Bahá'u'lláh Recalls the Síyáh-Chál

In the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, revealed about 1891, Bahá'u'lláh recalls in His own words the four months He spent in 1852 in the dungeon of Ṭihrán known as the Síyáh-Chál (the Black Pit).

The setting was the aftermath of the attempt on the life of Náṣiri'd-Dín Sháh in August 1852. "Many were arrested," He writes, "among them this Wronged One. By the righteousness of God! We were in no wise connected with that evil deed, and Our innocence was indisputably established by the tribunals." Nevertheless He was taken from Níyávarán, where the Sháh was then residing, "on foot and in chains, with bared head and bare feet, to the dungeon of Ṭihrán." On the way a man riding beside Him snatched off His hat.

He describes the dungeon plainly:

We were consigned for four months to a place foul beyond comparison. ... Upon Our arrival We were first conducted along a pitch-black corridor, from whence We descended three steep flights of stairs to the place of confinement assigned to Us. The dungeon was wrapped in thick darkness, and Our fellow prisoners numbered nearly a hundred and fifty souls: thieves, assassins and highwaymen. Though crowded, it had no other outlet than the passage by which We entered. No pen can depict that place, nor any tongue describe its loathsome smell.

Shoghi Effendi, in God Passes By, adds that the pit had originally served as a reservoir of water for one of the public baths of the capital.

Day and night in that place, Bahá'u'lláh writes, He meditated on the condition of the Bábís, and resolved, after His release, to "undertake, with the utmost vigor, the task of regenerating this people." One night, in a dream, He heard on every side the words: "Verily, We shall render Thee victorious by Thyself and by Thy Pen. Grieve Thou not for that which hath befallen Thee, neither be Thou afraid, for Thou art in safety."

A little later in the Epistle He recalls what came to Him in that prison:

During the days I lay in the prison of Ṭihrán, though the galling weight of the chains and the stench-filled air allowed Me but little sleep, still in those infrequent moments of slumber I felt as if something flowed from the crown of My head over My breast, even as a mighty torrent that precipitateth itself upon the earth from the summit of a lofty mountain. Every limb of My body would, as a result, be set afire. At such moments My tongue recited what no man could bear to hear.

In God Passes By, the Guardian writes that Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation was born in that dungeon, and that a period of no less than ten years passed before its implications could be disclosed even to those closest to Him. He declared His mission in the Garden of Riḍván in Baghdád in 1863.

A retelling based on the Epistle to the Son of the Wolf. For the fuller account, see the original.

Bahá'u'lláh. (1891). *Epistle to the Son of the Wolf*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/bahaullah/epistle-son-wolf/