The King of Festivals

*A retelling drawing on **The Kitáb-i-Aqdas**, the Most Holy Book of Bahá'u'lláh. Passages in quotation marks are His words in that Book, except where Shoghi Effendi is named.*

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Bahá'u'lláh Himself gave the Festival of Riḍván its place above all other Bahá'í Feasts. He did so in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book, which He revealed in 'Akká about ten years after He had declared His Mission in the Garden of Riḍván outside Baghdád.

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Among the laws of that Book is the ordering of the Holy Days. "All Feasts," Bahá'u'lláh wrote, "have attained their consummation in the two Most Great Festivals, and in the two other Festivals that fall on the twin days." The first of the Most Great Festivals, He explained, is "those days whereon the All-Merciful shed upon the whole of creation the effulgent glory of His most excellent Names and His most exalted Attributes." These are the days of Riḍván.

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The second is the day of the Báb's Declaration, "that day on which We raised up the One Who announced unto mankind the glad tidings of this Name."

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Two paragraphs later He wrote:

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> "Say: The Most Great Festival is, indeed, the King of Festivals. Call ye to > mind, O people, the bounty which God hath conferred upon you. Ye were sunk in > slumber, and lo! He aroused you by the reviving breezes of His Revelation, > and made known unto you His manifest and undeviating Path."

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Earlier in the same Book, in the verse that abolishes the concept of "uncleanness," by which various things and peoples had been held to be impure, He spoke of the first day of Riḍván itself:

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> "Verily, all created things were immersed in the sea of purification when, on > that first day of Riḍván, We shed upon the whole of creation the splendours of > Our most excellent Names and Our most exalted Attributes. This, verily, is a > token of My loving providence, which hath encompassed all the worlds. Consort > ye then with the followers of all religions, and proclaim ye the Cause of your > Lord, the Most Compassionate; this is the very crown of deeds, if ye be of them > who understand."

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In *God Passes By* Shoghi Effendi gathers these titles together, writing that Bahá'u'lláh acclaimed the Declaration as the "Most Great Festival," the "King of Festivals," the "Festival of God." The Guardian himself calls the festival that commemorates it "the holiest and most significant of all Bahá'í festivals."

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*This is a retelling. The quoted passages are from **The Kitáb-i-Aqdas**, paragraphs 75, 110 and 112, and from **God Passes By**, chapter IX.*

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