The Twelve Days of Riḍván

The worldwide Bahá’í community joyfully celebrates the twelve-day Festival of Riḍván in early spring each year. This year, 2023, Riḍván begins at sunset on April 20th and ends at sunset on May 2nd. Bahá’u’lláh has ordained Riḍván as the “Most Great Festival” and the “King of Festivals.” During these twelve days in 1863, He declared that He was the Manifestation of God for this day, the “One Whom God shall make manifest” as foretold by the Báb.  

This momentous declaration signalized the beginning of the Bahá’í Faith, and thereby sent spiritual reverberations across the universe from the city of Baghdad. He spent the last twelve days of his sojourn in Iraq in that garden, because the Turkish authorities had decreed that He would be further exiled to Constantinople (now called Istanbul). Bahá’u’lláh called the beautiful Najibiyyih Garden the “Garden of Riḍván,” which is the word in Arabic for “paradise.” 

Three Holy Days            

During the Riḍván festival, Bahá’u’lláh designated three of the twelve days as holy days on which work should be suspended. The first day of Riḍván commemorates when Bahá’u’lláh left the city to stay in the Garden of Riḍván on the banks of the Tigris River, where He would say farewell to his many friends and followers before his imminent departure.  

“Rejoice with exceeding gladness, O people of Baha, as ye call to remembrance the Day of supreme felicity, the Day whereon the Tongue of the Ancient of Days hath spoken, as He departed from His House, proceeding to the Spot from which He shed upon the whole of creation the splendors of His name, the All-Merciful.” (Bahá’u’lláh, “Gleanings from the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh,” p. 35)

On the ninth day of Riḍván, the rest of His family arrived in the garden. Bahá’u’lláh received countless visitors seeking His presence to bid him farewell. Every day the gardeners cut roses as gifts for the visitors, and piled them in a heap in Bahá’u’lláh’s tent. 

“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?” (Shoghi Effendi, “God Passes By,” p. 153)

On the twelfth day at noontime, Bahá’u’lláh mounted his red roan stallion with dignity and majesty, as He departed from Baghdad with His family and a small band of His followers. His journey to His next place of exile in the city of Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, would take four arduous months.

 Significance of the Festival of Riḍván

Although Bahá’u’lláh’s departure from Iraq for further exile appears as sorrowful, yet it was a momentous and joyful moment of spiritual significance, because He openly declared for the first time that He was the Promised One of all ages.

“The promised Day of God is come! He Who is the Manifestation of the Adored One hath been established upon the throne of His name, the All-Loving, and the sun of His bounty hath cast its rays upon the seeing and seen alike. Wherefore renounce ye, O denizens of the realms of limitation, that which ye possess, adorn your temples with His glorious vesture, and behold with untainted vision Him Who is the luminous Beauty of God seated upon the throne of glory in His transcendent, His almighty and all-subduing sovereignty. All praise be to the Best Beloved, Who hath revealed His hidden beauty with such manifest authority! “ (Bahá’u’lláh, “Days of Remembrance,” no. 10, para. 3, p. 40)