unmoved by the earnest solicitations of her husband and her
brothers; undaunted by the measures which, first in Karbila and
subsequently in Ba_gh_dad, and later in Qazvin, the civil and
ecclesiastical authorities had taken to curtail her activities, with eager
energy she urged the Babi Cause. Through her eloquent pleadings, her
fearless denunciations, her dissertations, poems and translations, her
commentaries and correspondence, she persisted in firing the imagination
and in enlisting the allegiance of Arabs and Persians alike to the new
Revelation, in condemning the perversity of her generation, and in
advocating a revolutionary transformation in the habits and manners of her
people.

She it was who while in Karbila--the foremost stronghold of _Sh_i'ah
Islam--had been moved to address lengthy epistles to each of the 'ulamas
residing in that city, who relegated women to a rank little higher than
animals and denied them even the possession of a soul--epistles in which
she ably vindicated her high purpose and exposed their malignant designs.
She it was who, in open defiance of the customs of the fanatical
inhabitants of that same city, boldly disregarded the anniversary of the
martyrdom of the Imam Husayn, commemorated with elaborate ceremony in the
early days of Muharram, and celebrated instead the anniversary of the
birthday of the Bab, which fell on the first day of that month. It was
through her prodigious eloquence and the astounding force of her argument
that she confounded the representative delegation of _Sh_i'ah, of Sunni,
of Christian and Jewish notables of Ba_gh_dad, who had endeavored to
dissuade her from her avowed purpose of spreading the tidings of the new
Message. She it was who, with consummate skill, defended her faith and
vindicated her conduct in the home and in the presence of that eminent
jurist, _Sh_ay_kh_ Mahmud-i-Alusi, the Mufti of Ba_gh_dad, and who later
held her historic interviews with the princes, the 'ulamas and the
government officials residing in Kirman_sh_ah, in the course of which the
Bab's commentary on the Surih of Kaw_th_ar was publicly read and
translated, and which culminated in the conversion of the Amir (the
governor) and his family. It was this remarkably gifted woman who
undertook the translation of the Bab's lengthy commentary on the Surih of
Joseph (the Qayyumu'l-Asma) for the benefit of her Persian
co-religionists, and exerted her utmost to spread the knowledge and
elucida