“the first fruits of His [Bahá’u’lláh’s] Divine Pen”: “Tablet of Kullu’ṭ-Ṭa‘ám and the poem entitled Rashh-i-‘Amá, revealed in Tihrán”

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’, chapter 7)

Themes that “poured from His [Bahá’u’lláh’s] sorrow-laden soul” during the time in Kurdistán

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.

(Shoghi Effendi, ‘God Passes By’, chapter 7)

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

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’, chapter 7)

Bahá’u’lláh retired to the wilderness of Kurdistán, attired “in the garb of a traveler, coarsely clad, taking with Him nothing but his kashkúl (alms-bowl) and a change of clothes”

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 Muḥammad, 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’, chapter 7)

April 10, 1854: Bahá’u’lláh suddenly left the city of Baghdad “without informing any one even among the members of His own family”

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’, chapter 7)