A Traveler's Narrative
page 52
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influence this sect that they might perchance alter their course
and conduct. From every quarter lying messages and disquieting
reports continually followed one another in uninterrupted
and constant succession to the effect that the deliberate intention
of the court of Persia was the eradication, suppression,
annihilation, and destruction of this sect; that correspondence
was continually being carried on with the local authorities;
and that all [the Bábís] in `Iráq would shortly be delivered over
with bound hands to Persia. But the Bábís passed the time in
calmness and silence, without in any way altering their behavior
and conduct.
So when Mírzá Buzurg Khán failed to effect and accomplish
the designs of his heart by such actions also, he ill-advisedly
fell to reflecting how he might grieve and humiliate
[the Bábís]. Every day he sought some pretext for offering
insult, aroused some disturbance and tumult, and raised up
the banner of mischief, until the matter came nigh to culminating
in the sudden outbreak of a riot, the lapse of the reins
of control from the hand, and the precipitation of [men's]
hearts into disquietude and perturbation and [their] minds
into anguish and agony.
Now when [the Bábís] found themselves unable to treat this
humor by any means (for, strive as they would, they were
foiled and frustrated), and when they failed to find any remedy
for this disorder or any fairness in this flower, they deliberated
and hesitated for nine months, and at length a certain number
of them, to stop further mischief, enrolled themselves as
subjects of the Sublime Ottoman Government, that [thereby]
they might assuage this tumult. By means of this device the
mischief was allayed, and the consul withdrew his hand from
molesting them; but he notified this occurrence to the Royal
Court in a manner at variance with the facts and contrary to
the truth, and, together with the confederate Shaykhs, applied
himself in every way to devices for distracting the senses [of the
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