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Notwithstanding this, between eminent doctors and illustrious scholars and those learned persons who were followers of the Bab opposition, discussion, and strife did so increase that in some provinces they desired (to resort to) mutual imprecation; and for the governors of the provinces, too, a means of acquiring gain was produced, so that great tumult and disturbance arose. And since the malady of the gout had violently attacked the king's foot and occupied his world-ordering thought, the good judgment of the Chief Minister, the famous Haji Mirza Aqasi, became the pivot of the conduct 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 Babis 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," or repeat with his tongue, "Moses is at war with Moses," or recite, "This is nought but Thy trial." 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 Bab, and a general onslaught took place. More especially when the claim of Mihdi-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 Imams, nay, the chief basis of the foundations of the church of His Highness Ja'far, is the Occultation of the immaculate twelfth Imam (upon both of them be peace). What has happened to Jabulqa? Where has Jabulsa gone? What was the Minor Occultation? What has become of the Major Occultation? What are the sayings of Husayn ibn Ruh, and what the tradition of Ibn Mihriyar? 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 Sufyan be? Where are the signs which are in the traditions of the Holy Family? Where is that whereon the Victorious Church is agreed? The matter is not outside one of two alternatives: either we must repudiate the traditions of the Holy Imams, grow wearied of the Church of Ja'far, and account the clear indications of the Imam as disturbed dreams; or, in accordance with the primary and subsidiary doctrines of the Faith and the essential and explicit declarations of the most luminous Law, we must consider the repudiation, nay, the destruction of this person as our chief duty. If so be that we shut our eyes to these authentic traditions and obvious doctrines universally admitted, no remnant will endure of the fundamental basis of the Church of the immaculate Imam: we shall neither be Sunnites, nor shall we be of the prevalent sect to continue awaiting the promised Saint and believing in the begotten Mihdi. Otherwise we must regard as admissible the opening of the Gate of Saintship, and consider that He Who is to arise of the family of Muhammad possesses two signs: the first condition, Holy Lineage; the second, (that He is divinely) fortified with brilliant verses. What can we do with these thousand-year-old beliefs of the delivered band of Shi'ites, or what shall we say concerning their profound doctors and preeminent divines? Were all these in error? Did they journey in the vale of transgression? What an evidently false assertion is this! By God, this is a thing to break the back! O people, extinguish this fire and forget these words! Alas! woe to our Faith, woe to our Law!"
(15:2)
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