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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."
34 stories where majesty appears.
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.
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.
For most of His life 'Abdu'l-Bahá had been a prisoner of the state. When He passed in Haifa in 1921, the very governments that had once exiled and confined Him hastened to do Him honour — telegrams of condolence from Winston Churchill and the British Crown, from Viscount Allenby, from the ministers of 'Iráq, and the High Commissioner himself standing among the mourners.
From a borrowed house in the Ottoman town of Adrianople, an exile stripped of homeland, wealth, and freedom revealed the Súriy-i-Mulúk — the Tablet of the Kings — and, addressing the whole concourse of the world's sovereigns at once, bade the rulers of the earth lay down their pride, deal justly with their peoples, and turn to the Day of God. Shoghi Effendi ranks it among the most momentous Tablets of the entire Bahá'í Revelation.
In Baghdád, in answer to the questions of an uncle of the Báb, Bahá'u'lláh revealed in the span of two days and two nights the Kitáb-i-Íqán — the Book of Certitude — a work of such sweep and majesty that it unveils the meaning of all the Scriptures of the past and stands among the greatest doctrinal works of His entire Revelation. Adib Taherzadeh recounts the awe of its outpouring.
Shut away in remote mountain fortresses on the edge of the Persian empire, with no library, no leisure, and no help, the Báb poured forth Writings of such volume and such speed — commentaries, expositions, and prayers composed without pause or premeditation — that friends and adversaries alike recognized in the sheer torrent of His revealed Word a sign no human power could counterfeit.
When 'Abdu'l-Bahá passed in Haifa in 1921, some ten thousand people — Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Druze; the High Commissioner and the poor of the lanes alike — climbed the slopes of Mount Carmel behind His coffin, and nine speakers of three faiths rose in turn to mourn Him. The majesty of that day was not borrowed from any office He held, for He held none; it was the grandeur a life of pure love had quietly built.
In 1912 'Abdu'l-Bahá laid with His own hand the foundation stone of the first Bahá'í House of Worship of the Western world, on the shore of Lake Michigan at Wilmette. Over the next forty years a community of working people — giving in dimes and dollars, across two world wars and a great depression — raised above that stone a temple of lacelike grandeur, a gift that most of its builders gave knowing they would never see it finished.
From within the prison-city of 'Akká — held under a sentence of perpetual confinement — Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book: the charter of a future world civilization, set down by a Prisoner whom the powers of the earth had meant to silence forever.
In 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Súrih of the Temple — the Súriy-i-Haykal — and gathered into its body the mighty messages He had already sent to the Pope, the Emperor of France, the Sháh, the Czar, the Queen, and the rulers of the earth, fashioning of His proclamation a living "Temple" of the Word.
On the night the Báb declared His mission in Shíráz, He took up His pen and began, with astonishing speed, to reveal the Qayyúmu'l-Asmá' — the first Book of His Dispensation. Shoghi Effendi ranks it among the greatest and mightiest of all the works the Báb left behind.
In 1953 the golden dome of the Shrine of the Báb was at last raised over Mount Carmel, completing the monument Shoghi Effendi loved to call the "Queen of Carmel" — a structure of surpassing majesty over the remains of a Prophet whom His own land had martyred in obscurity.
On Naw-Rúz 1909, after the sacred remains of the Báb had been hidden and moved for sixty years, 'Abdu'l-Bahá laid them with His own hands in the Shrine He had built on Mount Carmel — and, overcome, wept so that all who were present wept with Him. The greatest victory, He called it, of a long-deferred hope.
In the closing years of His life, from the neighbourhood of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Tablet of Ishráqát — the "Splendours" — setting forth, like rays breaking from a single rising Sun, the principles by which a divided world might be remade. Bahá'ís keep the very first month of their year, and its Feast, under the name this Tablet exalts: Bahá, the Splendour.
In Baghdád, in answer to the questions of an uncle of the Báb who was still searching, Bahá'u'lláh revealed in the span of two days and two nights the Kitáb-i-Íqán — the Book of Certitude. Shoghi Effendi ranks it the most important doctrinal work of the Bahá'í Revelation: a torrent of explanation poured out almost in a single sitting, and a sign of the glory of the Word.
When Bahá'u'lláh lay chained in the Black Pit of Ṭihrán, condemned without cause and surrounded by the executions of His fellow-prisoners, help came from an unlooked-for quarter: the Russian Minister at the Persian court, who took up His case, pressed for His release, and afterward offered Him the protection of his government. Nabíl records it as one of the signs that no power on earth could extinguish the Cause of God.
From within His imprisonment, on the death of one of the Ottoman ministers who had persecuted Him, Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Tablet of Fu'ád — and in it foretold, in order, the downfall of the other minister who shared the guilt and of the Sulṭán above them both. Within a few years it had all come to pass. The sovereignty of His Word over the mightiest powers of the age is a splendour the Feast of Bahá remembers.
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.
From within the prison-city of 'Akká — where the world's authorities had hoped His Cause would die — Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book. Out of the most desolate confinement came the charter of a future world civilization: its laws, its institutions, and its summons to the unity of humankind.
In the bitterest days of His imprisonment in 'Akká — His sons fallen, His companions scattered, the gates barred against Him — Bahá'u'lláh revealed the Lawḥ-i-Qad-Iḥtaraqa'l-Mukhliṣún, the Fire Tablet. Its verses move through a long lament over the world's wrongs and then break, at the end, into the certainty of the dawn: the glory of His Cause shining out from the very depth of His affliction.
Across forty years of exile, imprisonment, and persecution, Bahá'u'lláh poured forth a sea of revealed verses unmatched in religious history — Tablets, prayers, and books in such abundance that those who tried to record them could scarcely keep pace. Shoghi Effendi gathers the testimony of that torrent as one of the surest signs of the glory of His Revelation.
The Power that had banished Bahá'u'lláh to the worst prison in its empire could not keep Him there. In His last years the walls of 'Akká opened, and the once reviled Prisoner lived out His days in a mansion at Bahjí, honoured by pilgrims and notables alike — having shown, His family recalled, how to glorify God in abasement and how to glorify Him again in honour.
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.
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.
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."
From His exile in Adrianople and 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh addressed the most powerful monarch in Europe — Napoleon III of France — twice. The first message the Emperor is said to have cast aside with a contemptuous word; in the second Tablet Bahá'u'lláh warned him plainly that for what he had done his kingdom would be thrown into confusion and his empire pass from his hands. Within a few short years the prophecy was fulfilled to the letter, while the Cause the exile proclaimed continued to spread.
Two empires shut Bahá'u'lláh inside the prison-city of 'Akká, meaning to bury His Cause behind stone. Yet within those very walls a sovereignty shone that no decree could touch: governors and generals came humbly to His door, pilgrims crossed the world to reach Him, and from His captivity He addressed the emperors who held Him as a King addresses His subjects. Esslemont's account shows that the Captive of 'Akká was, in reality, no prisoner at all, but a King of Kings.
In the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Most Holy Book revealed in the prison-city of 'Akká, Bahá'u'lláh turned to the assembled monarchs of the earth and addressed them in words of staggering majesty. He told them that the sovereign Lord of all had come, that they were but vassals, and that the King of Kings had appeared and was summoning them unto Himself. A reflection on the verses in which the sovereignty of God is proclaimed over every throne on earth.
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.
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.
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.