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Attired in the garb of a traveler, coarsely clad, taking with Him nothing but his kashkul (alms- bowl) and a change of clothes, and assuming the name of Darvish Muhammad, Baha'u'llah retired to the wilderness, and lived for a time on a mountain named Sar- Galu, 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. At times His dwelling- place was a cave to which He refers in His Tablets addressed to the famous Shaykh Abdu'r- Rahman 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 Kitab- i- Iqan 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."
(120:2)
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