In the Small Hours: The Last Day and Passing of 'Abdu'l-Bahá

A retelling based on The Chosen Highway by Lady Blomfield, which preserves the family's own account of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's last days, gathered in Haifa soon after His passing. Short phrases in quotation marks are words preserved in that history.

The account His own family left of 'Abdu'l-Bahá's final days is among the most tender in all of Bahá'í history. They had watched Him grow weary through the autumn of 1921 — weary in body after a lifetime of exile, imprisonment, travel, and ceaseless service. Yet to the last He remained serene, unhurried, and entirely Himself.

On Friday, the twenty-fifth of November, He went out as He always did. He attended the noonday congregational prayer at the mosque, where the people of Haifa were used to seeing Him. Afterward He gave alms to the poor with His own hand, as had been His custom for as long as anyone could remember. He returned home, and the day continued in its ordinary way.

That same afternoon He received the notables of the city. The chronicle records that the Mufti of Haifa came to Him, and the Mayor, and the head of the police — men of standing who held Him in deep respect. He spoke with them, as He had spoken with so many over the years, with warmth and grace. To the end, the Master kept His door open and His welcome ready.

In those days He talked with His family with great tenderness. There was about Him a kind of quiet readiness, as though He had set everything in order and was at peace. He spoke, gently, of His own passing — not with fear, but almost as one speaks of a journey home. He had told the believers, in those last weeks, of His longing for rest.

On the night that would be His last, He rested as usual. In the small hours of the morning of the twenty-eighth of November, He woke. One of His daughters was near Him, and the family gathered. He asked them to turn back the coverings, for He found it hard to breathe, and they raised Him so that He might rest more easily. He asked for the lamp to be brought, and that a window be opened. They gave Him a little water; "I am very thirsty," He said, and drank. He looked upon them with a face full of peace.

Then, in words that gathered up the whole detachment of His life, He spoke of the world He was leaving. He had, He told them quietly, no more any wish for the things of this world. He had laid it down as lightly as a traveler lays down a cloak at the end of a road. And surrounded by those He loved — His sister, the Greatest Holy Leaf, and His daughters near Him — 'Abdu'l-Bahá quietly breathed His last. He did not struggle. He passed, as the family said, as gently as a child falling asleep, in the small hours of the morning, at about a quarter past one.

By morning the household was wrapped in a grief almost beyond bearing, and the news began to travel. It would flash across the world by cable within hours, and in city after city His friends — and many who were not yet His friends — would weep for the Master who had shown them, in a single human life, what the love of God looks like when it walks among us. The next day, ten thousand mourners followed His coffin up the slopes of Mount Carmel to its resting place near the Shrine of the Báb.

On the anniversary of His ascension, the community keeps the very hour — one o'clock in the morning, by tradition, the hour of His passing. What it remembers is not only how He left, but how He left: inside the ordinary rhythm of His days, having kept every appointment, having given to the poor with His own hand that very week, surrounded by His family, at peace, with the world already laid down behind Him. He taught with His dying as He had taught with His living — that for one who has loved and served to the end, death is not a defeat but a homecoming.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Chosen Highway by Lady Blomfield.

Blomfield, L.. (1940). *The Chosen Highway*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://bahai-library.com/blomfield_chosen_highway