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Featured in: Festival of Ridvan
Ridvan, also known as the Most Great Festival, celebrates Baha’u’llah’s time in the garden of Ridvan on the outskirts of Baghdad in 1863 when He publicly declared His station as a Manifestation of God. The Ridvan Festival is 12 days long and is also the time of year when Baha’is elect their governing bodies.
This video shares an account from the historian Nabil, one of those present at the Ridvan Garden in Baghdad in 1863 when Baha’u’llah announced His Mission as the Promised One of all religions. This description is quoted in Shoghi Effendi’s seminal history of the early years of the Baha’i Faith, God Passes By.
Here is Nabil’s description:
“Every day, ere the hour of dawn, the gardeners would pick the roses which lined the four avenues of the garden, and would pile them in the center of the floor of His blessed tent. So great would be the heap that when His companions gathered to drink their morning tea in His presence, they would be unable to see each other across it.
All these roses Bahá’u’lláh would, with His own hands, entrust to those whom He dismissed from His presence every morning to be delivered, on His behalf, to His Arab and Persian friends in the city.
One night, the ninth night of the waxing moon, I happened to be one of those who watched beside His blessed tent. As the hour of midnight approached, I saw Him issue from His tent, pass by the places where some of His companions were sleeping, and begin to pace up and down the moonlit, flower-bordered avenues of the garden.
So loud was the singing of the nightingales on every side that only those who were near Him could hear distinctly His voice. He continued to walk until, pausing in the midst of one of these avenues, He observed: `Consider these nightingales. So great is their love for these roses, that sleepless from dusk till dawn, they warble their melodies and commune with burning passion with the object of their adoration. How then can those who claim to be afire with the rose-like beauty of the Beloved choose to sleep?’
For three successive nights I watched and circled round His blessed tent. Every time I passed by the couch whereon He lay, I would find Him wakeful, and every day, from morn till eventide, I would see Him ceaselessly engaged in conversing with the stream of visitors who kept flowing in from Baghdád. Not once could I discover in the words He spoke any trace of dissimulation.”
You can read God Passes By online in its entirety on the Baha’i Reference Library.
Find more resources dedicated to the Festival of Ridvan in our special Baha’i Blog collection dedicated to this special 12 day period.
Some images and text are courtesy of the Baha’i International Community. Other images are from Pexels, Unsplash, Rawpixel, or are in the public domain.
Narration: Corinne
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