The Caravan to Constantinople: Twelfth Day of Riḍván

The Twelfth Day of Riḍván, May 3, 1863, was the day Bahá’u’lláh left the Garden and Baghdád behind. The family caravan — already prepared during the long twelve days outside the city — was ready to begin the arduous journey north and west, more than a thousand miles, toward Constantinople.

Esslemont captures the strangeness of those final hours. They were not heavy with farewell, but bright with the gathering of crowds:

During those days Bahá’u’lláh, instead of being sad or depressed, showed the greatest joy, dignity and power. His followers became happy and enthusiastic, and great crowds came to pay their respects to Him. All the notables of Baghdád, even the Governor himself, came to honor the departing prisoner.

What the Ottoman authorities had intended as a banishment in disgrace had become something else entirely. The Garden, on the bank of the Tigris, had become for twelve days a place of audience. Officials and townspeople, friends and strangers alike, came in procession to take their leave of a Man they could no longer pretend was an ordinary exile.

When at last He mounted His horse, those who watched understood — even if they could not yet say it — that Baghdád was being not so much deserted as graced one final time. The Twelfth Day of Riḍván closes the most holy of the Bahá’í festivals. It commemorates not loss but a lifting up; not the breaking of a household but the beginning of a Cause now openly upon the road of history.

For Bahá’ís, then, the twelve days are framed by two acts of dignity: the Master of the household entering the Garden alone on the First Day, and the Master of the Cause leaving it openly on the Twelfth.

Source: J. E. Esslemont, Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era (1923). Public domain text from Project Gutenberg eBook #19241.

Esslemont, J. E.. (1923). *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*. George Allen & Unwin. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19241/pg19241-images.html