The Báb Appoints the Day of God

A retelling based on Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era by J. E. Esslemont, which describes the Bahá'í calendar, with details from the notes to the Kitáb-i-Aqdas. Passages in quotation marks are the words of those books.

Naw-Rúz, the new year at the spring equinox, was kept in Persia long before the Báb. Esslemont notes that the Bahá'í New Year is fixed "like the ancient Persian New Year." Its place as a Bahá'í Holy Day goes back to the Báb, who gave it a setting in a calendar of His own.

"The Báb signalized the importance of the dispensation which He came to herald, by inaugurating a new calendar," Esslemont writes. Like the Gregorian calendar, it follows the solar year rather than the lunar month. It has nineteen months of nineteen days, 361 days in all, and a few extra days make up the solar year. The Báb did not fix where those extra days should fall; Bahá'u'lláh later placed them, in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, just before the last month.

"The Báb named the months after the attributes of God." In Esslemont's translation they are Splendour, Glory, Beauty, Grandeur, Light, Mercy, Words, Perfection, Names, Might, Will, Knowledge, Power, Speech, Questions, Honour, Sovereignty, Dominion and Loftiness. The notes to the Kitáb-i-Aqdas record that "In the Persian Bayán, the Báb bestowed the name 'Bahá' on the first month of the year," and that its first day, Naw-Rúz, "was ordained by the Báb as a festival."

The nineteenth month, 'Alá, "Loftiness," is the month of the Fast. For nineteen days the believers abstain "from both food and drink from sunrise to sunset." The Fast ends at the March equinox, and the new year begins with it. The notes to the Kitáb-i-Aqdas state the Báb's provisions plainly: "In the Bayán, the Báb ordained the month of 'Alá to be the month of fasting, decreed that the day of Naw-Rúz should mark the termination of that period, and designated Naw-Rúz as the Day of God."

So the ancient spring festival of Persia became, in the Báb's calendar, the first day of a year whose months carry the names of the attributes of God, and the day on which the Fast is broken.

Esslemont counts Naw-Rúz among "the great joy-days of the year for Bahá'ís." In Persia, he writes, such days were "celebrated by picnics or festal gatherings at which music, the chanting of verses and tablets, and short addresses suitable to the occasion are contributed by those present."

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era by J. E. Esslemont, and notes 26, 139 and 148 to the Kitáb-i-Aqdas.

Esslemont, J. E.. (1923). *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*. George Allen & Unwin. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19241