Ayyam-i-Ha: Days Outside of Time
Matthew Weinberg (mweinberg@energy.ota.gov)
Sun, Feb 19 1995 17:36:30 GMT
Ayyam-i-Ha: Days Outside of Time
By Karla Jamir (posted with permission)
The Ayyam-i-Ha holiday begins each year on the evening of February 25
and ends at sunset on March 1st. Of this period Baha'u'llah writes: "It
behoveth the people of Baha, throughout these days, to provide good
cheer for themselves, their kindred and, beyond them, the poor and
needy, and with joy and exultation to hail and glorify their Lord, to
sing His praise and magnify His Name."
A closer look at the history and background of Ayyam-i-Ha can help us to
value it even more for its unique spirit, resist any temptation to turn
it into a "Christmas equivalent," and discover some of its beautiful and
mystical symbolic meanings.
The Baha'i calendar of 19 months of 19 days needs 4 days (5 in leap
years) to equal a solar year. By definition such added days are
"intercalary" days. In revealing this "Badi" calendar, the Bab did not
say exactly where to place the extra days. Some of the early Babis
included them as part of the Fast, others stopped fasting 4 or 5 days
before Naw-Ruz (the new calendar year). Baha'u'llah named these days in
the Kitab-i-Aqdas and specified their place in the year:
"Let the days in excess of the months be placed before the month of
fasting. We have ordained that these, amid all nights and days, shall
be the manifestations of the letter Ha, and thus they have not been
bounded by the limits of the year and its months...and when they
end--these days of giving that precede the season of restraint--let them
enter upon the Fast. Thus hath it been ordained by Him Who is the Lord
of all mankind."
As in His prayer for Ayyam-i-Ha, Baha'u'llah juxtaposes these "days of
giving" with the Fast's "season of restraint." Ayyam-i-Ha is intended
partly as spiritual preparation for the Fast, a reminder of its
approach, and a way of fostering the detachment from material things so
necessary for the Fast.
Ayyam-i-Ha means the "Days of Ha." "Ha" is the Arabic letter
corresponding to the English "H", and one of the three Arabic letters
which make up the word "Baha." Both Baha'u'llah and the Bab followed
the Arabic tradition of assigning numerical values to letters, and of
giving spiritual meanings to both. The numerical value of "Ha" is 5,
the sum of the numerical values of the letters in the "Bab," and the
maximum number of intercalary days.
"Ha" is also the first letter of an Arabic pronoun commonly used in
Arabic religious writings to refer to God, or "the Divine Essence."
"Ha" by itself is used as a symbol of "the Essence of God," and was the
subject of many an Arabic essay on its mysteries. In Baha'u'llah's
Tablet of All Food the realm "beyond which there is no passing," or the
realm of the Divine Essence is designated as "Hahut." In the Bab's
interpretation of the letter "Ha" (quoted by Baha'u'llah in the
Kitab-i-Iqan), the Bab speaks of martyrdom in the path of God and warns
"even if all the kings of the earth were to be leagued together they
would be powerless to take from me a single letter..."
Baha'u'llah has designated the intercalary days "amid all the nights and
days" as "manifestations of the letter Ha"--that is, as Days of the
Divine Essence. These extra days stand apart from the ordinary cycle of
weeks and months and the human measure of time. They are not "bounded
by the limits of the year and its months"--just as the infinite reality
of the divine Essence of God is unbounded and cannot be captured or
comprehended within the cycle of time or any other human measurement.
Thus Ayyam-i-Ha can be thought of as days outside of time, days that
symbolize eternity, infinity, and the mystery and unknowable Essence of
God Himself. Contemplation during these days of the timeless mystery of
the Essence of God provides us the "joy and exultation" with which to
"sing His praise and magnify His Name."