The Last Naw-Rúz of the Báb

A retelling based on The Dawn-Breakers, Nabíl's narrative of the early days of the Faith. The narrative is retold in our own words; passages in quotation marks are preserved verbatim in that history.

In the last years of His brief ministry, the Báb was held a prisoner in the remote mountain fortress of Chihríq, in the highlands near the Turkish frontier. The authorities had sent Him there precisely because it was so isolated, hoping that distance and harsh confinement would smother the flame He had kindled. It did not. Even at that lonely castle the believers found ways to draw near, and the Báb continued, from within His prison, to guide and console them.

It was during this imprisonment that one of the most affecting of all His recorded gestures took place — a gesture bound up entirely with the festival of Naw-Rúz, the new year that falls at the spring equinox.

Among those who attended the Báb at Chihríq was a devoted believer named Mullá Ádí-Guzal. The Báb received him with affection and bestowed upon him a new name, Sayyáh — "the Traveller" — for the journey He was about to entrust to him. Into his care the Báb placed the visiting Tablets He had revealed in memory of the martyrs who had fallen at the fort of Shaykh Ṭabarsí in Mázindarán — among them Mullá Ḥusayn and Quddús, the first of the Faith's great company of martyrs. "Arise," He urged him, "and with complete detachment proceed, in the guise of a traveller, to Mázindarán, and there visit, on My behalf, the spot which enshrines the bodies of those immortals." Sayyáh was to make a pilgrimage on the Báb's behalf to that hallowed ground, and then to carry on to Ṭihrán.

The errand was long and dangerous. From the far northwestern mountains it would take Sayyáh clear across the country to Mázindarán on the Caspian, and then south to the capital. And yet, in sending him off on so great a journey, the Báb's parting words turned not on the danger or the distance, but on a single, homely hope. He asked His traveller to make haste — to return in time for the new year. "Strive to be back ere the day of Naw-Rúz," He told him, "that you may celebrate with Me that festival, the only one I probably shall ever see again."

That one sentence holds within it the whole poignancy of the scene. The Báb knew what was coming. In one of His own writings He had already marked this season, noting that "the sixth Naw-Rúz, after the Declaration of the Point of the Bayán, has fallen on the fifth day of Jamádiyu'l-Avval, in the seventh lunar year after that same Declaration." He understood — and quietly said so to His friend — that of all the new years of His life, this would in all likelihood be the last He would be permitted to see. Within little more than a year, He would be taken to Tabríz and martyred before a firing squad.

The journey Sayyáh carried also bore a hidden significance that only later generations would fully grasp. Beyond the pilgrimage to Ṭabarsí, he was to proceed to Ṭihrán and there to come into the presence of Bahá'u'lláh — He whose own Declaration lay still in the future, the Promised One to whom the Báb's whole Revelation pointed. So the Báb's last Naw-Rúz errand reached, by a thread that the believers could not yet see clearly, toward the very One for whose coming He had prepared the way. The festival of renewal became, in this small history, a quiet bridge between the Herald and the Promised.

Sayyáh obeyed. He set out, made his pilgrimage, accomplished his mission, and turned homeward. He reached his own destination, Nabíl records, in the early days of that spring, completing his visit within the appointed time — and so was able, as his Master had wished, to keep the festival with Him.

There is something heartbreaking and luminous together in this episode. A prisoner in a mountain fortress, knowing His days were numbered, did not ask His departing friend for rescue or for comfort or even for news of the believers. He asked only that he hurry home for Naw-Rúz, so that the two of them might keep the new year together one final time. The Báb met the certainty of His coming death not by abandoning the festival of life and renewal, but by treasuring it the more — wanting His last spring to be shared, in love, with one faithful soul.

For all who keep Naw-Rúz, this last new year of the Báb gives the festival a deeper colour. The spring equinox is the turning of the year toward light and life. The Báb kept that turning fully even while standing in the shadow of martyrdom — and in doing so taught that renewal is not the possession of those whose road is easy, but the birthright of every soul that turns, in love, toward the light.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Dawn-Breakers by Nabíl-i-A'ẓam.

Nabíl-i-A'ẓam. (1932). *The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá'í Revelation*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/other-literature/historical/dawn-breakers/