embodiment of all
that is lovable?" "I stood," declared Mirza Aqa Jan, "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."

Finally, discerning, as He Himself testifies in the Kitab-i-Iqan, "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."

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-Qasim-i-Hamadani, 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 Baha'u'llah was left entirely alone in His
wanderings through the wastes of Kurdistan, 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 Islam, and from whom they
differed in their outlook, race and language.

Attired in the garb of a traveler, coarsely clad, taking with Him nothing
but his ka_sh_kul (alms-bowl) and a change of clothes, and assuming the
name of Darvi_sh_ Muhammad, Baha'u'llah retired to the wilderness, and
lived for a time on a mountain named Sar-Galu, so far