Sulaymániyyih, as it was in 1844

Today Sulaymániyyih is a very pleasant small town, at a distance of about 200 miles from Baghdad, built amidst three hills and surrounded by trees and verdure. But it must have been otherwise in Bahá’u’lláh’s time, for Commander James F. Jones of the Indian Navy, who accompanied Sir Henry Rawlinson on a tour of Kurdistan in 1844, writes thus of Sulaymániyyih as he found it:

Sulimaniyeh, the capital of the Pachalic, is a collection of small and ruinous houses, bearing a more mean appearance than, I believe, the most wretched hamlet in England. This is, however, not attributable to the poverty of the Kurds alone, but to the nomad habits of its occupants, who, in the spring, summer, and autumn, abandon the town, and spread themselves over the country . . . After its second foundation by Ibrahim Pacha [sixty-two years previously], it gradually improved, and in Rich's time boasted of about a thousand houses. I believe, at the present time, it scarcely contains half that number of tenable dwellings, and is, moreover, considered unhealthily situated when compared with the more salubrious and less confined region of the adjoining plain. Built on the skirt of a low and barren range, which rises up immediately behind it, it is either entirely shut out from the cooler breezes that sweep the plain, or is visited by constant hot winds which blow from the E, and NE. over the heated ridge during the summer months. 

- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)

The “initial and impassioned outpourings of a Soul struggling to unburden itself, in the solitude of a self-imposed exile”

In the odes He revealed, whilst wrapped in His devotions during those days of utter seclusion, and in the prayers and soliloquies which, in verse and prose, both in Arabic and Persian, poured from His sorrow-laden soul, many of which He was wont to chant aloud to Himself, at dawn and during the watches of the night, He

• lauded the names and attributes of His Creator,
• extolled the glories and mysteries of His own Revelation,
• sang the praises of that Maiden that personified the Spirit of God within Him,
• dwelt on His loneliness and His past and future tribulations,
• expatiated upon the blindness of His generation, the perfidy of His friends and the perversity of His enemies,
• affirmed His determination to arise and, if needs be, offer up His life for the vindication of His Cause,
• stressed those essential pre-requisites which every seeker after Truth must possess, and
• recalled, in anticipation of the lot that was to be His,
• the tragedy of the Imám Husayn in Karbilá,
• the plight of Muhammad in Mecca,
• the sufferings of Jesus at the hands of the Jews,
• the trials of Moses inflicted by Pharaoh and his people and
• the ordeal of Joseph as He languished in a pit by reason of the treachery of His brothers.

These initial and impassioned outpourings of a Soul struggling to unburden itself, in the solitude of a self-imposed exile (many of them, alas lost to posterity) are, with the Tablet of Kullu’t-Ta‘ám and the poem entitled Rashh-i-‘Amá, revealed in Tihrán, the first fruits of His Divine Pen. They are the forerunners of those immortal works—the Kitáb-i-Íqán, the Hidden Words and the Seven Valleys—which in the years preceding His Declaration in Baghdád, were to enrich so vastly the steadily swelling volume of His writings, and which paved the way for a further flowering of His prophetic genius in His epoch-making Proclamation to the world, couched in the form of mighty Epistles to the kings and rulers of mankind, and finally for the last fruition of His Mission in the Laws and Ordinances of His Dispensation formulated during His confinement in the Most Great Prison of ‘Akká. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

The unbelievable sufferings of Bahá’u’lláh

... By the righteousness of God! I have borne what neither the oceans, nor the waves, nor the fruits, nor any created thing, whether of the past or of the future, hath borne or will be capable of bearing. 

