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Secret agents, however, charged to watch Ali Khan, informed Haji Mirza Aqasi of the turn events were taking, whereupon he immediately decided to transfer the Bab to the fortress of Chihriq (about April 10, 1848), surnamed by Him the Jabal- i- Shadid (the Grievous Mountain). There He was consigned to the keeping of Yahya Khan, a brother- in- law of Muhammad Shah. Though at the outset he acted with the utmost severity, he was eventually compelled to yield to the fascination of his Prisoner. Nor were the kurds, who lived in the village of Chihriq, and whose hatred of the Shi'ahs exceeded even that of the inhabitants of Mah- Ku, able to resist the pervasive power of the Prisoner's influence. They too were to be seen every morning, ere they started for their daily work, to approach the fortress and prostrate themselves in adoration before its holy Inmate. "So great was the confluence of the people," is the testimony of a European eye- witness, writing in his memoirs of the Bab, "that the courtyard, not being large enough to contain His hearers, the majority remained in the street and listened with rapt attention to the verses of the new Qur'an."
(19:2)
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