The Twelve Days of Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n<\/b><\/p>\n
The worldwide Bah\u00e1\u2019\u00ed community joyfully celebrates the twelve-day Festival of Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n in early spring each year. This year, 2026, Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n begins at sunset on April 21<\/span>th<\/span> and ends at sunset on May 2nd<\/span>. Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h has ordained Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n as the \u201cMost Great Festival\u201d and the \u201cKing of Festivals.\u201d During these twelve days in 1863, He declared that He was the Manifestation of God for this day, the \u201cOne Whom God shall make manifest\u201d as foretold by the B\u00e1b.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n This momentous declaration signalized the beginning of the Bah\u00e1\u2019\u00ed 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). Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h called the beautiful Najibiyyih Garden the \u201cGarden of Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n,\u201d which is the word in Arabic for \u201cparadise.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Three Holy Days\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n During the Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n festival, Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h designated three of the twelve days as holy days on which work should be suspended. The first day of Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n commemorates when Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h left the city to stay in the Garden of Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n on the banks of the Tigris River, where He would say farewell to his many friends and followers before his imminent departure.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cRejoice 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.\u201d (Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h, \u201cGleanings from the Writings of Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h,\u201d p. 35)<\/span><\/p>\n On the ninth day of Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n, the rest of His family arrived in the garden. Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h 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 Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h\u2019s tent.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cConsider 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?\u201d (Shoghi Effendi, \u201cGod Passes By,\u201d p. 153)<\/span><\/p>\n On the twelfth day at noontime, Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h 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.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0Significance of the Festival of Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n<\/b><\/p>\n Although Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe 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! \u201c (Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h, \u201cDays of Remembrance,\u201d no. 10, para. 3, p. 40)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Twelve Days of Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n The worldwide Bah\u00e1\u2019\u00ed community joyfully celebrates the twelve-day Festival of Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n in early spring each year. This year, 2026, Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n begins at sunset on April 21th and ends at sunset on May 2nd. Bah\u00e1\u2019u\u2019ll\u00e1h has ordained Ri\u1e0dv\u00e1n as the \u201cMost Great Festival\u201d and the \u201cKing of Festivals.\u201d During these twelve…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[40,34,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commemorations","category-local-bahai-communities","category-national-and-international-connections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southcentralcouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southcentralcouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southcentralcouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southcentralcouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southcentralcouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8852"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/southcentralcouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9535,"href":"https:\/\/southcentralcouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8852\/revisions\/9535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southcentralcouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southcentralcouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southcentralcouncil.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}