I. THE BAB AND BABISM. By J. D. Rees, Nineteenth Century,
II. DEATH IN THE ALPS,

451

Blackwood's Magazine, .
Macmillan's Magazine, .

458

468

V. THE DEVELOPMENT OF LORD SALIS-
BURY. By T. H. S. Escott,

VI. THE FIRST NEST OF A ROOKERY. By
Phil Robinson,

VII. VERLAINE. By Augustus Manston,
VIII. IN THe Hour of Death,

Nineteenth Century,

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From The Nineteenth Century.
THE BAB AND BABISM.1

In 1845, in the city of Shiraz, the seat
of learning, as the Persians say-of
rose-gardens and of nightingales, as I
would call it a young Persian began
to preach. He had made the pilgrim-
age to Mecca, and came back full of
ideas of his own-mystic and enthusi-
astic ideas, which evade definition and
perplex the downright Anglo-Saxon
understanding. However, he made it
quite clear that, in his opinion, the peo-
ple in general, and the priests in partic-
ular, had departed widely from the
cardinal doctrines of Muhammadan-
ism, and that the priests, in their lives,
were far from practising what they did
more or less erroneously preach. Now
my readers will say that this is very
vague; but I will make bold to say
that Bab was at first as vague as my-
self, but his mystic hints and unin-
telligible suggestions were taken for
the significant, if not for the magnifi-
cent. Let any one who has studied
Eastern writings on religion deny, if
he can, that to get anything definite
out of them is as difficult as the pro-
verbial extraction of a needle from a
bundle of hay. However, the young
man called himself the Gate of Heaven
-the "Bab;" and it is said that he pos-
sessed a handsome appearance, en-
gaging manners, and an eloquent
tongue-powerful agents at all times
for the accomplishment of any ends.
A little later, and the Gate of Heaven
represented himself as an emanation
from the Divinity itself, and then as-
sumed the title of "Highness," by
which, also, Jesus, the son of Mary, or
Miriam, is habitually known amongst
Muhammadans. Next be gathered
about him eighteen apostles, not that
he might have half as many again as
had his Highness Jesus, but because
a peculiar sanctity, in his opinion, at-
tached to the number nineteen. He,
the prophet of God, the latest revela-
tion, was the central point, round
[which revolved eighteen satellites, and,

1 This article was written before the assassination of the late shah of Persia.-ED. Nineteenth Century.

like the French Revolutionists, he would have renumbered and renamed everything, only with him everything would have had reference to the whole, or to the component parts of the mystic number.

Among his disciples were several persons of courage, eloquence, and resolution, probably superior to his own. Among them was the warrior-priest Hussein, who at once saw that a nation which awaited the coming of the Mahdi the hidden one, t'e twelfth imamwould be more likely to believe in the new religion if its prophet were represented as the Mahdi himself. He thus traded on the ignorance of his public, for this pretension was never asserted by Bab. It is impossible, however, as we have reason to know, to keep the Mahdi out of Muhammadan politics, and this confusion of ideas was almost inevitable.

We have to thank Hussein for giving clear expression to two of the chief aims set before the Babees-viz., the abolition of polygamy, and of the doctrine of pollution. It may here be remarked that, of the many unfair criticisms directed against Islam, there is none it deserves so little as that of encouraging polygamy. When the prophet restricted the number of wives to four, he made an immense advance in morality on the state of things existing in his time amongst the Arabs, where practically every woman in a man's household was in some respects in the position of a wife. If he could have gone further, there is little doubt from his teachings that he would have, and, as a matter of fact, his followers are for the most part husbands of one wife, notwithstanding the indulgence allowed by law. It may safely be affirmed that the English are in one sense, and in a manner that is more demoralizing and degrading than the authorized polygamy of Islam, at least as polygamous as the Muhammadans themselves. It has been reserved for a canon of the Church of England to stigmatize a great moral reformer as "an ignorant and immoral Bedouin," and "a lecherous Arab," to whom Ma

homet bore, in fact, no greater resemblance than an agricultural scarecrow does to an impaled Bulgarian.

At the town of Kazveen, on the southern side of the Elburz, and not far from the ruins of the castle of the chief of the Assassins, dwelt, at the time of which I write (1845), the beautiful daughter of a Mussulman doctor of the law. Her name was Zareen Taj, or Golden Crown. Her virtues were equal to her beauty; she was eloquent and well instructed-an ideal heroine. We have to thank her for the enunciation of another of the tenets of the Babees -the abolition of the veil. She showed her beautiful face without any reserve, perhaps the more readily because it was beautiful, embraced the cause of Bab with heart and soul, and, so say the historians, had no share whatever in the murder of her father-in-law-a priest, who naturally was scandalized beyond all measure by her behavior, and strove, with her other relations, to reclaim her from perdition.

Now these times were pregnant with other great events; and just as the Babees were beginning to feel their strength, the king died, and his Majesty, Nasir-ed-Din ascended the throne of Persia. This was the opportunity for the warrior Hussein, who gathered about him the converts he had made in Khorassan, and accompanied by Golden Crown, the Hypatia of this new religion, entrenched himself in an inaccessible spot in Mazendaran. Here Hypatia and Hussein preached the Church Militant, whose kingdom should be of this world as well as of the next. Like the Empress Theodora, when the heart of her husband sank within him. and his advisers counselled flight, she was ever present to instil courage into the doubting, and to promise those who fought, and those who lost their lives in battle, a golden crown in heaven. Like Theodora, she would not stop to consider if it became a woman to play the man against men. She urged that those were times when women should abjure seclusion, tear off their veils, not wait for what the men might do. but act themselves. Her eloquence and

beauty kindled incredible enthusiasm amongst the Babees in Mazendaran, a Caspian province of the Persian realm, whose thick forests and green foliage form so striking a contrast with the barren rocks and interminable deserts on the other side of the Elburz, beyond the talismanic peak of Demavend. The plan of the campaign was the conquest of Mazendaran, a march to Ré, the ancient Rhages of the Apocalypse, around the venerable tower of which ruined city a great victory was to be gained over the forces of the shah from the neighboring capital. The new prime minister sent one of the royal princes with a large army against the Babee chief, who, however, defeated prince and army. The second attack, though successfully repulsed, proved fatal to the brave Hussein, who died, declaring, with glorious mendacity, that he would reappear in forty days and carry his work to its completion. The prime minister continued for four months to besiege the mountain stronghold of the Babees, who, pushed to the last extremities, made flour from the ground bones of the dead, ate the boiled leather of their sword-belts, dug up and devoured buried carrion, and suffered all the horrors of a protracted siege. At last, the few survivors capit· ulated, their lives being guaranteed them, but all were slain in cold blood next day, including women and chil dren. All refused to recant.

Contrary to the hopes of the king and his minister, this success did not stifle the insurrection. Another of the disciples, the priest Mahomed, successfully defied the royal troops in Zendjan. Mortally wounded in one of the last engagements, he, like Hussein, exhorted his followers to hold out for forty days. at the expiry of which time he would return to lead them on to victory; but soon afterwards they were overcome by the king's general, who opened the tomb of his deceased enemy and found him peacefully lying in his coffin with his sword by his side. They dishonored his corpse and cast it to the dogs. Three of his chief lieutenants were taken to Teheran and condemned to

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death by having their veins opened. | in a guard-house close by, where one They died prophesying that their persecutor the prime minister would die the same death, as in fact he did not long after in the peaceful country palace of Fin by Kashan, where nothing recalls the tragic end of a powerful and erewhile successful minister.