The Báb's Promise Fulfilled at Riḍván

A retelling based on God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi. Words in quotation marks are from that book, which quotes the writings of the Báb.

The Báb declared His Mission in Shíráz in 1844. Throughout His writings He spoke of One Who would come after Him, "Him Whom God shall make manifest," and He urged His followers to let nothing, not even His own Book, keep them from recognizing that One. "Suffer not the Bayán," He wrote, "and all that hath been revealed therein to withhold you from that Essence of Being and Lord of the visible and invisible." He warned: "O people of the Bayán! act not as the people of the Qur'án have acted, for if ye do so, the fruits of your night will come to naught." Of Himself He wrote: "I, Myself, am but the first servant to believe in Him and in His signs." And: "Were He to appear this very moment, I would be the first to adore Him, and the first to bow down before Him."

He also pointed to the time. Shoghi Effendi quotes the Báb's words: "In the year nine, ye shall attain unto all good." And again: "Be attentive from the inception of the Revelation till the number of Vahíd (19)." Even more explicitly, the Báb stated that "the Lord of the Day of Reckoning" would "be manifested at the end of Vahíd (19) and the beginning of eighty (1280 A.H.)." The Tablet of the Letters, revealed during His imprisonment in the fortress of Chihríq, alluded, Shoghi Effendi writes, "to the nineteen years which must needs elapse between the Declaration of the Báb and that of Bahá'u'lláh."

The Báb was executed in Tabríz in 1850. Two years later, in August 1852, Bahá'u'lláh was arrested and cast into the Síyáh-Chál, the dungeon of Ṭihrán. His imprisonment lasted four months, and in the middle of it, Shoghi Effendi writes, the "year nine" (1269 A.H.), "anticipated in such glowing terms by the Báb," was ushered in. It was in that prison that Bahá'u'lláh's Revelation was born.

For about ten years He did not announce it. Shoghi Effendi speaks of a "delay," of no less than a decade, between the birth of the Revelation in the Síyáh-Chál and its announcement to the Báb's disciples. That delay ended in April 1863 in Baghdád. On the eve of a new banishment Bahá'u'lláh entered the Najíbíyyih Garden, which His followers named the Garden of Riḍván, and there declared His Mission to His companions, as the One Whose advent the Báb had foretold.

Of that Declaration Shoghi Effendi writes: "The nineteen years, constituting the first 'Vahíd,' preordained in the Persian Bayán by the pen of the Báb, had been completed." The Báb had also alluded to "Ridván" as the scene of the unveiling of Bahá'u'lláh's glory, and that prophecy, Shoghi Effendi says, "had been literally fulfilled." He calls the festival that commemorates this Declaration "the holiest and most significant of all Bahá'í festivals."

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see chapters II, VII and IX of God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi.

Effendi, S.. (1944). *God Passes By*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/shoghi-effendi/god-passes-by/