- Bahá’u’lláh (From a Tablet; provisional translation by Hand of the Cause Hassan Balyuzi)

Bahá’u’lláh recalls those painful days during His retirement

View of the mountains where Bahá’u’lláh
stayed in Sulaymaniyyih, 1940

At times His dwelling-place was a cave to which He refers in His Tablets addressed to the famous Shaykh ‘Abdu’r-Rahmán and to Maryam, a kinswoman of His. “I roamed the wilderness of resignation” He thus depicts, in the Lawh-i-Maryam, the rigors of His austere solitude, “traveling in such wise that in My exile every eye wept sore over Me, and all created things shed tears of blood because of My anguish. The birds of the air were My companions and the beasts of the field My associates.” “From My eyes,” He, referring in the Kitáb-i-Íqán to those days, testifies, “there rained tears of anguish, and in My bleeding heart surged an ocean of agonizing pain. Many a night I had no food for sustenance, and many a day My body found no rest.… Alone I communed with My spirit, oblivious of the world and all that is therein.” 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

Sojourn in the mountains of Kurdistan 1854-6

Bahá’u’lláh's kashkúl

Attired in the garb of a traveler, coarsely clad, taking with Him nothing but his kashkúl (alms-bowl) and a change of clothes, and assuming the name of Darvísh Muhammad, Bahá’u’lláh retired to the wilderness, and lived for a time on a mountain named Sar-Galú, so far removed from human habitations that only twice a year, at seed sowing and harvest time, it was visited by the peasants of that region. Alone and undisturbed, He passed a considerable part of His retirement on the top of that mountain in a rude structure, made of stone, which served those peasants as a shelter against the extremities of the weather. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By)

The kashkúl which He had with Him in the mountains of Kurdistan is preserved today in the International Baha'i Archives on Mount Carmel. 

- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)

Bahá’u’lláh, accompanied by an attendant, left Baghdád for “Kurdistán, a region whose sturdy and warlike people were known for their age-long hostility to the Persians”

Suddenly, and without informing any one even among the members of His own family, on the 12th of Rajab 1270 A.H. (April 10, 1854), He departed, accompanied by an attendant, a Muhammadan named Abu’l-Qásim-i-Hamadání, to whom He gave a sum of money, instructing him to act as a merchant and use it for his own purposes. Shortly after, that servant was attacked by thieves and killed, and Bahá’u’lláh was left entirely alone in His wanderings through the wastes of Kurdistán, a region whose sturdy and warlike people were known for their age-long hostility to the Persians, whom they regarded as seceders from the Faith of Islám, and from whom they differed in their outlook, race and language. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

Bahá’u’lláh had no intension to go back to Baghdád

…in Our solitude We were unaware of the harm or benefit, the health or ailment, of any soul. Alone, We communed with Our spirit, oblivious of the world and all that is therein… Our withdrawal contemplated no return, and Our separation hoped for no reunion. The one object of Our retirement was to avoid becoming a subject of discord among the faithful, a source of disturbance unto Our companions, the means of injury to any soul, or the cause of sorrow to any heart. Beyond these. We cherished no other intention, and apart from them. We had no end in view. 

- Bahá’u’lláh (‘The Kitab-i-Iqan)

 

Bahá’u’lláh’s family didn’t know where He went

One morning, the household of Bahá’u’lláh awoke to find Him gone. And no one knew where to seek Him. That day was 10 April 1854. It was to Sulaymáníyyih, in the heart and uplands of Kurdish ‘Iráq, that Bahá’u’lláh had turned for seclusion. 

- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)

10 April 1854: Bahá’u’lláh left Baghdád

Seeing that his presence in Baghdád was in danger of splitting the community, Bahá’u’lláh decided to leave the scene of the conflict for the mountains 300 kilometers to the north of Baghdád which are the domains of the Kurdish people. He took with him one attendant, Aqá ‘Abu’l-Qásim Hamadáni, who was not well- known among the Bábís, and left suddenly, informing no-one of where He was going. 

- Moojan Momen (‘Bahá’u’lláh, A Short Biography’)

A prayer by Bahá’u’lláh describing His agonizing conditions

O God, my God! Be Thou not far from me, for tribulation upon tribulation hath gathered about me. O God, my God! Leave me not to myself, for the extreme of adversity hath come upon me. Out of the pure milk, drawn from the breasts of Thy loving-kindness, give me to drink, for my thirst hath utterly consumed me. Beneath the shadow of the wings of Thy mercy shelter me, for all mine adversaries with one consent have fallen upon me. Keep me near to the throne of Thy majesty, face to face with the revelation of the signs of Thy glory, for wretchedness hath grievously touched me. With the fruits of the Tree of Thine Eternity nourish me, for uttermost weakness hath overtaken me. From the cups of joy, proffered by the hands of Thy tender mercies, feed me, for manifold sorrows have laid mighty hold upon me. With the broidered robe of Thine omnipotent sovereignty attire me, for poverty hath altogether despoiled me. Lulled by the cooing of the Dove of Thine Eternity, suffer me to sleep, for woes at their blackest have befallen me. Before the throne of Thy oneness, amid the blaze of the beauty of Thy countenance, cause me to abide, for fear and trembling have violently crushed me. Beneath the ocean of Thy forgiveness, faced with the restlessness of the leviathan of glory, immerse me, for my sins have utterly doomed me. 

