The Last Day of the Most Great Festival

*A retelling based on **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi (chapter 9). The words in quotation marks are quoted from that book.*

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On the afternoon of April 22, 1863, Bahá'u'lláh crossed the Tigris from Baghdád to the Najíbíyyih Garden, which His followers later called the Garden of Riḍván. Shoghi Effendi writes that His arrival there "signalizes the commencement of what has come to be recognized as the holiest and most significant of all Bahá'í festivals, the festival commemorating the Declaration of His Mission to His companions." He sees that Declaration as "a prelude to the final proclamation of that same Mission to the world and its rulers from Adrianople."

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Of the exact circumstances of the Declaration, he writes, "we, alas, are but scantily informed." One of the few records is the account of Nabíl, who describes the gardeners heaping roses in Bahá'u'lláh's tent before dawn each day, and Bahá'u'lláh, from morning till evening, "ceaselessly engaged in conversing with the stream of visitors who kept flowing in from Baghdád."

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Bahá'u'lláh Himself called that occasion the "Most Great Festival," the "King of Festivals" and the "Festival of God." In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas He describes it as the Day whereon "all created things were immersed in the sea of purification." In another Tablet He wrote:

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> Arise, and proclaim unto the entire creation the tidings that He who is the > All-Merciful hath directed His steps towards the Ridván and entered it.

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The festival closed with a departure. At noon on May 3, 1863, the twelfth day, Bahá'u'lláh mounted His horse and rode out of the garden on the first stage of the journey to Constantinople, the beginning of what Shoghi Effendi calls "a second banishment," one that would bring Him "still farther from His native land." Bahá'u'lláh Himself wrote of His departure: "He (God) it was Who enabled Me to depart out of the city (Baghdád), clothed with such majesty as none, except the denier and the malicious, can fail to acknowledge."

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Three of the twelve days of Riḍván are Holy Days: the first, when He entered the garden; the ninth, when His family joined Him there; and the twelfth, when He left it.

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*This is a retelling. For the fuller account, see **God Passes By** by Shoghi Effendi, chapter 9.*

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