The Year of Stress: Nabíl's Grief at the Ascension of Bahá'u'lláh

The Bahá’í Holy Day of the Ascension of Bahá’u’lláh — observed each year at three in the morning on May 29 — has few extended first-hand narratives in the public-domain literature. But ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, in His Memorials of the Faithful, records what the Ascension meant for one believer who had walked beside Bahá’u’lláh for decades: Nabíl-i-Zarandí, the chronicler of the Dawn-Breakers.

Nabíl had spent his life in the path of the Cause. He had searched for Bahá’u’lláh in Kurdistán when His whereabouts were unknown; he had carried the news of the Manifestation across Persia; he had been turned back at the gates of ‘Akká during the years of strict imprisonment; he had lived as a recluse in a cave on Mount Carmel, lamenting night and day, moaning and chanting prayers, until at last the Wronged One issued forth and Nabíl was admitted again to His presence.

Then, on May 29, 1892, Bahá’u’lláh ascended at Bahjí.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá writes:

This went on until the day Bahá’u’lláh ascended. At that supreme affliction, that shattering calamity, Nabíl sobbed and trembled and cried out to Heaven. He found that the numerical value of the word shidád — year of stress — was 309, and it thus became evident that Bahá’u’lláh foretold what had now come to pass.

The Master continues:

Utterly cast down, hopeless at being separated from Bahá’u’lláh, fevered, shedding tears, Nabíl was in such anguish that anyone seeing him was bewildered. He struggled on, but the only desire he had was to lay down his life. He could suffer no longer; his longing was aflame in him; he could stand the fiery pain no more. And so he became king of the cohorts of love, and he rushed into the sea.

Before that day, Nabíl had written out the year of his death in a single word: Drowned.

Of him ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says, in closing, that the waters of sacrifice closed over him; he was drowned, and he came, at last, to the Most High.

For Bahá’ís, the Memorial of Nabíl is a window into the cost of love on the day of the Ascension. The community’s observance of that day — the chanting of the Tablet of Visitation at the appointed hour — sits inside a much older silence: the silence of those who, like Nabíl, could not imagine the world without Him.

Source: 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Memorials of the Faithful (Bahá'í Publishing Trust, 1915), chapter on Nabíl-i-Zarandí. Public domain text from Project Gutenberg eBook #19279.

'Abdu'l-Bahá. (1915). *Memorials of the Faithful*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19279/pg19279-images.html