The Wedding Treasures of Navváb

*A retelling based on **The Chosen Highway** by Lady Blomfield, which preserves the recollections of the Holy Family, chiefly those of the Greatest Holy Leaf, the daughter of Ásíyih Khánum, and of her granddaughter Ṭúbá Khánum.*

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In *The Chosen Highway* the Greatest Holy Leaf, Bahíyyih Khánum, tells Lady Blomfield about her mother, Ásíyih Khánum. She was the only daughter of a Persian vizier of high degree, and she married Mírzá Ḥusayn-'Alí of Núr, later known as Bahá'u'lláh, when she was very young.

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Her brother married His sister, and people said of the double alliance, "It is adding wealth to wealth." When she came to her husband's home, "forty mules were loaded with her possessions." For six months before the wedding a jeweller worked at her home, and even the buttons of her garments were of gold set with precious stones. Bahá'u'lláh called her "Navváb," a title of great courtesy and respect.

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Her daughter remembered her as "tall, slender, graceful, eyes of dark blue - a pearl, a flower amongst women." Even in those early years she and her husband kept away from State functions as far as they could and gave their time to the poor. People called Bahá'u'lláh "The Father of the Poor" and her "The Mother of Consolation."

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After Bahá'u'lláh's arrest in 1852 the family lost almost everything. To prepare for their banishment to Baghdád, she sold nearly all that remained of her wedding treasures, jewels and embroidered garments for about four hundred tumans; the government provided nothing for those it exiled. The gold buttons were exchanged for bread on the road.

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The journey lasted about four weeks, in bitter cold with snow on the ground, and she rode in a litter on a jolting mule only six weeks before her youngest son was born. In the towns she washed the family's clothes at the public baths and carried them away cold and wet, and her hands, unused to such work, became very painful. "Never did she utter one word of complaint," her daughter said.

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Her granddaughter Ṭúbá Khánum, a daughter of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, adds more. She was told how, in Baghdád, Navváb and the Greatest Holy Leaf spent six months sewing a coat for Bahá'u'lláh to wear when He returned from the wilderness of Sulaymáníyyih, using small pieces of precious red cloth that had survived the loss of the wedding treasures. He came back in the rough coat of a dervish, and they had no money to buy another.

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In the barracks at 'Akká no laundress was allowed in, so Navváb, helped by the Greatest Holy Leaf, did much of the washing and cooking so that their one servant would not be overworked. Later, in the small rented house in 'Akká, her room held a narrow bed that served as a divan by day, a small table with her prayer books and pen case, and an old painted box holding her other dress.

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Bahá'u'lláh had only two coats, and much of her time went to patching them and darning His stockings. The hardships of her life had worn down her health. When she died, Ṭúbá Khánum was seven years old.

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When Lady Blomfield wept at hearing of these years, the Greatest Holy Leaf told her: "If I did not live in my thoughts all through the events of the sad days of our lives, I should have naught else in my life, for it has been all sorrow; but sorrow is really joy, when suffered in the path of God!"

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*This is a retelling. For the full account, see **The Chosen Highway** by Lady Blomfield.*

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