The Companions Who Served in the Garden of Riḍván

*A retelling based on **The Chosen Highway** by Lady Blomfield, which records the spoken chronicle of Mírzá Asadu'lláh Káshání, with details from Adib Taherzadeh's **The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh** and Shoghi Effendi's **God Passes By**. Passages in quotation marks are the words of those books.*

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Mírzá Asadu'lláh Káshání came from Káshán, where his eldest brother had become a Bábí. After a dream in which he saw Bahá'u'lláh in His house in Baghdád, he set out to find Him, on foot, "walking day and night." When he needed money he worked at his trade of coppersmith in the towns along the way. In Baghdád he lived with a group of five or six friends who took turns preparing food, and morning and evening they came into Bahá'u'lláh's presence.

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In April 1863 a decree arrived from Constantinople ordering Bahá'u'lláh to leave Baghdád. Before the journey He moved to a garden on the far bank of the Tigris, which Bahá'ís came to call the Garden of Riḍván. Asadu'lláh was in the crowd that saw Him go. "Weeping women pressed forward and laid their babes and young children at His feet," he remembered. Bahá'u'lláh raised the infants one by one, blessed them, and gave them back to their mothers. Then He "got into a boat to cross the river."

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"When we had seen that the boat was on the other side of the river," Asadu'lláh said, "we started off to walk to the Ridvan, where we set up His tent, and five or six others for the friends. I helped Mirza Muhammad Baqir to cook, and to make tea for the friends."

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For some days a strong wind blew through the garden. "His tent swayed; we thought it might be blown down, therefore we took it in turns to sit and hold the tent ropes so that it might be steady; night and day we held the ropes, so glad, in this way, to be near our Glorious Lord."

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Taherzadeh writes that each day Bahá'u'lláh summoned a number of His companions and dismissed them in the evening. "Only those without family ties were allowed to remain for the night, when some of them would keep vigil around His tent." One of those who kept watch was Nabíl, the chronicler, whose account Shoghi Effendi quotes in *God Passes By*.

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Every morning before dawn, Nabíl said, the gardeners picked the roses that lined the four avenues of the garden and heaped them on the floor of Bahá'u'lláh's tent, so high that the companions drinking their morning tea "would be unable to see each other across it." Bahá'u'lláh gave the roses to those He sent back to the city each morning, to be delivered on His behalf to His Arab and Persian friends there.

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"For three successive nights I watched and circled round His blessed tent," Nabíl recalled. "Every time I passed by the couch whereon He lay, I would find Him wakeful."

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"The family of Bahá'u'lláh joined Him in the Ridvan on the ninth day," Asadu'lláh said, "and on the twelfth day, in the afternoon, they went from us, under the escort of Turkish soldiers to an unknown destination." Bahá'u'lláh had told the friends not to follow, but Asadu'lláh ran after the party for three hours. Bahá'u'lláh saw him, got down from His horse and waited for him.

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He told him to go back to Baghdád and, with the friends, to set about their work "not slothfully, but with energy," and said: "Be not overcome with sorrow - I am leaving friends I love in Baghdad. I will surely send to them tidings of our welfare. Be steadfast in your service to God, who doeth whatsoever He willeth. Live in such peace as will be permitted to you."

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **The Chosen Highway** by Lady Blomfield and **The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh**, volume 1, by Adib Taherzadeh.*

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