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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
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"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens."
38 stories on this theme.
Esslemont's account of the twelve days Bahá'u'lláh spent in the Garden of Najíb Páshá outside Baghdád in April 1863, where, on what Bahá'ís remember as the First Day of Riḍván, He declared to His followers that He was the One whose coming the Báb had foretold.
Bahá'u'lláh entered the Garden of Riḍván on April 22, 1863. His family — the river having been impassable on the first day — joined Him on the ninth day, April 29. The Ninth Day of Riḍván commemorates that reunion, and Esslemont's account of the twelve days outside Baghdád sets the scene.
On May 3, 1863 — the twelfth day of His sojourn in the Garden of Riḍván — Bahá'u'lláh mounted His horse and set out from Baghdád toward Constantinople. Esslemont records the strange, joyful character of those last days, when even the Governor of Baghdád came to honor the departing prisoner.
When Bahá'u'lláh had to leave Baghdád, His friends were heartbroken — but in a garden full of roses, He gave them the most joyful news of all.
A river ran too high to cross, so a family had to wait nine whole days before they could join Bahá'u'lláh in a beautiful garden full of roses.
Bahá'u'lláh was being sent far away from the city of Baghdád — but instead of being sad, He was full of joy, and the whole city came to honor Him as He left.
For ten years in Baghdád Bahá'u'lláh had carried His station in silence. Then, in the spring of 1863, on the eve of a new banishment, He entered a rose-filled garden on the bank of the Tigris and, for twelve days, declared openly to His companions that He was the Promised One foretold by the Báb. Bahá'ís remember those days as the King of Festivals — the hour the long-hidden Glory of God was at last unveiled.
Before it became the holiest spot in the Bahá'í year, the Garden of Riḍván was simply a green wooded park on the far bank of the Tigris, belonging to a notable of Baghdád named Najíb Páshá. This is the story of that garden — its roses and avenues, and how the believers crossed the river to reach the place where the Promised One declared His Mission.
Before Bahá'u'lláh ever reached the Garden of Riḍván, He had to walk out of His house and through the streets of Baghdád — and the city wept. Men and women of every station crowded the route to the river, and a small child ran from the crowd and clung to His robe, begging Him not to go.
As Bahá'u'lláh prepared to leave for the Garden of Riḍván, the great and the powerful of Baghdád came to do Him honour. Officials, men of rank, even the governor of the city paid their respects to the departing exile — and, in Nabíl's words, heads on every side bowed to the dust at the feet of His horse.
On the eve of a fresh exile, with an uncertain road ahead, Bahá'u'lláh might have shown sorrow. Instead, the histories record, He showed "the greatest joy, dignity and power." This is the story of His bearing during the twelve days of Riḍván, and of how that serenity lifted the spirits of all who watched.
In His own writings the Báb called Himself "a letter out of that most mighty book and a dewdrop from that limitless ocean," and pointed always to One yet to come. 'Abdu'l-Bahá's A Traveler's Narrative records how that promise ripened — until, in a garden by the Tigris, the Ocean the Báb had heralded appeared.
It is to Nabíl, the chronicler of the early days, that we owe the most beloved picture of the Garden of Riḍván — roses heaped so high in Bahá'u'lláh's tent that the companions could not see one another across it, and a saying about the nightingales that He uttered in the warm Baghdád nights of April 1863.
When Bahá'u'lláh entered the Garden of Riḍván on 22 April 1863, His family could not follow Him at once: the Tigris had risen in flood and made the crossing impassable. Only on the ninth day, when the waters fell, did the Holy Family cross the boat-bridge to join Him — which is why the ninth day of Riḍván is itself a holy day.
Years before the Garden of Riḍván, the Báb had filled His writings with promises of "Him Whom God shall make manifest" — and had pointed, in veiled and exact words, to "the year nine" and to nineteen years that must elapse before the Promised One would appear. In April 1863, nineteen years after the Báb's own Declaration, that promise was kept.
