Naw-Rúz at the Farm of Vashshásh

A retelling based on The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh by Adib Taherzadeh, which gathers the history of Bahá'u'lláh's years in Baghdád. The narrative is retold in our own words.

For ten years Bahá'u'lláh made His home in Baghdád, and through those years the little community of exiled Bábís that had gathered around Him was slowly transformed. They had arrived scattered and broken, their Faith all but leaderless after the martyrdom of the Báb and the terrible persecutions in Persia. Under the influence of Bahá'u'lláh, without His ever yet openly declaring who He was, that despairing band was revived. The years in Baghdád became, for them, a long springtime of the spirit — a quiet renewal that prepared the way for everything that followed.

It was fitting, then, that the festival of Naw-Rúz — the new year of the spring equinox, the festival of renewal itself — should be kept among them with great gladness. The believers of Persia had cherished Naw-Rúz from time immemorial, and the Báb had lifted the ancient festival into the new Revelation, naming the first month of His calendar after the splendour of God and making Naw-Rúz its crown. For the exiles in Baghdád, gathered around Bahá'u'lláh, the keeping of the new year was no small thing. It was a yearly renewal of their fellowship and their hope.

In the spring of 1863 that festival fell at a moment of extraordinary significance, though only Bahá'u'lláh Himself yet knew how great. The order had come from the authorities that He must leave Baghdád and proceed to Constantinople — a fresh and bitter exile, designed once more to separate Him from the believers and to extinguish His growing influence. The days in Baghdád were numbered. And it was in precisely these last weeks, on the very threshold of that wrenching departure, that Naw-Rúz arrived.

Bahá'u'lláh kept it fully. Rather than spend the festival shut within the city, He went out into the countryside. At the Mazraʻiy-i-Vashshásh — a farm in the green country near His house — He celebrated the two-week festival of Naw-Rúz in the company of His family and His companions. It was, by every account, a time of joy. The fields were turning green with the spring; the believers were gathered around the One they loved; and the new year was kept in the open air, in hospitality and fellowship, as the old festival had always been kept and as the new Revelation now hallowed it.

There is a particular poignancy in this Naw-Rúz, read in the light of what came within days of it. It was during this same season at Vashshásh that Bahá'u'lláh revealed the mystical Tablet of the Holy Mariner, whose imagery of a sacred Ark sailing through perilous seas cast over the assembled believers a sense that some great change was near. And barely a month after the festival, on the twenty-second of April, Bahá'u'lláh would enter the Garden of Riḍván on the outskirts of Baghdád and there announce to His chosen companions the station He had so long concealed: that He was the Promised One foretold by the Báb, "Him Whom God shall make manifest." The twelve days in that garden would become the most sacred festival of the Bahá'í year, the King of Festivals.

So this last Baghdád Naw-Rúz stands at a hinge of history. Behind it lay ten years in which a shattered community had been quietly brought back to life. Before it lay the Declaration of Riḍván and the long road of further exile that would end in the prison-city of 'Akká. And Bahá'u'lláh kept the new year of renewal in the fullness of joy on the very brink of both — gathering His loved ones to a farm in the spring countryside, celebrating the turning of the year even as the greatest turning of all approached.

For those who keep Naw-Rúz today, this scene offers a quiet teaching. The festival of renewal is not reserved for seasons of ease. Bahá'u'lláh celebrated it joyously in the shadow of exile and on the eve of the supreme proclamation of His mission. The new year, kept among friends in a green field, became one more sign that the spirit's springtime arrives not when the road is smooth, but whenever hearts turn together toward the light of God.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh by Adib Taherzadeh.

Taherzadeh, A.. (1974). *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh (Vol. 1 — Baghdád 1853-63)*. George Ronald.