Sayyid Yahya of Niriz. Both revolts were in progress when the Bab,
with one of his devoted disciples, was brought from his prison at Chihriq
to Tabriz and publicly shot in front of the _arg_ or citadel. The body,
after being exposed for some days, was recovered by the Babis and conveyed
to a shrine near Tehran, whence it was ultimately removed to Acre in Syria,
where it is now buried. For the next two years comparatively little was
heard of the Babis, but on the 15th of August 1852 three of them, acting on
their own initiative, attempted to assassinate Nasiru'd-Din Shah as he was
returning from the chase to his palace at Niyavaran. The attempt failed,
but was the cause of a fresh persecution, and on the 31st of August 1852
some thirty Babis, including the beautiful and talented poetess
Qurratu'l-'Ayn, were put to death in Tehran with atrocious cruelty. Another
of the victims of that day was Hajji Mirza Jani of Kashan, the author of
the oldest history of the movement from the Babi point of view. Only one
complete MS. of his invaluable work (obtained by Count Gobineau in Persia)
exists in any public library, the Bibliotheque Nationale at Paris. The
so-called "New History" (of which an English translation was published at
Cambridge in 1893 by E. G. Browne) is based on Mirza Jani's work, but many
important passages which did not accord with later Babi doctrine or policy
have been suppressed or modified, while some additions have been made. The
Bab was succeeded on his death by Mirza Yahya of Nur (at that time only
about twenty years of age), who escaped to Bagdad, and, under the title of
_Subh-i-Ezel_ ("the Morning of Eternity"), became the pontiff of the sect.
He lived, however, in great seclusion, leaving the direction of affairs
almost entirely in the hands of his elder half-brother (born 12th November
1817), Mirza Husayn 'Ali, entitled _Baha' u'llah_ ("the Splendour of God"),
who thus gradually became the most conspicuous and most influential member
of the sect, though in the _Iqan_, one of the most important polemical
works of the Babis, composed in 1858-1859, he still implicitly recognized
the supremacy of _Subh-i-Ezel_. In 1863, however, Baha declared himself to
be "He whom God shall manifest" (_Man Yuz-hiruhu'llah_, with prophecies of
whose advent the works of the Bab are filled), and called on all the Babis
to recognize his claim. The majority responded, but _Subh-i-Ezel_ and some
of his faithful adherents refused. Af