Bahá’u’lláh’s return from Sulaymáníyyih to Baghdád established “a firm anchorage …such as the Faith had never known in its history”

The return of Bahá’u’lláh from Sulaymáníyyih to Baghdád marks a turning point of the utmost significance in the history of the first Bahá’í century. The tide of the fortunes of the Faith, having reached its lowest ebb, was now beginning to surge back, and was destined to roll on, steadily and mightily, to a new high water-mark, associated this time with the Declaration of His Mission, on the eve of His banishment to Constantinople. With His return to Baghdád a firm anchorage was now being established, an anchorage such as the Faith had never known in its history. Never before, except during the first three years of its life, could that Faith claim to have possessed a fixed and accessible center to which its adherents could turn for guidance, and from which they could derive continuous and unobstructed inspiration. No less than half of the Báb’s short-lived ministry was spent on the remotest border of His native country, where He was concealed and virtually cut off from the vast majority of His disciples. The period immediately after His martyrdom was marked by a confusion that was even more deplorable than the isolation caused by His enforced captivity. Nor when the Revelation which He had foretold made its appearance was it succeeded by an immediate declaration that could enable the members of a distracted community to rally round the person of their expected Deliverer. The prolonged self-concealment of Mírzá Yaḥyá, the center provisionally appointed pending the manifestation of the Promised One; the nine months’ absence of Bahá’u’lláh from His native land, while on a visit to Karbilá, followed swiftly by His imprisonment in the Síyáh-Chál, by His banishment to ‘Iráq, and afterwards by His retirement to Kurdistán—all combined to prolong the phase of instability and suspense through which the Bábí community had to pass. 

- Shoghi Effendi (‘God Passes By’, chapter 8)

Bahá’u’lláh terminated the period of His retirement and returned to Baghdad on March 19, 1856

Deciding to terminate the period of His retirement Bahá’u’lláh bade farewell to the shaykhs of Sulaymáníyyih, who now numbered among His most ardent and, as their future conduct demonstrated, staunchest admirers. Accompanied by Shaykh Sulṭán, He retraced His steps to Baghdád, on “the banks of the River of Tribulations,” as He Himself termed it, proceeding by slow stages, realizing, as He declared to His fellow-traveler, that these last days of His retirement would be “the only days of peace and tranquillity” left to Him, “days which will never again fall to My lot.”

On the 12th of Rajab 1272 A.H. (March 19, 1856) He arrived in Baghdád, exactly two lunar years after His departure for Kurdistán. 

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

The “pleadings of His own kindred and friends, particularly His twelve-year old Son, ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá”

No less urgent were the pleadings of His own kindred and friends, particularly His twelve-year old Son, ‘Abdu’l‑Bahá, Whose grief and loneliness had so consumed His soul that, in a conversation recorded by Nabíl in his narrative, He had avowed that subsequent to the departure of Bahá’u’lláh He had in His boyhood grown old. 

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

Mírzá Yahyá “had…insistently and in writing, besought” Bahá’u’lláh to return

Mírzá Yahyá, realizing full well to what a pass his unrestrained leadership of the Faith had brought him, had, moreover, insistently and in writing, besought Him to return. 

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

Bahá’u’lláh explains to one of the believers what prompted Him to return to Baghdad from Kurdistan

The tragic situation that had developed in the course of His two years’ absence now imperatively demanded His return. “From the Mystic Source,” He Himself explains in the Kitáb-i-Íqán, “there came the summons bidding Us return whence We came. Surrendering Our will to His, We submitted to His injunction.” “By God besides Whom there is none other God!” is His emphatic assertion to Shaykh Sultán, as reported by Nabíl in his narrative, “But for My recognition of the fact that the blessed Cause of the Primal Point was on the verge of being completely obliterated, and all the sacred blood poured out in the path of God would have been shed in vain, I would in no wise have consented to return to the people of the Bayán, and would have abandoned them to the worship of the idols their imaginations had fashioned.” 

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

1856: Bahá’u’lláh “refused for some time to leave His house”

Such was the sadness that overwhelmed Him on His arrival that He refused for some time to leave His house, except for His visits to Káẓimayn and for His occasional meeting with a few of His friends who resided in that town and in Baghdád. 

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