Bahá'u'lláh in the Mountains of Kurdistan

A retelling based on God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi (chapters 7 and 8), which recounts Bahá'u'lláh's withdrawal to Kurdistan, with a few details from H. M. Balyuzi's Bahá'u'lláh, The King of Glory. Words in quotation marks are as recorded in those books.

About a year after Bahá'u'lláh reached Baghdád as an exile, mischief and contention among some of the Bábís there led Him to withdraw. "The one object of Our retirement," He later wrote in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, "was to avoid becoming a subject of discord among the faithful, a source of disturbance unto Our companions, the means of injury to any soul, or the cause of sorrow to any heart."

On 10 April 1854, without telling anyone, not even His own family, He left the city with a single attendant, Abu'l-Qásim-i-Hamadání. The attendant was later killed by thieves, and Bahá'u'lláh was left entirely alone in the wilds of Kurdistan.

Coarsely clad, carrying only His kashkúl (alms-bowl) and a change of clothes, He took the name Darvísh Muḥammad. For a time He lived on a mountain called Sar-Galú, so far from any village that the peasants of the region went there only twice a year, at sowing and at harvest. He sheltered in a rough stone structure that the peasants used against the weather, and at times in a cave. Of those days He wrote in the Kitáb-i-Íqán: "Many a night I had no food for sustenance, and many a day My body found no rest.... Alone I communed with My spirit, oblivious of the world and all that is therein."

A shaykh of Sulaymáníyyih who owned land nearby sought Him out, as he had been directed in a dream of the Prophet Muḥammad. Soon afterwards Shaykh Ismá'íl, the leader of the Khálidíyyih Order, visited Him and, after repeated requests, persuaded Him to move to Sulaymáníyyih. There He lived in a room of the Takyiy-i-Mawláná Khálid, a theological seminary.

At first He kept such silence and reserve that no one suspected Him of any learning. Then one of the students who waited on Him showed the teachers a specimen of His "exquisite penmanship," and their curiosity was aroused. A delegation led by Shaykh Ismá'íl asked Him to explain difficult passages in the Futúhát-i-Makkíyyih of Ibn-i-'Arabí. "God is My witness," He replied, "that I have never seen the book you refer to." He had one of them read a page aloud to Him each day, and resolved their questions so that "they were lost in admiration."

They then asked Him to write a poem in the same rhyme and metre as the Qaṣídiy-i-Tá'íyyih of Ibn-i-Fáriḍ, something they said no mystic or scholar had yet managed. He dictated two thousand verses and allowed them to keep one hundred and twenty-seven, judging the rest premature. Those verses are the ode known as the Qaṣídiy-i-Varqá'íyyih.

'Abdu'l-Bahá later described this time: "In a short time, Kurdistán was magnetized with His love. During this period Bahá'u'lláh lived in poverty. His garments were those of the poor and needy. His food was that of the indigent and lowly. An atmosphere of majesty haloed Him as the sun at midday. Everywhere He was greatly revered and loved."

In Baghdád, news came of the death of Abu'l-Qásim. Balyuzi writes that it then became evident that the Darvísh Muḥammad whose fame had reached the city "could be no other than the person of Bahá'u'lláh." At the urging of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, then about twelve years old, and of Bahá'u'lláh's brother Áqáy-i-Kalím, Shaykh Sulṭán set out for Sulaymáníyyih to beg Him to return. He later told Nabíl that he found everyone there, "from their Master down to the humblest neophyte," so devoted to Bahá'u'lláh that he feared for his life had he told them why he had come.

Bahá'u'lláh arrived back in Baghdád on 19 March 1856, exactly two lunar years after His departure. Before long, 'ulamás and Ṣúfís from Sulaymáníyyih began to come to Baghdád seeking Him, "with the name of 'Darvísh Muhammad' on their lips."

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see God Passes By by Shoghi Effendi, chapters 7 and 8.

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