Navváb and the Ninth Day

*A retelling based on **The Chosen Highway** by Lady Blomfield, which records the memories of Bahíyyih Khánum, the Greatest Holy Leaf, about her mother, Ásíyih Khánum. The account of the flood comes from **A Flame of Fire** by A. Q. Faizi. Words in quotation marks are quoted from those books.*

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Ásíyih Khánum was the wife of Bahá'u'lláh and the mother of 'Abdu'l-Bahá, Bahíyyih Khánum and Mírzá Mihdí. Bahá'u'lláh addressed her as "Navváb," which one of her granddaughters describes as "a title of great courtesy and respect, used by Persian noblemen to their wives."

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She came from a noble family of Persia. Her daughter recalled that when she married, "forty mules were loaded with her possessions." A jeweller had worked for six months at her home making her jewellery, and even the buttons of her garments were of gold set with precious stones. Those buttons, her daughter added, "were destined to be exchanged for bread, on the terrible exile journey from Tihran to Baghdad."

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She and Bahá'u'lláh took as little part as they could in State functions and the luxuries of wealthy Persian families, and gave their time to the poor and the troubled. "From our doors nobody was ever turned away; the hospitable board was spread for all comers." The people called Bahá'u'lláh "The Father of the Poor," and they called her "The Mother of Consolation."

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In 1852, after an attempt on the life of the Sháh, Bahá'u'lláh was arrested and thrown into the dungeon of Ṭihrán. Relatives, friends and servants fled the house, and it was soon stripped of everything. Bahá'u'lláh's brother Mírzá Músá helped Navváb and her three children into hiding. She saved a few of her wedding treasures and sold them, and with the money she paid the gaolers to take food to her husband in prison. After four months He was released and banished, and the family made the winter journey to Baghdád. They lived there in exile for ten years.

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In 1863 Bahá'u'lláh was summoned to Constantinople. On 22 April He left His house and crossed the Tigris by boat to the Garden of Riḍván with three of His sons, among them 'Abdu'l-Bahá and Mírzá Mihdí. Navváb, her daughter and the rest of the household stayed behind in the city. A. Q.

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Faizi writes that "on that same day the river overflowed and only on the ninth day was it possible for His family to join Him in the Garden." A believer whose memories are recorded in *The Chosen Highway* said: "The family of Bahá'u'lláh joined Him in the Ridvan on the ninth day; and on the twelfth day, in the afternoon, they went from us, under the escort of Turkish soldiers to an unknown destination."

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Navváb went with Bahá'u'lláh on that journey, and on to Adrianople and 'Akká. The ninth day of Riḍván, when she and the rest of the family joined Him in the Garden, is kept by Bahá'ís as a Holy Day.

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **The Chosen Highway** by Lady Blomfield.*

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