The Caravan Sets Out for Constantinople

*A retelling based on **Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era** by J. E. Esslemont, with a few details from **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi. Words in quotation marks are from those books.*

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"After much negotiation, at the request of the Persian Government, an order was issued by the Turkish Government summoning Bahá'u'lláh to Constantinople." Esslemont writes that when the news reached His followers they "were in consternation." So many of them crowded His house that the family encamped for twelve days in the Garden of Najíb Páshá outside the town "while the caravan was being prepared for the long journey."

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Those twelve days, from 22 April to 3 May 1863, fell nineteen years after the Báb's Declaration. During them Bahá'u'lláh announced to several of His followers that He was the One Whose coming the Báb had foretold.

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Esslemont notes that, "instead of being sad or depressed," He "showed the greatest joy, dignity and power." His followers became happy and enthusiastic, great crowds came to pay their respects, and the notables of Baghdád, even the Governor, came "to honor the departing prisoner." The garden became known to Bahá'ís as the Garden of Riḍván, and those days are commemorated each year in the Feast of Riḍván.

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On the twelfth day He left the garden. "The journey to Constantinople lasted between three and four months, the party consisting of Bahá'u'lláh with members of His family and twenty-six disciples." Shoghi Effendi adds in *God Passes By* that the caravan, with fifty mules and a mounted guard of ten soldiers, went by easy stages across eastern Anatolia to Sámsún on the Black Sea, that officials and villagers along the way received Bahá'u'lláh with honour, and that from Sámsún the exiles went on by steamer.

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When they reached Constantinople, Esslemont writes, "they found themselves prisoners in a small house in which they were very much overcrowded." Four months later they were moved on again, to Adrianople.

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era** by J. E. Esslemont and chapter IX of **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi.*

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