of affairs, and his incapacity and lack of resource became apparent as the sun. For every hour he formed a new opinion and gave a new order: at one moment he would seek to support the decision of the doctors, accounting the eradication and suppression of the Bábís as necessary: at another time he would charge the doctors with aggressiveness, regarding undue interference as contrary to justice: at another time he would become a mystic and say, “All these voices are from the King,”1 or repeat with his tongue, “Moses is at war with Moses,”2 or recite, “This is nought but Thy trial.”3 In short this changeable minister, by reason of his mismanagement of important matters and failure to control and order the affairs of the community, so acted that disturbance and clamor arose from all quarters and directions: the most notable and influential of the doctors ordered the common folk to molest the followers of the Báb, and a general onslaught took place. More especially when the claim of Mihdí-hood reached the hearing of eminent divines and profound doctors they began to make lamentation and to cry and complain from their pulpits, saying, “One of the essentials of religion and of the authentic traditions transmitted from the holy Imáms, nay, the chief basis of the foundations of the church of His Highness Ja’far, is the Occultation of the immaculate twelfth Imám (upon both of them be peace). What has happened to Jábulqá? Where has Jábulsá gone? What was the Minor Occultation? What has become of the Major Occultation? What are the sayings of Ḥusayn ibn Rúh, and what the tradition of Ibn Mihríyár? What shall we make of the flight of the Guardians and the Helpers? How shall we deal with the conquest of the East and the West? Where is the Ass of Antichrist? When will the appearance of the Súfyán be? Where are the signs which are in