When Bahá'u'lláh crossed the Tigris into the Garden of Riḍván on that April afternoon in 1863, His eldest Son crossed with Him — 'Abdu'l-Bahá, then a young Man of eighteen, who had already given the whole devotion of His life to His Father, and who in the Garden stood at the threshold of the Cause He would one day be appointed to lead.
Bahá'ís did not invent the supreme rank of Riḍván — Bahá'u'lláh Himself conferred it. In His Most Holy Book He named those days the first of the "two Most Great Festivals," and tradition has hailed Riḍván as the "King of Festivals," the days whereon, in His own words, "all created things were immersed in the sea of purification."
In the spring of 1863, in the last weeks of His decade in Baghdád and only days before He would declare His mission in the Garden of Riḍván, Bahá'u'lláh kept the two-week festival of Naw-Rúz with His companions at the Mazraʻiy-i-Vashshásh, a farm in the countryside outside the city — a final, joyous new year on the eve of the greatest of all proclamations.
When Bahá'u'lláh entered the Garden of Riḍván outside Baghdád in April 1863, His daughter Bahíyyih Khánum — the Greatest Holy Leaf, then a girl in her teens — remained behind with the household, kept on the far bank by the flooding Tigris. On the ninth day the waters fell and she crossed at last to rejoin her Father in the Garden of Paradise.
Among the household of Bahá'u'lláh in the Riḍván days of 1863 was His younger son Mírzá Mihdí, the Purest Branch, then a gentle boy. The recollections preserved in The Chosen Highway let us picture him among the family on the near bank of the Tigris, waiting through the flood, and crossing on the ninth day to be gathered with his Father in the Garden of Paradise.
The festival of Riḍván lasts twelve days, and of these the first, the ninth, and the twelfth are kept as holy days on which work is set aside. Drawing on the early Bahá'í periodical Star of the West, this retelling looks at how the ninth day — the day the Holy Family crossed to join Bahá'u'lláh in the Garden — came to be hallowed, and how the friends keep it.
The festival of Riḍván was made ready by loving hands. Drawing on The Revelation of Bahá'u'lláh, this retelling honours the companions who served the Holy Family through the twelve days outside Baghdád — pitching the tent, gathering and tending the roses, keeping watch through the nights — and who helped the household across the Tigris on the ninth day.
Why was the Holy Family's crossing to the Garden of Riḍván delayed until the ninth day? Drawing on Esslemont's Bahá'u'lláh and the New Era, this retelling follows the swollen Tigris of the spring of 1863 — the river in flood, the bridge of boats made impassable — and the morning the waters fell at last and let the household cross into the Garden of Paradise.
When Bahá'u'lláh crossed the Tigris on the afternoon of 22 April 1863 to enter the Garden of Riḍván, the river ran so high that His wife and household could not follow Him. For nine days they waited on the far bank; then, on the Ninth Day, they crossed at last and were reunited with Him among the roses. The Ninth Day of Riḍván commemorates that homecoming of the Holy Family.
When Bahá'u'lláh crossed the Tigris to enter the Garden of Riḍván in April 1863 and declared His mission, the eldest of the sons at His side was 'Abdu'l-Bahá, then a youth of eighteen. He had grown up in the shadow of His Father's exile and had already, as a child, recognized His station. The Ninth Day of Riḍván, when the rest of the family joined them in the Garden, gathers the whole household around that declaration.
Ásíyih Khánum — the noble lady Bahá'u'lláh named Navváb — had shared with Him the loss of their home, the winter exile from Persia, and ten years in Baghdád. When He entered the Garden of Riḍván in 1863 the flooded Tigris kept her on the far bank; on the Ninth Day she crossed at last to join Him. The Ninth Day of Riḍván honours that reunion of the wife and mother of the Holy Family with the One whose every exile she had shared.
The family that joined Bahá'u'lláh in the Garden of Riḍván on the Ninth Day was no ordinary household. They had shared His imprisonment in the Síyáh-Chál, the plundering of their home, banishment from Persia, and ten years of exile in Baghdád. Esslemont's account of those sufferings sets in relief the joy of their reunion in the Garden — and explains why the Faith keeps that reunion as a holy day.
