ate the grave, disinter the corpse, order it to be dragged to the
sound of drums and trumpets through the streets of Zanjan, and be exposed,
for three days and three nights, to unspeakable injuries. These, and other
similar incidents connected with the epic story of the Zanjan 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 Baha'u'llah.

To the tide of calamity which, during the concluding years of the Bab's
ministry, was sweeping with such ominous fury the provinces of Persia,
whether in the East, in the South, or in the West, the heart and center of
the realm itself could not remain impervious. Four months before the Bab's
martyrdom Tihran in its turn was to participate, to a lesser degree and
under less dramatic circumstances, in the carnage that was besmirching the
face of the country. A tragedy was being enacted in that city which was to
prove but a prelude to the orgy of massacre which, after the Bab's
execution, convulsed its inhabitants and sowed consternation as far as the
outlying provinces. It originated in the orders and was perpetrated under
the very eyes of the irate and murderous Amir-Nizam, supported by Mahmud
_Kh_an-i-Kalantar, and aided by a certain Husayn, one of the 'ulamas of
Ka_sh_an. The heroes of that tragedy were the Seven Martyrs of Tihran, who
represented the more important classes among their countrymen, and who
deliberately refused to purchase life by that mere lip-denial which, under
the name of taqiyyih, _Sh_i'ah Islam had for centuries recognized as a
wholly justifiable and indeed commendable subterfuge in the hour of peril.
Neither the repeated and vigorous intercessions of highly placed members
of the professions to which these martyrs belonged, nor the considerable
sums which, in the case of one of them--the noble and serene Haji Mirza
Siyyid 'Ali, the Bab's maternal uncle--affluent merchants of _Sh_iraz and
Tihran were eager to offer as ransom, nor the impassioned pleas of state
officials on behalf of another--the pious and highly esteemed dervish,
Mirza Qurban-'Ali--nor even the personal intervention of the Amir-Nizam,
who endeavored to induce both of these brave men to recant, could succeed
in persuading any of the seven to forego the coveted laurels of martyrdom.
The defiant answers which they flung at their persecutors; the