- Bahá’u’lláh ('Prayers and Meditations by Bahá’u’lláh')

“For two years or rather less” Bahá’u’lláh “shunned all else but God”

“For two years or rather less,” He, likewise, in another Tablet, declares, “I shunned all else but God, and closed Mine eyes to all except Him, that haply the fire of hatred may die down and the heat of jealousy abate.” 

- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)

Bahá’u’lláh’s “object of…retirement”; “Our separation hoped for no reunion”

Finally, discerning, as He Himself testifies in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, “the signs of impending events,” He decided that before they happened He would retire. “The one object of Our retirement,” He, in that same Book affirms, “was to avoid becoming a subject of discord among the faithful, a source of disturbance unto Our companions, the means of injury to any soul, or the cause of sorrow to any heart.” “Our withdrawal,” He, moreover, in that same passage emphatically asserts, “contemplated no return, and Our separation hoped for no reunion.” 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

Bahá’u'lláh reached the decision to take Himself away from Baghdád

…Bahá’u'lláh reached the decision to take Himself away from Baghdád and from the society of men whom He knew and who knew Him. Such seclusion from the gatherings of men has always occurred in the lives of the Manifestations of God. Moses went out to the desert of Sinai. Buddha sought the wilds of India. Christ walked the wilderness of Judaea, Muhammad paced the sunbaked hillocks of Arabia. 

- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)

Bahá’u’lláh “decided…to retire”: - “these showers of afflictions and unceasing calamities”

In the early days of Our arrival in this land, [Iraq] when We discerned the signs of impending events, We decided, ere they happened, to retire. We betook Ourselves to the wilderness, and there, separated and alone, led for two years a life of complete solitude. From Our eyes there rained tears of anguish, and in Our bleeding heart there surged an ocean of agonizing pain. Many a night We had no food for sustenance, and many a day Our body found no rest. By Him Who hath My being between His hands! notwithstanding these showers of afflictions and unceasing calamities, Our soul was wrapt in blissful joy, and Our whole being evinced an ineffable gladness. 

- Baha’u’llah (‘The Kitab-i-Iqan’)

Bahá’u’lláh’s overwhelming suffering: - Mírzá Áqá Ján’s testimony: “Blessed Beauty evinced such sadness that the limbs of my body trembled”

Mírzá Áqá Ján himself has testified: “That Blessed Beauty evinced such sadness that the limbs of my body trembled.” He has, likewise, related, as reported by Nabil in his narrative, that, shortly before Bahá'u'lláh's retirement, he had on one occasion seen Him, between dawn and sunrise, suddenly come out from His house, His night-cap still on His head, showing such signs of perturbation that he was powerless to gaze into His face, and while walking, angrily remark:

"These creatures are the same creatures who for three thousand years have worshipped idols, and bowed down before the Golden Calf. Now, too, they are fit for nothing better. What relation can there be between this people and Him Who is the Countenance of Glory? What ties can bind them to the One Who is the supreme embodiment of all that is lovable?”

“I stood,' declared Mírzá Áqâ Ján, “rooted to the spot, lifeless, dried up as a dead tree, ready to fall under the impact of the stunning power of His words. Finally, He said:

"Bid them recite: “Is there any Remover of difficulties save God? Say: Praised be God! He is God! All are His servants, and all abide by His bidding!” Tell them to repeat it five hundred times, nay, a thousand times, by day and by night, sleeping and waking, that haply the Countenance of Glory may be unveiled to their eyes, and tiers of light descend upon them." He Himself, I was subsequently informed, recited this same verse, His face betraying the utmost sadness. ...

