the enemy's designs were no less than the sovereigns of the Qajar dynasty,
first, the bigoted, the sickly, the vacillating Muhammad _Sh_ah, who at
the last moment cancelled the Bab's imminent visit to the capital, and,
second, the youthful and inexperienced Nasiri'd-Din _Sh_ah, who gave his
ready assent to the sentence of his Captive's death. The arch villains who
joined hands with the prime movers of so wicked a conspiracy were the two
grand vizirs, Haji Mirza Aqasi, the idolized tutor of Muhammad _Sh_ah, a
vulgar, false-hearted and fickle-minded schemer, and the arbitrary,
bloodthirsty, reckless Amir-Nizam, Mirza Taqi _Kh_an, the first of whom
exiled the Bab to the mountain fastnesses of A_dh_irbayjan, and the latter
decreed His death in Tabriz. Their accomplice in these and other heinous
crimes was a government bolstered up by a flock of idle, parasitical
princelings and governors, corrupt, incompetent, tenaciously holding to
their ill-gotten privileges, and utterly subservient to a notoriously
degraded clerical order. The heroes whose deeds shine upon the record of
this fierce spiritual contest, involving at once people, clergy, monarch
and government, were the Bab's chosen disciples, the Letters of the
Living, and their companions, the trail-breakers of the New Day, who to so
much intrigue, ignorance, depravity, cruelty, superstition and cowardice
opposed a spirit exalted, unquenchable and awe-inspiring, a knowledge
surprisingly profound, an eloquence sweeping in its force, a piety
unexcelled in fervor, a courage leonine in its fierceness, a
self-abnegation saintly in its purity, a resolve granite-like in its
firmness, a vision stupendous in its range, a veneration for the Prophet
and His Imams disconcerting to their adversaries, a power of persuasion
alarming to their antagonists, a standard of faith and a code of conduct
that challenged and revolutionized the lives of their countrymen.

The opening scene of the initial act of this great drama was laid in the
upper chamber of the modest residence of the son of a mercer of _Sh_iraz,
in an obscure corner of that city. The time was the hour before sunset, on
the 22nd day of May, 1844. The participants were the Bab, a twenty-five
year old siyyid, of pure and holy lineage, and the young Mulla Husayn, the
first to believe in Him. Their meeting immediately before that interview
seemed to be purely fortuitous. The interview itself was protracted till
the hour of dawn. The