The Sun of Bahá Has Set

*A retelling based on **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi, chapter XIII, "Ascension of Bahá'u'lláh." The words in quotation marks are preserved in that history.*

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Early in May 1892 Bahá'u'lláh contracted a fever at the Mansion of Bahjí. Shoghi Effendi records that it subsided for a time and then returned in a more acute form, that His general condition grew steadily worse, and that complications followed. Six days before the end He called the believers and pilgrims to His bedside for a last audience, thanked them for their services, and prayed that God would assist them to remain united.

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He ascended at the hour of dawn on 29 May 1892 (2 Dhi'l-Qa'dih 1309 A.H.), eight hours after sunset, in the seventy-fifth year of His age.

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The news was at once sent to Sulṭán 'Abdu'l-Ḥamíd in a telegram which began with the words "the Sun of Bahá has set." The telegram told the Sultan of the intention to lay the sacred remains within the precincts of the Mansion, and he readily assented. Bahá'u'lláh was buried shortly after sunset on the day of His ascension, in the northernmost room of the house next to the Mansion where His son-in-law lived. That room is His Shrine, the Qiblih toward which Bahá'ís turn in prayer.

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Nabíl, the chronicler, had been granted a private audience with Bahá'u'lláh during His illness. Shortly after the ascension, overcome by grief, he drowned himself in the sea. Before his death he wrote of those days: "My inner and outer tongue are powerless to portray the condition we were in." He described how a multitude of the people of 'Akká and the neighbouring villages, who had crowded the fields around the Mansion, "could be seen weeping, beating upon their heads, and crying aloud their grief."

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For a full week a great number of mourners, rich and poor, stayed at Bahjí to grieve with the family, and were fed day and night. Notables among them were Shí'ahs, Sunnís, Christians, Jews and Druzes, as well as poets, religious scholars and government officials. They joined in lamenting the loss and in praising the virtues and greatness of Bahá'u'lláh, and many wrote tributes to Him in verse and prose, in Arabic and Turkish. Similar tributes came from Damascus, Aleppo, Beirut and Cairo. All of them were submitted to 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Who now represented the Cause of His Father.

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Shoghi Effendi adds that this outpouring among people who were not Bahá'ís was "but a drop" compared with the grief of the many thousands of believers in Persia, India, Russia, 'Iráq, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt and Syria.

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*This is a retelling. For the full account, see **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi, chapter XIII.*

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