The Night Chant in the Síyáh-Chál
Nabíl-i-A'ẓam, The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá'í Revelation, (1932), Bahá'í Publishing Trust · Read original
When in Bahá'í history
Síyáh-Chál (today: Tehran, Iran)
A retelling of Bahá’u’lláh’s own account as recorded by Nabíl in The Dawn-Breakers.
In 1852 Bahá’u’lláh was confined for four months in the Síyáh-Chál, the “Black Pit”, an underground dungeon in Tihrán not far from the palace of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh. Nabíl heard Him describe it many times and recorded His words in The Dawn-Breakers.
The prisoners were huddled together in one cell, their feet in stocks and heavy chains about their necks. The air was foul, the floor was covered with filth and vermin, and no light reached them. Each day the gaolers called the name of one of the Bábí prisoners, who would rise, embrace Bahá’u’lláh and his fellow prisoners, and go out to be killed.
Bahá’u’lláh had taught His companions certain verses, and every night they chanted them. In His own words:
We were placed in two rows, each facing the other. We had taught them to repeat certain verses which, every night, they chanted with extreme fervour. “God is sufficient unto me; He verily is the All-sufficing!” one row would intone, while the other would reply: “In Him let the trusting trust.”
The chanting went on until the early hours of the morning. Its sound filled the dungeon and, passing through its walls, reached the Sháh in his palace nearby. “What means this sound?” he is reported to have asked. “It is the anthem the Bábís are intoning in their prison,” he was told. The Sháh said nothing more, and made no attempt to stop them.
Bahá’u’lláh recalled that His fellow prisoners bore their condition without complaint, and that praise of God, rather than complaint of the Sháh’s treatment, was always on their lips. After each execution, the executioner, who had grown friendly to Bahá’u’lláh, would tell Him how the martyr had died and of the joy with which he had endured his sufferings to the end.
Bahá’u’lláh was released after four months and exiled to Baghdád. In God Passes By Shoghi Effendi places in this same dungeon the first stirrings of Bahá’u’lláh’s own Revelation.
A retelling of Bahá’u’lláh’s account in Nabíl’s The Dawn-Breakers, chapter 26 (Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1932). For the fuller account, see the original.
Cite this story
Nabíl-i-A'ẓam. (1932). *The Dawn-Breakers: Nabíl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahá'í Revelation*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/other-literature/historical/dawn-breakers/
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