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288 A HISTORY OF PERSIA. act which was quickly followed by the arrest of his sons. No tumult succeeded this step, but, on the contrary, it produced universal satisfaction. The king himself attended to the administration of justice and the chief direction of public affairs. In the course of the few days which immediately followed the disgrace of the Kaim- Makam, numerous accusations were, as might have been expected, advanced against the fallen man, and the Shah could not fail to be convinced of the corruptness of his former minister, and the deficiencies of his administra- tion. The result was that orders were given that the ex-minister should be strangled in his prison a sentence which was carried into execution on the night of the 26th of June, 1835. But the Shah now found that it was not so easy to construct a government as it had been to break one down. At this time the plague and the cholera were raging in the capital, and amongst those who fell victims to one or other pestilence were many of the members of the court. The Asef-ed-Dowleh, the maternal uncle of the king, had been appointed to the government of Khorassan ; but he was anxious to recover his old post of prime minister, and, on hear- ing of the fall of the Kaim-Makam, he came without permission, and in the greatest haste, from Meshed to Tehran. The choice of the king, however, fell upon Haji Meerza Aghassi, a native of Erivan, who had in the course of his early travels in Arabia acquired so much knowledge that on his return to Tabreez he had been appointed tutor to two of the sons of Abbass Meerza. Amongst other accomplishments he boasted of possessing the art of predicting future events, and