Sh_ah, anxiously pondering the
significance of these dire happenings, and apprehensive of their
repercussions on his countrymen, his government and his sovereign, was
feverishly revolving in his mind that fateful decision which was not only
destined to leave its indelible imprint on the fortunes of his country,
but was to be fraught with such incalculable consequences for the
destinies of the whole of mankind. The repressive measures taken against
the followers of the Bab, he was by now fully convinced, had but served to
inflame their zeal, steel their resolution and confirm their loyalty to
their persecuted Faith. The Bab's isolation and captivity had produced the
opposite effect to that which the Amir-Nizam had confidently anticipated.
Gravely perturbed, he bitterly condemned the disastrous leniency of his
predecessor, Haji Mirza Aqasi, which had brought matters to such a pass. A
more drastic and still more exemplary punishment, he felt, must now be
administered to what he regarded as an abomination of heresy which was
polluting the civil and ecclesiastical institutions of the realm. Nothing
short, he believed, of the extinction of the life of Him Who was the
fountain-head of so odious a doctrine and the driving force behind so
dynamic a movement could stem the tide that had wrought such havoc
throughout the land.

The siege of Zanjan was still in progress when he, dispensing with an
explicit order from his sovereign, and acting independently of his
counsellors and fellow-ministers, dispatched his order to Prince Hamzih
Mirza, the Hi_sh_matu'd-Dawlih, the governor of A_dh_irbayjan, instructing
him to execute the Bab. Fearing lest the infliction of such condign
punishment in the capital of the realm would set in motion forces he might
be powerless to control, he ordered that his Captive be taken to Tabriz,
and there be done to death. Confronted with a flat refusal by the
indignant Prince to perform what he regarded as a flagitious crime, the
Amir-Nizam commissioned his own brother, Mirza Hasan _Kh_an, to execute
his orders. The usual formalities designed to secure the necessary
authorization from the leading mujtahids of Tabriz were hastily and easily
completed. Neither Mulla Muhammad-i-Mamaqani, however, who had penned the
Bab's death-warrant on the very day of His examination in Tabriz, nor Haji
Mirza Baqir, nor Mulla Murtada-Quli, to whose houses their Victim was
ignominiously led by the farra_sh_-ba_sh_i, by order o