“Several times during those days, He was heard to remark: ’We have, for a while, tarried amongst this people, and failed to discern the slightest response on their part.’ Oftentimes He alluded to His disappearance from our midst, yet none of us understood His meaning.” 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

Bahá’u’lláh’s overwhelming suffering: - “until the present day, such malice, envy and hate have in no wise appeared, nor will they ever be witnessed in the future”

“In these days,” He, describing in the Kitáb-i-Íqán the virulence of the jealousy which, at that time, was beginning to bare its venomous fangs, has written, “such odors of jealousy are diffused, that … from the beginning of the foundation of the world … until the present day, such malice, envy and hate have in no wise appeared, nor will they ever be witnessed in the future.” 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

Bahá’u’lláh’s overwhelming suffering: - “Noah’s flood is but the measure of the tears I have shed…”

Furthermore, in His Qasídiy-i-Varqá’íyyih, an ode revealed during the days of His retirement to the mountains of Kurdistán, in praise of the Maiden personifying the Spirit of God recently descended upon Him, He thus gives vent to the agonies of His sorrow-laden heart: “Noah’s flood is but the measure of the tears I have shed, and Abraham’s fire an ebullition of My soul. Jacob’s grief is but a reflection of My sorrows, and Job’s afflictions a fraction of my calamity.” “Pour out patience upon Me, O My Lord!”—such is His supplication in one of His prayers, “and render Me victorious over the transgressors.” 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

Bahá’u’lláh’s overwhelming suffering: - “I have borne what no man, be he of the past or of the future, hath borne or will bear.”

And again: “I [Baá’u’lláh] have borne what no man, be he of the past or of the future, hath borne or will bear.” “Oceans of sadness,” He testifies in the Tablet of Qullu’ṭ-Ta‘ám, “have surged over Me, a drop of which no soul could bear to drink. Such is My grief that My soul hath well nigh departed from My body.” “Give ear, O Kamál!” He, in that same Tablet, depicting His plight, exclaims, “to the voice of this lowly, this forsaken ant, that hath hid itself in its hole, and whose desire is to depart from your midst, and vanish from your sight, by reason of that which the hands of men have wrought. God, verily, hath been witness between Me and His servants.” And again: “Woe is Me, woe is Me … All that I have seen from the day on which I first drank the pure milk from the breast of My mother until this moment hath been effaced from My memory, in consequence of that which the hands of the people have committed.” 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

Bahá’u’lláh’s overwhelming suffering: - “We were afflicted with the perfidy of Our friends”

“The wrongs which I suffer,” He [Bahá’u’lláh], in His Lawh-i-Maryam, laments, “have blotted out the wrongs suffered by My First Name (the Báb) from the Tablet of creation.” “O Maryam!” He continues, “From the Land of Ṭá (Tihrán), after countless afflictions, We reached ‘Iráq, at the bidding of the Tyrant of Persia, where, after the fetters of Our foes, We were afflicted with the perfidy of Our friends. God knoweth what befell Me thereafter!” 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

“The cup of Bahá’u’lláh’s sorrows was now running over.”

The cup of Bahá’u’lláh’s sorrows was now running over. All His exhortations, all His efforts to remedy a rapidly deteriorating situation, had remained fruitless. The velocity of His manifold woes was hourly and visibly increasing. Upon the sadness that filled His soul and the gravity of the situation confronting Him, His writings, revealed during that somber period, throw abundant light. In some of His prayers He poignantly confesses that “tribulation upon tribulation” had gathered about Him, that “adversaries with one consent” had fallen upon Him, that “wretchedness” had grievously touched Him, and that “woes at their blackest” had befallen Him. God Himself He calls upon as a Witness to His “sighs and lamentations,” His “powerlessness, poverty and destitution,” to the “injuries” He sustained, and the “abasement” He suffered. “So grievous hath been My weeping,” He, in one of these prayers, avows, “that I have been prevented from making mention of Thee and singing Thy praises.” “So loud hath been the voice of My lamentation,” He, in another passage, avers, “that every mother mourning for her child would be amazed, and would still her weeping and her grief.” 

