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With the Bab's return to Shiraz the initial collision of irreconcilable forces may be said to have commenced. Already the energetic and audacious Mulla Aliy- i- Bastami, one of the Letters of the Living, "the first to leave the House of God (Shiraz) and the first to suffer for His sake," who, in the presence of one of the leading exponents of Shi'ah Islam, the far- famed Shaykh Muhammad Hasan, had audaciously asserted that from the pen of his new- found Master within the space of forty- eight hours, verses had streamed that equalled in number those of the Qur'an, which it took its Author twenty- three years to reveal, had been excommunicated, chained, disgraced, imprisoned, and, in all probability, done to death. Mulla Sadiq- i- Khurasani, impelled by the injunction of the Bab in the Khasa'il- i- Sab'ih to alter the sacrosanct formula of the adhan, sounded it in its amended form before a scandalized congregation in Shiraz, and was instantly arrested, reviled, stripped of his garments, and scourged with a thousand lashes. The villainous Husayn Khan, the Nizamu'd- Dawlih, the governor of Fars, who had read the challenge thrown out in the Qayyumu'l- Asma', having ordered that Mulla Sadiq together with Quddus and another believer be summarily and publicly punished, caused their beards to be burned, their noses pierced, and threaded with halters; then, having been led through the streets in this disgraceful condition, they were expelled from the city.
(10:2)
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