Persia, and all of them, from the day of their arrival to the day they dispersed, were His guests.

The Báb was then confined in the castle of Chihríq. As Shoghi Effendi later summarised it in God Passes By, the primary purpose of the gathering was to implement the revelation of the Bayán by a sudden, complete break with the past; a subsidiary purpose was to consider means of freeing the Báb, which was destined from the outset to fail.

Every day of the gathering, Bahá’u’lláh revealed a Tablet, which was chanted before the assembled believers, and upon each of them He conferred a new name. He Himself was henceforth called Bahá; the Last Letter of the Living became Quddús; and Qurratu’l-‘Ayn received the title Ṭáhirih. Each day saw the abrogation of some law or long-established tradition, yet few, if any, suspected that Bahá’u’lláh was the source of these changes. Quddús, Shoghi Effendi records, affected to oppose the seemingly extremist views of Ṭáhirih, in pursuance of a pre-conceived plan designed to soften the alarm the conference was sure to arouse.

Nabíl gives an account of the decisive day as Shaykh Abú-Turáb related it. Illness had confined Bahá’u’lláh to His bed, and Quddús and the other companions had gathered around Him. A messenger from Ṭáhirih came to summon Quddús to her garden, and he refused. Then Ṭáhirih herself appeared before the assembled companions, adorned and unveiled. Quietly and with great dignity she stepped forward and seated herself at the right hand of Quddús.

Consternation seized the gathering. To these men, who regarded her as the very incarnation of Fáṭimih, even to gaze at her shadow had seemed improper. One, ‘Abdu’l-Khálíq-i-Iṣfahání, was so shaken that he cut his throat with his own hands and fled, covered with blood and shrieking. A few, following his example, abandoned their companions and forsook their Faith. Quddús sat holding an unsheathed sword, his face betraying inexpressible anger.

Ṭáhirih, undisturbed, rose and addressed the remnant of the assembly, without premeditation and in language strikingly like that of the Qur’án. She declared: I am the Word which the Qá’im is to utter, the Word which shall put to flight the chiefs and nobles of the earth! Then she invited those present to celebrate the occasion:

This day is the day of festivity and universal rejoicing, the day on which the fetters of the past are burst asunder.

She called on those who had shared in this great achievement to arise and embrace one another.

That day and the days that followed brought sudden and fundamental changes in the worship and habits of the assembled believers, and great confusion. Some condemned the change as heresy; some looked to Ṭáhirih alone, others to Quddús alone. For a few days the tension between the two persisted, until Bahá’u’lláh intervened and effected a complete reconciliation between them. In God Passes By, Shoghi Effendi calls Badasht the sounding of the trumpet-blast announcing the formal extinction of the old Dispensation and the inauguration of the new; the trumpeter, he writes, was a lone woman.

Bahá’u’lláh’s sojourn in Badasht lasted twenty-two days. When the companions departed, Quddús and Ṭáhirih travelled together toward Mázindarán in a howdah Bahá’u’lláh had prepared for them.

Four years later, in 1852, Ṭáhirih was put to death in Ṭihrán, strangled with a silken kerchief she had herself set aside for that purpose. Shoghi Effendi calls her the first woman suffrage martyr.

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers (Chapter XVI, The Conference of Badasht), with details from God Passes By. For the fuller account, see the original.

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