Spread of the Babi Movement
The first eighteen disciples of the Bab (with Himself as nineteenth) became known as "Letters of the Living." These disciples He sent to different parts of Persia and Turkistan to spread the news of His advent. Meantime He Himself set out on a pilgrimage to Mecca, where He arrived in December 1844, and there openly declared His mission. On His return to Búshihr great excitement was caused by the announcement of His Babhood. The fire of His eloquence, the wonder of His rapid and inspired writings, His extraordinary wisdom and knowledge, His courage and zeal as a reformer, aroused the greatest enthusiasm among His followers, but excited a corresponding degree of alarm and enmity among the orthodox Muslims. The Shi'ih doctors vehemently denounced Him, and persuaded the Governor of Fars, namely Husayn Khan, a fanatical and tyrannical ruler, to undertake the suppression of the new heresy. Then commenced for the Bab a long series of imprisonments, deportations, examinations before tribunals, scourgings and indignities, which ended only with His martyrdom in 1850 (16:1)

Claims of the Bab
The hostility aroused by the claim of Babhood was redoubled when the young reformer proceeded to declare that He was Himself the Mihdi (Mahdi) Whose coming Muhammad had foretold. The Shi'ihs identified this Mihdi with the 12th Imam7 who, according to their beliefs, had mysteriously disappeared from the sight of men about a thousand years previously. They believed that he was still alive and would reappear in the same body as before, and they interpreted in a material sense the prophecies regarding his dominion, his glory, his conquests and the "signs" of his advent, just as the Jews in the time of Christ interpreted similar prophecies regarding the Messiah. They expected that he would appear with earthly sovereignty and an innumerable army and declare his revelation, that he would raise dead bodies and restore them to life, and so on. As these signs did not appear, the Shi'ihs rejected the Bab with the same fierce scorn which the Jews displayed towards Jesus. The Babis, on the other hand, interpreted many of the prophecies figuratively. They regarded the sovereignty of the Promised One, like that of the Galilean "Man of Sorrows," as a mystical sovereignty; His glory as spiritual, not earthly glory; His conquests as conquests over the cities of men's hearts; and they found abundant proof of the Bab's claim in His wonderful life and teachings, His unshakable faith, His invincible steadfastness, and His power of raising to newness of spiritual life those who were in the graves of error and ignorance (16:2)

But the Bab did not stop even with the claim of Mihdihood. He adopted the sacred title of "Nuqtiyiúla" or "Primal Point." This was a title applied to Muhammad Himself by His followers. Even the Imams were secondary in importance to the "Point," from Whom they derived their inspiration and authority. In assuming this title, the Bab claimed to rank, like Muhammad, in the series of great Founders of Religion, and for this reason, in the eyes of the Shi'ihs, He was regarded as an impostor, just as Moses and Jesus before Him had been regarded as impostors. He even inaugurated a new calendar, restoring the solar year, and dating the commencement of the New Era from the year of His own Declaration (16:2)

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