The Family Reunited in the Garden: Ninth Day of Riḍván

A retelling drawing on The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, volume 1, by Adib Taherzadeh, which gathers the historical record of Bahá'u'lláh's ministry and His Tablets. Short phrases in quotation marks are words preserved in that history.

In the spring of 1863 the order had come at last: Bahá'u'lláh, exiled already from Persia to Baghdád, was to be banished farther still — to Constantinople, the seat of the Ottoman Empire. For ten years He had lived among the people of Baghdád, and in those ten years the city had come to love Him. When the news of His removal spread, the believers and the townspeople alike were thrown into grief, and so many sought to come to His house to take their leave that the small dwelling could not hold them. A notable of the city, Najíb Páshá, placed his garden across the river Tigris at Bahá'u'lláh's disposal, and there, in that wooded garden the believers would forever after call the Garden of Riḍván — the Garden of Paradise — the household made ready to encamp for the days that remained before the long journey north.

On the afternoon of the twenty-second of April, Bahá'u'lláh left His house and crossed the river to enter the Garden. He was accompanied, the record relates, by three of His sons: 'Abdu'l-Bahá, then a young man of eighteen; Mírzá Mihdí, the Purest Branch, a boy of fourteen; and Mírzá Muḥammad-'Alí, who was ten. As He entered, the call to afternoon prayer was being raised from a nearby mosque, and the cry of "Alláh-u-Akbar" — God is the Most Great — rang out across the garden, as though heaven itself were announcing the arrival of the King of Glory. There, among avenues lined with flowers and trees, with the fragrance of roses heavy on the air and nightingales singing in the branches, Bahá'u'lláh walked in the utmost joy. And in those days, to His chosen companions, He declared the secret He had carried in silence for ten years: that He was the Promised One foretold by the Báb.

But on that first afternoon, not all of the Holy Family could be with Him. The river Tigris, swollen and running high with the waters of spring, lay between the house and the Garden, and the crossing was difficult and at times impossible. His wife, Ásíyih Khánum — the lady He had named Navváb — and the rest of the household, including His daughter Bahíyyih Khánum, the Greatest Holy Leaf, were unable to follow Him across. So it came to pass that while Bahá'u'lláh, in the Garden on the far bank, was inaugurating the most joyful festival the world had ever known, His own family remained on the near shore, divided from Him by the flooded river, waiting.

For nine days they waited. This was a family that had already shared a great deal. They had endured the seizing of Bahá'u'lláh and His confinement in the Síyáh-Chál, the black pit beneath Ṭihrán. They had endured the plundering of their home and the loss of their wealth. They had been driven out of Persia in the depth of winter and had made the bitter road to Baghdád. They had lived ten years of exile at His side. Now, on the very threshold of His open declaration, the river held them back a little longer.

Then, on the ninth day — the twenty-ninth of April — the household crossed at last and were reunited with Bahá'u'lláh in the Garden. The river that had divided them for nine days was crossed at last, and the household that had shared every exile was gathered again about Him in Paradise. This is the day Bahá'ís keep as the Ninth Day of Riḍván.

It is a quiet thing, this homecoming, set within the blaze of the King of Festivals. The Declaration itself — the unveiling, after ten years of silence, of the Glory of God — is the supreme event of the twelve days. Yet the Faith has chosen to mark, as one of its holy days, not only the proclamation but the reunion: the hour when the very people who had walked the whole long road with Him, who had borne the prison and the exile and the want, were restored to His side beneath the roses. There is a tenderness in that choice. It says that those who had shared His sufferings were not to be left out of His glory; that the household which had followed Him into the dark was to be gathered to Him in the light.

For four more days after their arrival the family remained with Him in the Garden, and then, on the twelfth day, the caravan set out for Constantinople and the harder exiles beyond. But for those days in between, the Holy Family was together with the Promised One in the place He had made Paradise — and that gathering, after the long division of the flooded river, is what the Ninth Day of Riḍván holds in remembrance.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, volume 1, by Adib Taherzadeh.

Taherzadeh, A.. (1974). *The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh (volume 1)*. George Ronald.