Ṭáhirih at Badasht

A retelling for children, based on The Dawn-Breakers by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam (Chapter XVI, The Conference of Badasht), with a few details from Shoghi Effendi's God Passes By.

At the beginning of the summer of 1848, Bahá'u'lláh rented three gardens in Badasht, a small village in the north of Persia. He gave one garden to Quddús, one to Ṭáhirih, and kept the third for Himself. Eighty-one followers of the Báb had come there from different towns, and all of them were Bahá'u'lláh's guests. The Báb Himself was a prisoner in the castle of Chihríq, far away in the mountains.

Each day Bahá'u'lláh revealed a Tablet, which was chanted to the gathered believers, and He gave each of them a new name. He Himself was now called Bahá. Quddús and Ṭáhirih received the names we know them by today. Ṭáhirih means "the Pure One." Each day, too, some old law or custom was set aside. Hardly anyone guessed that Bahá'u'lláh was the One behind these changes.

One day Bahá'u'lláh was ill and in bed. Quddús and the other believers had gathered around Him. Then Ṭáhirih suddenly came in and stood before them without her veil. In that land women kept their faces veiled before men, and these believers held Ṭáhirih in such honor that they thought it wrong even to look at her shadow. Calmly, and with great dignity, she walked forward and sat down beside Quddús.

The men were shocked. One of them ran from the gathering in horror. A few others followed him, left their friends and gave up their Faith. Quddús sat holding a drawn sword, and his face showed great anger.

Ṭáhirih was not moved. She stood up and spoke to those who remained, in words so beautiful that they sounded like the Qur'án. Then she told them to celebrate:

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

Fetters are chains. She was telling them that the old ways that had held them were broken, and a new day had begun. She asked everyone who had shared in that day to stand up and embrace one another.

For some days afterward the believers were confused. Some sided with Ṭáhirih and some with Quddús, and the two of them disagreed openly. Then Bahá'u'lláh stepped in and brought them back together in complete harmony. Years later Shoghi Effendi explained that Quddús had only pretended to oppose Ṭáhirih. It was a plan, made beforehand, to soften the alarm the gathering was sure to cause.

When they left Badasht, Quddús and Ṭáhirih travelled together in a howdah, a covered seat carried on an animal, which Bahá'u'lláh had prepared for them. Along the way Ṭáhirih wrote a new poem each day for her companions to chant.

Four years later, in 1852, Ṭáhirih was put to death in Ṭihrán because of her Faith. Shoghi Effendi called her "the first woman suffrage martyr." Suffrage is the right to vote.

This is a retelling for children. For the fuller account, see "Ṭáhirih at the Conference of Badasht".

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/