The Home in Shíráz: The Báb and Khadíjih Bagum

A retelling based on The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Volume 2 by Adib Taherzadeh, which preserves the reminiscences of Khadíjih Bagum, the wife of the Báb, as she later recounted them to Munírih Khánum. Short phrases in quotation marks are words preserved in that history.

There is a particular tenderness in remembering that the Báb, before He was the Báb to any soul on earth, was a young husband in an ordinary house in Shíráz — that the Revelation which would shake an empire was first being written in the quiet of a home, by lamplight, while the city outside slept and noticed nothing. We are able to glimpse that home because of one precious witness: Khadíjih Bagum, His wife, who lived beside Him through those hidden years and who, long afterward, set down what she could remember. Her account, gathered into Adib Taherzadeh's history of the Revelation, is among the dearest possessions of the Bahá'í story.

Khadíjih Bagum belonged to the Báb's own circle of kindred; the two families were joined by ties of blood and by the close affection of relations who had always known one another. She was one of three sisters. And the way she tells the beginning of her story is not the way a merchant's bride usually tells it — for it begins not with a betrothal but with a dream.

One night, she remembered, she dreamt that Fátimih — the daughter of the Prophet Muḥammad, the holiest woman in the faith of Islám — came to their house as a suitor comes, to ask for a marriage. In that land it was the custom for the women of a man's family to make such a proposal on his behalf; and in the dream it was Fátimih herself who came. With great joy Khadíjih and her sisters went out to her, and the radiant visitor came forward and kissed Khadíjih upon the forehead. In her heart, even sleeping, she understood that she had been chosen. She woke happy and full of wonder, but felt too shy to tell anyone what she had seen.

That very afternoon — and this is the marvel of it — the mother of the Báb came to their house. Khadíjih and her sister went out to greet her, and exactly as the dream had shown, the honoured visitor came forward, kissed Khadíjih on the forehead, embraced her, and then departed. When she had gone, the eldest sister turned to Khadíjih and told her plainly what the visit had meant: the mother of the Báb had come to ask for her hand in marriage for her Son. This is a great felicity for me, Khadíjih answered — and only then did she dare to tell the dream that had gone before, and to let her family see the gladness of her heart.

In the days that followed, gifts were sent as a token of the engagement, after the custom of the time, and the Báb travelled down to Búshihr on business in the company of His uncle. It was not the manner of that society for a betrothed man to see his bride before the wedding, and so Khadíjih did not meet Him in those weeks; yet the bond was already forming in her soul. While He was away in Búshihr, she dreamt a second time. In this dream she sat in His presence on what seemed to be the evening of their wedding. The Báb was clothed in a green cloak, its borders inscribed with verses of the Qur'án, and — she said — light was shining from Him. The vision filled her with such joy that she awoke; and from that hour she was certain in her heart that He whom she was to marry was no ordinary soul. She carried that love quietly and told no one.

When at last He returned from Búshihr, His uncle arranged the wedding, and the young couple began their life together in Shíráz. What Khadíjih remembered of that life is the thing most worth remembering. After the wedding, she said, I entertained no thought of earthly things. Her whole heart was drawn to the person of the Báb. From His words and His conduct, from a dignity and a greatness of soul that she could feel without being able to name, it became clear to her that her Husband was a distinguished and exalted Being. Yet — and here her honesty is moving — the thought never once entered her mind that He might be the Qá'im, the Promised One for whom all the land was waiting. She knew only that she lived beside a soul of surpassing holiness. Most of the time, she remembered, He was engaged in praying and reading verses.

It was in those hours of prayer and writing that she came upon the gentlest of mysteries. As was the way of merchants, the Báb would ask in the evenings for His papers and His account books. But Khadíjih noticed, watching Him, that these were not the papers of any trade. Sometimes she would ask Him what they were. Once He answered her: It is the Book of the accounts of all the peoples of the world. And if a visitor were suddenly to arrive, He would spread a handkerchief over the pages, covering from common eyes the verses that were not yet meant to be seen. So it was that the wife of the Báb watched, evening after evening, the quiet inscribing of a Revelation, and did not yet know what she beheld.

All the near relations — His uncles, His aunts — were conscious in their own measure of His exalted nature. They revered Him; they showed Him the utmost respect. The whole household lived, without quite understanding why, in an atmosphere of reverence toward the gentle young Master in their midst. And so the days passed, ordinary on their surface and luminous underneath, until the fateful night of the fifth of Jamádíyu'l-Avval — the twenty-second of May, 1844 — when a seeker named Mullá Ḥusayn at last attained His presence and the long-hidden secret broke into the open. On that night, Khadíjih remembered, He was as if on fire, in the utmost joy and excitement, for a guest dear to Him had come. She longed to hear His blessed words, but He bade her go and rest; and though she lay awake the whole night through, she would not disobey Him. From her room she could hear His voice until the morning, reading the verses of God and adducing proofs.

Of the sufferings that came after, she could hardly bear to speak. But of the years before — the dreams, the green cloak shining with light, the long devotions, the hidden Book of all the peoples of the world — she left us a window into the home of the Báb. It is a window worth standing at on the anniversary of His birth. Behind that ordinary door in Shíráz, a young wife loved a Husband whose station she could feel but not yet fathom, and the morning of a new age was already being written, page by quiet page, by the One she had been given in a dream.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Volume 2 by Adib Taherzadeh.

Taherzadeh, A.. (1977). *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, Volume 2*. George Ronald.