- Shoghi Effendi ('God Passes By’)

Mirza Yahyá began a secret campaign to discredit Bahá’u’lláh

Mirza Yahyá had never lifted a finger to protect the Faith of which he was supposed to be the nominal head. Now, incited and aided by Siyyid Muhammad and a few, very few, others of the same nature, Mirza Yahyá began a secret campaign to discredit Bahá’u’lláh. He circulated wild rumors, ascribed to Bahá'u'lláh actions, opinions, views and intentions totally at variance with truth. These undercurrents and innuendoes became so perilous for the integrity of the Faith of the Báb, threatening it with bitter controversies and even fatal divisions…"

- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)

“A clandestine opposition” against Bahá’u’llá “could now be clearly discerned”

A clandestine opposition, whose aim was to nullify every effort exerted, and frustrate every design conceived, by Bahá’u’lláh for the rehabilitation of a distracted community, could now be clearly discerned. Insinuations, whose purpose was to sow the seeds of doubt and suspicion and to represent Him as a usurper, as the subverter of the laws instituted by the Báb, and the wrecker of His Cause, were being incessantly circulated. His Epistles, interpretations, invocations and commentaries were being covertly and indirectly criticized, challenged and misrepresented. An attempt to injure His person was even set afoot but failed to materialize. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

Factors that widened “the breach which the infamous and crafty Siyyid Muhammad had sedulously contrived to create”

To these evidences of an ever deepening veneration for Bahá’u’lláh and of a passionate attachment to His person were now being added further grounds for the outbreak of the pent-up jealousies which His mounting prestige evoked in the breasts of His ill-wishers and enemies. The steady extension of the circle of His acquaintances and admirers; His friendly intercourse with officials including the governor of the city; the unfeigned homage offered Him, on so many occasions and so spontaneously, by men who had once been distinguished companions of Siyyid Káẓim; the disillusionment which the persistent concealment of Mírzá Yaḥyá, and the unflattering reports circulated regarding his character and abilities, had engendered; the signs of increasing independence, of innate sagacity and inherent superiority and capacity for leadership unmistakably exhibited by Bahá’u’lláh Himself—all combined to widen the breach which the infamous and crafty Siyyid Muhammad had sedulously contrived to create. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’)

Bahá’u’lláh's fame in Baghdád increases – arousing fresh jealousy in the heart of Mirzá Yahá

The fame of the Tablet of Kullu’t-Ta‘ám aroused fresh jealousy in the heart of Mirzá Yahá, who could not realize his own inability. Siyyid Muhammad-i-Isfaháni, the Antichrist of the Bahá'í Revelation, was pushing Mirzá Yahyá more and more to oppose and thwart Bahá’u’lláh. Friends were gathering around Bahá’u’lláh from every side, not only from the ranks of the Bábís, who were just beginning to hold their heads high once again, but from circles well beyond. The Válí of Baghdád had come to see that this Exile, recently arrived from Irán, was of a different category from the many Persian princes and princelings banished to Iráq or who had fled there. Bahá’u’lláh was well in the public eye. It was He Who had suffered months of inhuman incarceration in the dungeon of Tihrán, whereas Mirzá Yahyá's cowardice had condemned him to feel always insecure, to be always on the run and, not daring to use his own name, to pursue an obscure existence in a dilapidated corner of Baghdád. 

- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)

On one occasion Bahá’u’lláh chanted in the “language used by the denizens of one of the worlds of God” - The Badí’ (Unique) language

Mirza Áqá Jàn further related to Nabil that, one day in Kázimayn, when both he and Aqá Muhammad-Hasan-i-Isfahání [a merchant] were in the presence of Bahá’u’lláh, in the house of Hájí ‘Abdu'l-Majid-i-Shirázi, He asked the host whether he wished to hear the Badí’ (Unique) language, which, He said, was the language used by the denizens of one of the worlds of God. He then proceeded to chant in that language. Mirzá Áqá Ján said that hearing this language had a wonderful effect on the listener. One day, Mirzá Áqá Ján related, Bahá'u'lláh said to Haji ‘Abdu’l-Majid: ‘Haji, you have heard the Badí’ language, and witnessed God's supremacy over His worlds. Render thanks for this bounty and appreciate its worth.’” "

- Hasan Balyuzi (‘Bahá’u’lláh King of Glory’)