The Swollen River and the Ninth Day

A retelling based on The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, volume 1, by Adib Taherzadeh. The account of the flood is from A Flame of Fire by A. Q. Faizi. Words in quotation marks are from those books.

When Bahá'u'lláh was ordered to leave Baghdád for Constantinople, large numbers of people wished to see Him before He went, and His house was too small to receive them. Najíb Páshá, one of the notables of Baghdád, placed his garden-park, the Najíbíyyih, at His disposal. It lay on the outskirts of the city, across the river from His house. His followers came to call it the Garden of Riḍván, the Garden of Paradise.

On the afternoon of 22 April 1863, thirty-one days after Naw-Rúz, Bahá'u'lláh left His house. People of every kind crowded the streets and rooftops along His way to the river, many of them weeping. Before crossing, He spoke to the companions gathered around Him:

"O My companions, I entrust to your keeping this city of Baghdad, in the state ye now behold it, when from the eyes of friends and strangers alike, crowding its housetops, its streets and markets, tears like the rain of spring are flowing down, and I depart. With you it now rests to watch lest your deeds and conduct dim the flame of love that gloweth within the breasts of its inhabitants."

He was then ferried across the river with three of His sons, among them 'Abdu'l-Bahá, then eighteen, and Mírzá Mihdí, the Purest Branch, then fourteen, and with His amanuensis, Mírzá Áqá Ján. As He entered the garden, the call to afternoon prayer, "Allah'u'Akbar" (God is the Greatest), was being raised from the mosque. There He declared His station to the companions who were present.

The rest of His family could not follow at once. A. Q. Faizi records that on that same day "the river overflowed and only on the ninth day was it possible for His family to join Him in the Garden." The river then overflowed a second time, and on the twelfth day it subsided again.

Of the twelve days Bahá'u'lláh spent in the garden, three are Holy Days. Adib Taherzadeh names them: "the first day on which He declared Himself, the ninth day when all His family joined Him and rejoiced at His Declaration, and the twelfth day when He left that garden." Bahá'u'lláh left the Garden of Riḍván at noon on 3 May 1863 and set out on the journey to Constantinople.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, volume 1, by Adib Taherzadeh, and A Flame of Fire by A. Q. Faizi.

Taherzadeh, A.. (1974). *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh (Vol. 1 — Baghdád 1853-63)*. George Ronald.