'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎500] (559/714)

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PERSIA
of (jiving an excuse for the superstitious rancour of superiors.
Quite recently the Babis have had great success in the camp of
another enemy, having secured many proselytes among the Jewish
populations of the Persian towns. I hear that during the past
year thev are reported to have made 150 Jewish converts in
Teheran, 100 in Hamadan, 50 in Kashan, and 75 per cent, of the
Jews at Gulpaigan.
For a long time after the terrible events of 1850-52, Babism
dared not lift its head in Persia, and the zeal of even a triumphant
priesthood found no victims. 1 Latterly, as the wide-
r< rsedition g p rea( j i n fl uenC e of the heresy has become more manifest,
there have been spasmodic outbreaks of fury on the part of the
sacerdotal hierarchy employing the civil governors as their tools,
and occasional acts of barbarity that recall an earlier time. In
1878 occurred the brutal and unprovoked murder of two eminent
merchants of Isfahan, at the instance of the Ulema, or priestly
Council of that city. 2 The two victims, whose names were Haji
Mirza Hasan and Haji Mirza Husein, have been renamed by
the Babis, Sultan-es-Shahada, or King of Martyrs, and Mahbub-
es-Shahada, or Beloved of Martyrs; and their naked graves in
the cemetery have become places of pilgrimage where many a
tear is shed over the fate of the ' Martyrs of Isfahan." In 1888 a
respectable elderly man, named Mirza Agha Ashraf of Abadeh,
was put to death in Isfahan by the Zil-es-Sultan, and his body
mutilated and burnt, because, being suspected of Babism, he
declined publicly to curse the Bab. Just before my visit to
Persia in 1889, a Babi persecution had broken out at Nejefabad
and Sehdeh, two towns or groups of villages in the neighbour
hood of Isfahan, where the Babis have always been very strong.
Large numbers of the unhappy sectaries were expelled from
their homes by the mujtaheds, and came wandering to Isfahan,
seeking redress, and taking sanctuary in the stable of the Zil.
Some fled to Teheran, but were sent back by the Shah. As for
the Zil, in his weakened position, he was so powerless in the hands
of the mullahs, that small mercy could be expected from him. At
1 The messenger, however, who bore a letter from Beha to the Shah in 1869
one of a series addressed by the prophet to the crowned heads of Europe and
Asia—recei% ed the penalty of his rash presumption by being branded to death
with red-hot bricks.
2 Vide E. Stack, Six Months in Persia, vol. ii. p. 29; and C.J. Wills, In the
Land, etc pp. 154-156.