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SPREAD OF BABISM. 351 fused, they requested, not unreasonably, that he would furnish them with a written statement of that which they were required to believe. The Bab made no objection to this request ; but when the statement came to be read it was found to be written in some other language than the Arabic or Persian. Upon this the assembled priests declared that the fanatic was mad, and in conformity with this opinion, they decreed that, instead of the sentence of death which the Bab deserved to have passed upon him for having declared that he was God, he should receive the punishment of the bastinado, and be confined for life. The execution of the first part of this sentence is said to have had the effect of causing the Bab to acknowledge that he had been guilty of egregious folly; but it produced little or no effect on the spread of his fame and of his doctrine. Many of the principal priests of Persia became secret converts to Babism, and, while the Bab languished in prison at Sheeraz, and afterwards at Ispahan and at Chereck in Azerbaeejan, his naib, who had contrived to escape, was successfully engaged in preaching his religion at Yezd. So numerous in a short time were the followers of the Bab that a decree was issued by the chief religious authorities in Persia, making it a capital crime for any one to profess the tenets of the false prophet of Sheeraz. Some of the followers of the Bab, full of new-born zeal, thought that they were doing a service acceptable to the Almighty by assassinating some of the chief priests who had issued decrees condemnatory of Babism ; and, on the other hand, the priesthood authorized a persecution of the followers of the Bab. In this way the feelings and interests of a large body of