I take this opportunity of reporting that the Persian priest of Shiraz so long detained in confinement at this place, was sent a prisoner to Constantinople in company with the Tartar [BJ] who conveyed the last Bagdad post.[13]
Meanwhile, as early as February, Major Rawlinson came to an erroneous conclusion about the Báb, which subsequent events belied. He wrote to Canning on the 18th:
... the excitement which has been for some time prevalent in this vicinity among the Sheeah sect in connection with the expected manifestation of the Imam Mehdi, is beginning gradually to subside, the impostor who personated the character of the forerunner of the Imam ... having been deterred by a sense of personal danger from a further prosecution of the agitation, which he set on foot at Kerbela in the Autumn on his passage from Persia to Mecca.[14]
He was also in error in stating to Sheil, ten days later, that 'the impostor ... joined as a private individual the Caravan of pilgrims which is travelling to Persia by the route of Damascus and Aleppo'.[15]
In considering this episode of the arrest, imprisonment and banishment of the first Bábí martyr, there are four aspects which deserve special note. First is the fact that while the Bábís in Shíráz were being punished by Ḥusayn Khán, Governor of the province of Fárs,[BK] the Persian Government was trying to rescue Mullá `Alí in Baghdád. Secondly, whereas the Shí`ah divines were demanding a light punishment, the Sunnís were clamouring for the death penalty. A third point, important to students of the Bábí Faith, is that from the earliest stage of its history rumours and misinformation about the Báb abounded. It is also of considerable interest that this episode was reported to Lord Aberdeen, the British Foreign Secretary in London.
As to Mullá `Alí, what precisely happened to him, how and where he died and where he was interred, have all remained mysteries. It has been said that he died in the prison of Karkúk, but no definite proof exists. He was the first of the concourse of martyrs whose numbers were soon to swell into hundreds and thousands.
CHAPTER 5
PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA: THE HOUSE OF KA`BAH
Vaunt not thyself, O thou who leadeth the pilgrims on their way,
That which thou seest is the House, and that which I see is the
Lord of that House.
—Ḥáfiẓ