The Swollen River and the Ninth Day

A retelling based on The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh by Adib Taherzadeh, a careful historical study drawing on the eyewitness chronicles of the Baghdád period.

The Festival of Riḍván lasts twelve days, and of those twelve the first, the ninth, and the twelfth are kept as holy days. The first is easy to understand — it is the afternoon Bahá'u'lláh entered the Garden and began to declare His mission. The twelfth, too, has an obvious meaning: it is the day He left the Garden to begin the long exile to Constantinople. But why the ninth? The answer lies in a small, very human circumstance — a river in flood — and in the faithful patience of a family kept waiting on the wrong side of it.

When the order came from the Ottoman capital summoning Bahá'u'lláh away from Baghdád, His house on the bank of the Tigris was thronged day and night by grieving friends. To make room for the crowds who wished to take their leave of Him, a notable of the city, Najíb Páshá, offered his own garden-park on the far side of the river. And so, on the afternoon of the twenty-second of April 1863 — thirty-one days after Naw-Rúz — Bahá'u'lláh crossed the Tigris and entered that garden, which His followers would ever after call the Garden of Riḍván, the Garden of Paradise. With Him went three of His sons — 'Abdu'l-Bahá, then a young man of eighteen; Mírzá Mihdí, the Purest Branch; and Mírzá Muḥammad-'Alí — along with His amanuensis, Mírzá Áqá Ján, and a small number of companions. As He set foot on the garden's bank, the call to prayer rose from the city's mosque, and the words Alláh-u-Akbar — God is the Most Great — rang out across the water.

But the rest of His household did not cross with Him. The histories record that the Tigris that spring had risen and overflowed its banks. The river that ordinarily carried a steady traffic of boats had swollen into a flood, and the crossing — by the bridge of boats that spanned the stream — became impassable for the women and children of the family and for those still completing the preparations for the journey. For nine days the swollen Tigris lay between the Holy Family and the Garden of Paradise.

It is worth dwelling on what that waiting meant. On the far bank, in the green quiet of the garden, the most momentous declaration in the history of the Faith was beginning to unfold: roses heaped in His tent, nightingales singing through the warm nights, the long-hidden Glory of God at last unveiled to His chosen companions. And on the near bank, the members of His own household — among them Navváb, His devoted wife, and Bahíyyih Khánum, His daughter — could only wait, held back by the rising water, while across the river the new Day dawned without them. They did not complain; they made ready, and they waited, as they had learned to wait through every trial of the Baghdád years.

At last the waters fell. On the ninth day — the thirtieth of April — the river settled back within its banks, the bridge of boats became passable again, and the Holy Family completed their crossing and entered the Garden of Riḍván to be reunited with Bahá'u'lláh. The household that had been divided by the flood was made whole again in Paradise. It is this reunion — the family's arrival in the Garden — that Bahá'ís commemorate on the ninth day of Riḍván, one of the nine holy days of the Bahá'í year on which work is set aside.

There is a quiet lesson folded into this episode. The Cause of God does not advance only in scenes of triumph and unveiling; it is carried also by those who wait faithfully on the far side of a flooded river, doing the ordinary work of preparation, trusting that the waters will fall and the reunion will come. The declaration in the Garden was the work of God; the patient waiting on the bank was the work of a family who loved Him. Both belong to the story of Riḍván, and the Faith has hallowed them both — the first day of the unveiling, and the ninth day of the homecoming.

So when the ninth day of Riḍván comes round each spring, Bahá'ís remember not only a great proclamation but a small, tender thing: a river that rose, a family that waited, and the morning the waters fell and let them cross at last into the Garden.

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

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