Twenty-seven days after that mournful Tablet[“Tablet of the
Holy Mariner”] had been so unexpectedly revealed by Bahá’u’lláh, and the
fateful communication, presaging His departure to Constantinople had been
delivered into His hands, on a Wednesday afternoon (April 22, 1863), thirty-one
days after Naw-Rúz, on the third of Dhi’l-Qádih, 1279 A.H., He set forth
on the first stage of His four months’ journey to the capital of the Ottoman
Empire. That historic day, forever after designated as the first day of the
Ridván Festival, the culmination of innumerable farewell visits which friends
and acquaintances of every class and denomination, had
been paying him, was one the like of which the inhabitants of Baghdád
had rarely beheld. A concourse of people of both sexes and of every age,
comprising friends and strangers Arabs, Kurds and Persians, notables and
clerics, officials and merchants, as well as many of the lower classes, the poor,
the orphaned, the outcast, some surprised, others heartbroken, many tearful and
apprehensive, a few impelled by curiosity or secret satisfaction, thronged the
approaches of His house, eager to catch a final glimpse of One Who, for a
decade, had, through precept and example, exercised so potent an influence on
so large a number of the heterogeneous inhabitants of their city.
Leaving for the last time, amidst weeping and lamentation, His “Most Holy Habitation,” out of which had “gone forth the breath of the All-Glorious,” and from which had poured forth, in “ceaseless strains,” the “melody of the All-Merciful,” and dispensing on His way with a lavish hand a last alms to the poor He had so faithfully befriended, and uttering words of comfort to the disconsolate who besought Him on every side, He, at length, reached the banks of the river, and was ferried across, accompanied by His sons and amanuensis, to the Najíbíyyih Garden, situated on the opposite shore. “O My companions,” He thus addressed the faithful band that surrounded Him before He embarked, “I entrust to your keeping this city of Baghdád, in the state ye now behold it, when from the eyes of friends and strangers alike, crowding its housetops, its streets and markets, tears like the rain of spring are flowing down, and I depart. With you it now rests to watch lest your deeds and conduct dim the flame of love that gloweth within the breasts of its inhabitants.”
The muezzin had just raised the afternoon call to prayer
when Bahá’u’lláh entered the Najíbíyyih Garden, where He tarried twelve days
before His final departure from the city. (Shoghi Effendi, ‘God Passes By’)