first wavered, and after a visit to the ruins of
the mosque at Kufa, where Ali, his ancestor,
had been murdered, he returned to Shiraz,
determined to wage open war against the national
religion. Many of his fellow-travellers had
been so charmed by his eloquence and
agreeable manners, that they had followed him to
Shiraz, and when he began to explain the
Koran in a totally new fashion, they eagerly
adopted his interpretation. Mirza-Ali-Mohammed
commenced by inveighing against the
vices of the Mullahs, and he showed that their
actions, their habits, and their doctrines were
totally at variance with the commands of the
holy book. He preached daily against them
in the mosques, and daily gathered round him
a larger following of disciples. The Mullahs
attempted to refute his assertions in public
discussions, but they were worsted in
argument, and Mirza's fame was enhanced by his
triumph. Had he been satisfied with the part
of a reformer only, he would have been safe
in the strength of his popularity; but he
chose to found a new religion on the ruins
of the one he condemned, and thus eventually
led his followers into a fatal struggle with the
government.

He announced to his disciples that he was
the Bâb, that is to say, the gate, the mystic
gate, by which alone one could enter into the
true faith, and acquire a knowledge of God;
and from this name his followers have
received their appellation of Bâbys. Soon
afterwards he ventured to assume a still higher
rank, and revealed to his numerous
disciples that he was not only the gate which led
to the knowledge of the Creator, but to a
certain degree the very object of that
knowledge, that is to say, a divine emanation. He
declared that not only was he a prophet, and
the greatest of prophets, but that he was
prophecy itself: the truth, the Spirit of God in a
human form. Thus he returned to the old
idea of emanation, and following the theology
of the Kabbalists, he taught that the creative
power was exercised by seven attributes or
emanations of the Deity. To speak without
figures, the Creator divides himself, so to say,
in order to manifest himself in creation. In
the Book of Precepts, translated by M. de
Gobineau, are to be found these words
attributed to the Creator, which express this idea
still more forcibly, "In truth, O my Creation,
thou art myself!" In the same work may be
read the creed of the new religion: "We have
all begun in God, and we shall all return
into God, and we draw all our joy from God."
According to the Bâb, in the Day of
Judgement, which is not far distant, this terrible
sentence will be heard: "All things shall
perish, except divine nature." But this
universal destruction will not fall upon those
who have known the truth, who have read the
holy books, or who shall implore the divine
mercy at the last moment. Paradise is defined
by the Bâb as "the love of God which has
nothing more to desire, the love of God fully
satisfied." It is easy to see that the doctrines
of the Bâb could not be reconciled with the
traditions and faith of Islam, and the social
morality taught therein was more likely even
than the theology to render the Bâb hostile to
the official religion. He attacked the
fundamental vices of Mohammedan society; he
condemned polygamy and censured the seclusion
and veiling of women, and by abolishing the
laws which forbade the intercourse of true
believers with unbelievers, he introduced a new
element of progress into Persian society. The
rank which the Bâb assumed did not fail to
attract the attention of the authorities. His
pantheistic mysticism led him to promulgate a
particular doctrine with reference to revelation,
and especially with reference to himself as the
expounder of revelation. Thus, although all
men were said to come forth equally from the
bosom of the Deity, yet they did not all
represent him in the same degree, and only a
very few of them received the mission of
disclosing the divine thoughts to mortals: these
are the prophets, whom the Bâb describes as
the living word of God. Each of the
predecessors of the Bâb had prepared the way for
his successor, but in the Bâb himself it was no
longer a mere prophet who had come down
upon earth, but prophecy itself, of which he
was the culminating point, and which he
exercised simultaneously and mysteriously with
eighteen other persons, male and female, who
were imbued with the same spirit. These
nineteen holy persons have but one common
soul, and each on his death transmits to his
successor that part which he possessed of the
common soul, which, when added to the original
soul, fits him for the mysterious labours he is to
perform.

In addition to these innovations, he wished
to effect a total revolution in the daily habits
and customs of his disciples. Having fixed
upon the number nineteen as the sacred number,
and as the mystic bond which united earth to
heaven, he determined that that number should
govern all things capable of enumeration and
division. Thus the year was divided into nineteen
months, the month into nineteen days, the
day into nineteen hours, and the hour into
nineteen minutes; and so also with the division
of weights, of measures, and of coins; the
same number was also to be used in the division,
of the offices for the administration of the new
society when it was thoroughly established.

The exasperated Mullahs now thought they
had found a golden opportunity for revenge;
they cried out loudly against his apostasy, his
sacrilege, and his blasphemy; and they
succeeded in persuading the civil functionaries
that they had discovered the germs of a
dangerous political conspiracy. Both parties
appealed to the government at Teheran to
crush the bold innovator.

Mohammed Shah, who was then ruling over
Persia, was an indolent and invalid prince; the
only course he took was to impose silence on
all the parties; and, to provide against any
disturbance, he ordered the governor of Shiraz
not to allow the Bâb to go beyond the limits