Each morning of the twelve days of Riḍván, the gardener heaped fresh roses in Bahá'u'lláh's tent until those seated on one side could not see those on the other; and from that abundance He sent roses, by His companions' hands, to the friends across the river. The image speaks to the heart of the Ninth Day, when the swollen Tigris was crossed and His own family was at last gathered to Him in the Garden.
When Bahá'u'lláh rode out of the Garden of Riḍván on the twelfth day, He did not step into freedom but onto a road — more than a thousand miles of mountain and plain, north and then west, to the Ottoman capital. With His family and twenty-six companions He set out on a march of more than three months, and at every stage along the way the people met Him not as a banished prisoner but as an honored guest.
Not everyone could follow Bahá'u'lláh onto the road of exile. When the convoy of the Beloved left Baghdád for Constantinople, believers remained behind in a city now empty of His presence and full of His enemies. In His memorial to Muḥammad-Muṣṭafá Baghdádí, 'Abdu'l-Bahá preserves what faithfulness looked like in those who stayed — loyal, staunch, and openly teaching the Faith after the great separation.
In the very days of the Riḍván festival, on the eve of His banishment from Baghdád, Bahá'u'lláh revealed one of the great Tablets of His early ministry — the Súriy-i-Ṣabr, the Tablet of Patience, also called the Tablet of Job. Sent in honor of a survivor of the Nayríz upheaval whom He named Ayyúb, it lifts up the steadfastness of those who suffered for the Báb and crowns the Festival of joy with a hymn to patient endurance.
When the convoy left Baghdád on the twelfth day of Riḍván, 'Abdu'l-Bahá was a young Man of eighteen, already beloved by the people of the city and wholly devoted to His Father. In the spoken chronicle gathered in The Chosen Highway, the years of exile are remembered through the family who lived them — and the eldest Son stands out as the one who carried the burdens, comforted the household, and gave Himself entirely to Bahá'u'lláh.
The banishment that began on the twelfth day of Riḍván was meant to humble Bahá'u'lláh, yet the long road north became a procession of homage. Town after town received Him with reverence, recalling the love of the people of Baghdád; and as the caravan neared the Black Sea, He revealed the Tablet of the Howdah, in which the majesty of His Cause shone out over the very road of His exile.
At noon on the twelfth and last day in the Garden of Riḍván — May 3, 1863 — Bahá'u'lláh mounted a red roan stallion, the finest His lovers could buy for Him, and rode out toward the long exile to Constantinople. The crowds bowed to the dust at His horse's feet and pressed forward to embrace His stirrups; what the empire had decreed as banishment looked, to all who watched, like the riding-forth of a King.
On the twelfth day of Riḍván the long-prepared caravan finally moved. With members of His family and twenty-six of His disciples, Bahá'u'lláh set out from the Garden on a march that would last between three and four months, over a thousand miles to Constantinople. The Cause that had grown in the quiet of Baghdád was now openly upon the road of history.
As the day of His banishment approached, Bahá'u'lláh showed neither sorrow nor fear. In the Garden, on the eve of His departure for Constantinople, He showed the greatest joy, dignity, and power; His followers grew happy and enthusiastic; and all the notables of Baghdád, even the Governor himself, came to honor the departing prisoner. The Twelfth Day of Riḍván seals that strange reversal in which an exile looked like a triumph.
When Bahá'u'lláh rode out of the Garden of Riḍván on the twelfth day, the grief knew no party and no creed. Believers and unbelievers alike sobbed and lamented; the chiefs and notables who had gathered were struck with wonder. The departure laid bare what ten years of His presence had done to a whole city's heart — and what His presence does to any heart it touches.
The supreme festival of the Bahá'í year does not close on a day of arrival but on a day of departure. The Twelfth Day of Riḍván seals the twelve days Shoghi Effendi calls the holiest and most significant of all Bahá'í festivals — the Most Great Festival, the King of Festivals, the Festival of God — by sending the newly unveiled Glory of God out from the Garden and onto the road of His Cause.