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Such was the beginning of the famous episode of Zanjan. Her father-in-law and uncle was also a mullā, and also called Muḥammad; he was conspicuous for his bitter hostility to the Sheykhi and the Bābī sects. Ḳurratu'l 'Ayn herself had a flexible and progressive mind, and shrank from no theological problem, old or new.

The chief figures mainly responsible for, and immediately concerned with, this ghastly tragedy were the envious and hypocritical Amír Arslán Khán, the Majdu’d-Dawlih, a maternal uncle of Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, and his associates, the Sadru’d-Dawliy-i-Iṣfáhání and Muḥammad Khán, the Amír-Tumán, who were assisted, on the one hand, by substantial military reinforcements dispatched by order of the Amír-Nizám, and aided, on the other, by the enthusiastic moral support of the entire ecclesiastical body in Zanján.

When the Bāb returned to his confinement, now really rigorous, at Chihriḳ, he was still under the control of the old, capricious, and now doubly anxious grand vizier, but it was not the will of Providence that this should continue much longer. A release was at hand. It was the insurrection of Zanjan which changed the tone of the courtiers and brought near to the Bāb a glorious departure.

Certainly it was a notable journey, diversified by happy meetings with friends and inquirers at Kashan, Khanliḳ, Zanjan, Milan, and Tabriz. At Kashan the Bāb saw for the first time that fervent disciple, who afterwards wrote the history of early Bābism, and his equally true-hearted brother merchants both of them.

This turmoil, so ravaging, so distressing, had hardly subsided when another conflagration, even more devastating than the two previous upheavals, was kindled in Zanján and its immediate surroundings.

In Ádhirbayján and Zanján, in Nishápúr and Ṭihrán, the adherents of the Faith were either imprisoned, vilified, penalized, tortured or put to death.

For it was during these intensely dramatic, fate-laden years that the full implications of the station of the Báb were disclosed to His disciples, and formally announced by Him in the capital of Ádhirbayján, in the presence of the Heir to the Throne; that the Persian Bayán, the repository of the laws ordained by the Báb, was revealed; that the time and character of the Dispensation ofthe One Whom God will make manifestwere unmistakably determined; that the Conference of Badasht proclaimed the annulment of the old order; and that the great conflagrations of Mázindarán, of Nayríz and of Zanján were kindled.

The pathetic scenes following upon the division of the inhabitants of Zanján into two distinct camps, by the order of its governor—a decision dramatically proclaimed by a crier, and which dissolved ties of worldly interest and affection in favor of a mightier loyalty; the reiterated exhortations addressed by Hujjat to the besieged to refrain from aggression and acts of violence; his affirmation, as he recalled the tragedy of Mázindarán, that their victory consisted solely in sacrificing their all on the altar of the Cause of the Sáhibu’z-Zamán, and his declaration of the unalterable intention of his companions to serve their sovereign loyally and to be the well-wishers of his people; the astounding intrepidity with which these same companions repelled the ferocious onslaught launched by the Sadru’d-Dawlih, who eventually was obliged to confess his abject failure, was reprimanded by the Sháh and was degraded from his rank; the contempt with which the occupants of the Fort met the appeals of the crier seeking on behalf of an exasperated enemy to inveigle them into renouncing their Cause and to beguile them by the generous offers and promises of the sovereign; the resourcefulness and incredible audacity of Zaynab, a village maiden, who, fired with an irrepressible yearning to throw in her lot with the defenders of the Fort, disguised herself in male attire, cut off her locks, girt a sword about her waist, and, raising the cry of Sáhibu’z-Zamán!” rushed headlong in pursuit of the assailants, and who, disdainful of food and sleep, continued, during a period of five months, in the thick of the turmoil, to animate the zeal and to rush to the rescue of her men companions; the stupendous uproar raised by the guards who manned the barricades as they shouted the five invocations prescribed by the Báb, on the very night on which His instructions had been receivedan uproar which precipitated the death of a few persons in the camp of the enemy, caused the dissolute officers to drop instantly their wine-glasses to the ground and to overthrow the gambling-tables, and hurry forth bare-footed, and induced others to run half-dressed into the wilderness, or flee panic-stricken to the homes of the ‘ulamásthese stand out as the high lights of this bloody contest.

Hujjat, another champion of conspicuous audacity, of unsubduable will, of remarkable originality and vehement zeal, was being, swiftly and inevitably, drawn into the fiery furnace whose flames had already enveloped Zanján and its environs.

These, and other similar incidents connected with the epic story of the Zanján upheaval, characterized by Lord Curzon as a “terrific siege and slaughter,” combine to invest it with a sombre glory unsurpassed by any episode of a like nature in the records of the Heroic Age of the Faith of Bahá’u’lláh.