Joy on the Eve of Exile: Twelfth Day of Riḍván

A retelling based on Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era by J. E. Esslemont, the classic introduction to the Faith. The lines in quotation marks are quoted directly from that book.

There is a sentence in Esslemont's account of those twelve days that, once read, is hard to forget. Describing the spirit of Bahá'u'lláh as He prepared to leave Baghdád for ever and set out on the long banishment to Constantinople, Esslemont writes:

During those days Bahá'u'lláh, instead of being sad or depressed, showed the greatest joy, dignity and power. His followers became happy and enthusiastic, and great crowds came to pay their respects to Him. All the notables of Baghdád, even the Governor himself, came to honor the departing prisoner.

Read it slowly, and weigh what it is actually saying. This was the eve of an exile. Bahá'u'lláh had already lost His homeland, His station, His wealth; He had already endured the Black Pit of Ṭihrán and a winter crossing into a strange land; and now, after ten years in Baghdád, He was being driven a thousand miles farther still, not because He had done any wrong, but precisely because He had become too greatly loved for the authorities to leave Him where He was. Every ordinary expectation would predict sorrow in such a man — grief, anxiety, the heaviness of one more uprooting. And the opposite is what the witnesses saw. Not sadness but joy. Not depression but dignity. Not the shrinking of a victim but power.

That joy was not a brave face put on for the sake of the believers. It was the overflow of a soul whose security rested in nothing the empire could take away. Worldly power has its grip on us mainly through fear and hope — fear of what the powerful may do, hope of what they may grant. Bahá'u'lláh stood entirely free of both. The decree could move His body across the map; it could not reach the source of His gladness. And because His joy was real, it was contagious. His followers, who might have been expected to despair as their Beloved was taken from them, became, Esslemont says, happy and enthusiastic. The mood of the Garden in those final days was not the hush of a deathbed but the brightness of a festival.

The most astonishing line, though, is the last. All the notables of Baghdád, even the Governor himself, came to honor the departing prisoner. The Governor was the instrument of the exile — the local face of the very power that was sending Bahá'u'lláh away. By every convention of the world, the banished man and the official who banishes him stand on opposite sides; one is disgraced, the other disgraces him. Here that whole order is quietly turned upside down. The Governor came not to gloat but to pay his respects. The notables came not to see a prisoner humbled but to honor Him. Something in Bahá'u'lláh had so plainly overmastered the situation that even those carrying out His banishment found themselves bowing to the One they were banishing.

This is the reversal that the Twelfth Day of Riḍván holds at its center. The day commemorates a departure into exile, yet it is kept as one of the holiest and most joyful days of the Bahá'í year. There is no contradiction in that, once we see what Esslemont saw. The day is holy not in spite of the exile but because of what the exile revealed: that the Glory of God, dispossessed of every outward support, shines all the brighter; that true sovereignty has nothing to do with thrones and decrees; and that a Captive on the eve of banishment can fill a garden with such joy that crowds throng to Him and the very governor of the city comes to do Him honor.

What the Ottoman authorities intended as the lowering of a troublesome exile became, in the seeing of all who were there, a lifting up. They meant to send a prisoner away in disgrace. Instead, Baghdád watched its most honored Guest ride out in joy, dignity, and power — and could not help but bow.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era by J. E. Esslemont.

Esslemont, J. E.. (1923). *Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era*. George Allen & Unwin. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/19241/pg19241-images.html