1. MacEoin, Denis, “The Babi Concept of Holy War,” Religion 12 (1982): 93–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. For the Babi movement in general, see Amanat, Abbas, Resurrection and Renewal: The Making of the Babi Movement in Iran, 1844-1850 (Ithaca and London, 1989).Google Scholar With respect to the Mazandaran conflict, a good number of primary sources are available. The Babi-Baha^˒i sources include three eyewitness accounts, two narratives, as well as sections on the episode found in general histories of the Babi and Baha^˒i religions. Of the eyewitness accounts, Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza-yi Shirazi's untitled chronicle is the earliest and most extensive. (Cambridge, Browne Manuscripts, Or. F. 28, item 3. Also published online [http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~bahai/arabic/vol5/lutfali/lutfali.htm.])

The author was executed in 1852. His chronicle was therefore written within three years and three months of the conclusion of the Mazandaran episode. Mir Abu Talib-i Shahmirzadi's untitled narrative was written much later, but before 1888 (London, Afnan Library, uncatalogued photocopy of autograph manuscript). Haji Nasir-i Qazwini's eyewitness account is much shorter than the other two (“Tārīkh-i janāb-i Ḥājī Naṣīr-i shahīd,” in ^ᶜAbd al-^ᶜAli ^ᶜAla^˒i, ed., Tārīkh-i Samandar wa mulḥaqāt [Tehran, 1974-75], 500-20.) He wrote his narrative not long before he died in prison in 1300/1882-83.

The Waqā^˒i^ᶜ-i mīmiyya by Sayyid Muhammad Husayn-i Zawara^˒i Mahjur is an early account of the Shaykh Tabarsi conflict. (Cambridge, Browne Manuscripts, Or. F. 28, item 1. Published online at http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~bahai/arabic/vol5/mimiyyih/mimiyyih.htm.) Mahjur seems to have written in 1278/1861-62.

The account by Aqa Sayyid Muhammad Riza Shahmirzadi also contains some information about the Mazandaran conflict (London, Afnan Library, uncatalogued photocopy of autograph manuscript). He was the youngest brother of Mir Abu Talib-i Shahmirzadi. His account seems to have been written, at least in part, in the 1890s.

Of the general histories of the Babi and Baha^˒i religions, the Kitāb-i Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf is the earliest so far published, Browne, E. G., ed., Kitāb-i Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf (Leiden and London, 1910).Google Scholar The Tārīkh-i-Jadīd by Mirza Husayn-i Hamadani adds almost no new information on the Mazandaran conflict to what is available in the Kitāb-i Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf; Browne, E. G., ed. and trans., The Tārīkh-i-Jadīd or New History of Mīrzā ^ᶜAlī Muḥammad the Bāb (Cambridge, 1893).Google Scholar Nabil-i Zarandi's narrative, completed in 1890, is much more extensive than the other two. The part dealing with Babi history has been published in an edited and abridged English translation under the title The Dawn-Breakers: Nabīl's Narrative of the Early Days of the Bahā^˒ī Revelation, trans, and ed. Effendi, Shoghi (Wilmette, 1932).Google Scholar

The most important Muslim accounts of the clash are in the two main official histories of the period—Mirza Muhammad Taqi Lisan al-Mulk Sipihr, Nāsikh al-tawārīkh: tārīkh-i Qājāriyya, ed. Jamshid Kiyanfar (Tehran, 1998-99) and Riza Quli Khan Hidayat, Rawżat al ṣafā-yi Nāṣirī 10 (Qum, 1960-61)—as well as the brief account by a certain Shaykh al-^ᶜAjam, “Min kalam-i-Shaykh al-^ᶜAjam-i Māzandarānī,” in Dorn, B., “Nachträge zu dem Verzeichniss der von der Kaiserlichen öffentlichen Bibliothek erworbenen Chanykov'schen Handschriften und den da mitgetheilten Nachrichten über die Baby und deren Koran, von B. Dorn,” Bulletin de l'Académie Impériale des Sciences de St-Pétersbourg 9 (1866): 202–31.Google Scholar The Nāsikh al-tawārīkh and the Rawżat al-ṣafā-yi Nāṣirī record the history down to the year 1274/1857-58. The account by Shaykh al-^ᶜAjam was probably written in 1860.

A wide collection of contemporary diplomatic reports and accounts by Western travelers and missionaries is published in Moojan Momen's The Bābī and Bahā^˒ī Religions, 1844-1944: Some Contemporary Western Accounts (Oxford, 1981).Google Scholar A number of reports by the Russian Minister in Tehran and one by the Russian consul in Astarabad are available in “Excerpts from Dispatches written during 1848-1852 by Prince Dolgorukov, Russian minister to Persia,” World Order 1 (1966): 17–24.Google Scholar

A document of singular importance is the edict of Nasir al-Din Shah to the governor of Mazandaran, a facsimile of which is published in The Bahā^˒ī World, 5 (1936): 58.Google Scholar Ruhu'llah Mehrabkhani gives an English translation of this edict in his Mullā Ḥusayn: Disciple at Dawn (Los Angeles, 1987), 249–51.Google Scholar

3. Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 301. According to Nabil, the trial of the Bab took place toward the end of July 1848. However, recently published evidence indicates that the trial occurred in the second half of April 1848. See letters from Aqa Sayyid Husayn-i Katib and Khal-i Asghar in Abu'l-Qasim Afnan, ^ᶜAhd-i A^ᶜlā: Zindagānī-yi Hażrat-i Bāb (Oxford, 2000), 337–39.Google Scholar

4. Algar, Hamid, Religion and State in Iran, 1785-1906: The Role of the Ulama in the Qajar Period (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), 148.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5. Walbridge, John, “The Babi Uprising in Zanjan: Causes and Issues,” Iranian Studies 29 (1996): 359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. A later report ascribed to Nizam al-^ᶜUlama^˒, who led the interrogation, likewise does not indicate that anyone paid attention to the political implications inherent in the claim to mahdihood. For the text and translation of Nasir al-Din Mirza's report, see Browne, E. G., Materials for the Study of the Bābī Religion (Cambridge, 1918), 249–55.Google Scholar For the report ascribed to Nizam al- ^ᶜUlama^˒, see Hidayat, Rawżat al-ṣafā-yi Nāṣirī, 10: 423–28.Google Scholar See also Sipihr, Nāsikh al-tawārīkh, 2: 909-13; Browne, E. G., ed. and trans., A Traveller's Narrative Written to Illustrate the Episode of the Bāb 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1891), 2: 277–90Google Scholar, note M.

7. Dispatch of January 30, 1849, cited in Momen, Bābī and Bahā^˒ī Religions, 92.

8. Wright, Austin H., “Bāb und seine Secte in Persien,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 5 (1851): 384–85Google Scholar, cited in Momen, Bābī and Bahā^˒ī Religions, 73.

9. Mahjur, Waqā^˒i^ᶜ-i mīmiyya, 6-8. Mir Abu Talib, untitled narrative, 23, 46-47; ^ᶜAla^˒i, ed., Tārīkh-i Samandar, 168; see also Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 288-89.

10. Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 298-300; Khanum, Munireh, Munīrih Khānum: Memoirs and Letters, trans. Smith, Sammireh Anwar (Los Angeles, 1986), 15–16.Google Scholar

11. “Excerpts from Dispatches,” 19.

12. Momen, Bābī and Bahā^˒ī Religions, 71.

13. Momen, Moojan, “The Trial of Mullā ^ᶜAlī Basṭāmī: a Combined Sunnī-Shī^ᶜī Fatwā against the Bāb,” Iran 20 (1982): 116–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Letter in Afnan, ^ᶜAhd-i A ^ᶜlā, 184.

15. Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal, 279; Asad Allah Fazil-i Mazandarani, Kitāb-i ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq (Tehran, n.d.), 3: 374; Browne, ed., Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf, 139; ^ᶜAbd al-Husayn Awarah, al-Kaw^ᶜkib al-durriyya (Cairo, 1923), 1: 133.Google Scholar

16. Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal, 196.

17. See Bab, Dalā^˒il-i sab^ᶜa (n.p., n.d.), 47-48, and the treatise by Ibn-i Karbala^˒i, in Fazil-i Mazandarani, Ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, 3: 514, both written in 1263/1846-47, about a year before the Shaykh Tabarsi conflict.

18. Browne, ed., Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf, 139; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 262; Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 118.

19. Bab, Dalā^˒il-i sab^ᶜa, 33. See also the Bab's letter to the ^ᶜulamā^˒ of Tabriz, cited in Afnan, ^ᶜAhd-i A^ᶜlā, 334.

20. Afnan, ^ᶜAhd-i A ^ᶜlā, 320. This letter was apparently written some time after Muhammad Shah's death.

21. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 24. In this paper, the observation-based lunar calendar current in Iran, instead of the regulated, fixed Islamic calendar, has been used to determine the corresponding dates in the Gregorian calendar.

22. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 52-53.

23. Browne, E. G., A Year Amongst the Persians (London, 1893), 617.Google Scholar

24. Sipihr, Nāsikh al-tawārīkh, 3: 1019; Hidayat, Rawżat al-ṣafā-yi Nāṣirī, 10: 433.

25. Sipihr, Nāsikh al-tawārīkh, 3: 1021 and Hidayat, Rawżat al-ṣafā-yi Nāṣirī, 10: 434 write that in this attack the Babis massacred the people of the village where the militia of the Mazandarani chiefs had entrenched themselves. The Babi and Baha^˒i sources do not refer to any such massacre. Browne is obviously mistaken in stating that according to the author of the Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf, the Babis, on this occasion, killed “the soldiers and villagers alike” (Tārīkh-i-Jadīd, 362). The Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf 161-62 only refers to the demolition of the village, and the appropriation of provisions. The text indicates that it was in retaliation for the villagers permitting the militia to use their village. Had the Babis killed the inhabitants, it would not make sense to refer only to the destruction of their village and appropriation of their property as the punishment inflicted on them.

26. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 43-44, 75.

27. Bahā^˒ī World, 5: 58; Mehrabkhani, Mullā Ḥusayn, 250-51.

28. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 91.

29. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 99; Semino's letter of June 16, 1849, Semino, Barthélémy, Zhinirāl Semino dar khidmat-i Īrān-i ^ᶜaṣr-i Qājār wa jang-i Harāt: 1236-1266 hijrī-yi qamarī, ed. Ettehadieh, Mansoureh (Nizam-Mafi) and Mir-Mohammad Sadegh, S. (Tehran, 1997), 192.Google Scholar

30. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 112; Mir Abu Talib, untitled narrative, 16; ^ᶜAla^˒i, ed. Tārīkh-i Samandar, 510-11; Mahjur, Waqā^˒i^ᶜ-i mīmiyya, 64-65; Browne, ed., Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf, 177; Sipihr, Nāsikh al-tawārīkh, 3: 1027; Hidayat, Rawżat al ṣafā-yi Nāṣirī, 10: 439-40.

31. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 119; ^ᶜAla^˒i, ed. Tārīkh-i Samandar, 515; Ferrier to de LaHitte, February 21, 1850, cited in Momen, Bābī and Bahā^˒ī Religions, 95.

32. It seems that ^ᶜAbbas Quli Khan was suspected of having become a Babi. See Semino's letter of June 16, 1849, Semino, Zhinirāl Semino, 192.

33. Mir Abu Talib, untitled narrative, 21, 32-33, 36; see also Browne, ed., Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf 192; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 399-400; Sipihr, Nāsikh al-tawārīkh, 3: 1035–36.Google Scholar

34. V. Minorsky, review of M. S. Ivanov: Babidskie Vosstaniya v Irane (1848-1852), Trudy Instituta Vostokovedeniia, AN SSSR, vol. 30, Moscow 1939, in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 11 (1946): 878.Google Scholar

35. Greussing, Kurt, “The Babi movement in Iran 1844-52: from merchant protest to peasant revolution,” in Bak, János M., Benecke, Gerhard, eds., Religion and Rural Revolt (Manchester, 1984), 256–69.Google Scholar

36. See Momen, Moojan, “The Social Basis of the Bābī Upheavals in Iran (1848-53): A Preliminary Analysis,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 15 (1983): 157–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Momen has discussed Ivanov's analysis, but many of the points he raises apply equally to Greussing's article.

37. Smith, Peter and Momen, Moojan, “The Bābī Movement: A Resource Mobilization Perspective,” in Smith, Peter, ed., In Iran: Studies in Bābī and Bahā^˒ī History (Los Angeles, 1986), 3: 72Google Scholar; cf. Amanat, Resurrection and Renewal, 359.

38. Browne, Materials, xv; idem, Tārīkh-i-Jadīd, xvi.

39. Algar, Religion and State in Iran, 144.

40. MacEoin, Denis, “From Babism to Baha^˒ism: Problems of Militancy, Quietism, and Conflation in the Construction of a Religion,” Religion 13 (1983): 222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41. MacEoin, Denis, “Bahā^˒ī Fundamentalism and the Academic Study of the Bābī Movement,” Religion 16 (1986): 70CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “From Babism to Baha^˒ism,” 222.

42. MacEoin, Denis, “Babism,” Encyclopædia Iranica (henceforth EIr), 3: 316Google Scholar; idem, “Babi Concept of Holy War,” 121.

43. MacEoin, “Babi Concept of Holy War,” 121; cf. idem, “Babism,” 316; idem, “Bahā^˒ī Fundamentalism,” 70.

44. MacEoin, “Babi Concept of Holy War,” 107.

45. Bab, Bayān (n.p., n.d.), 158, 120, 63. For regulations of the Bayān concerning jihād and non-believers, see MacEoin, “Babi Concept of Holy War,” 108-109.

46. Bab, Dalā^˒il-i sab^ᶜa, 42-43.

47. MacEoin, “Bahā^˒ī Fundamentalism,” 70.

48. MacEoin, “Babi Concept of Holy War,” 121.

49. Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 324-25, 351.

50. Momen, “Social Basis of the Bābī Upheavals,” 161; MacEoin, “Babi Concept of Holy War,” 115.

51. I am grateful to Mr. Saleh Molavinegad for drawing my attention to the practice of chāwush-khwānī.

52. Ğolām Ḥosayn Yūsofī, “Čāvoš” EIr 5: 101-102.

53. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 2-4, 8-9.

54. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 19.

55. Mir Abu Talib, untitled narrative, 37; cf. 9, 10, 11. Nabil had access to a different manuscript of Mir Abu Talib's account. In his rendering of the passage in question, Mulla Husayn is “the bearer” of the “Black Standard.” Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 407.

56. Browne, ed., Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf, 153.

57. Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 354.

58. See Mohammad ^ᶜAli Amir-Moezzi, “Eschatology, iii. In Imami Shi^ᶜism,” in EIr 8: 578.

59. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 18; cf. 88.

60. Awarah, al-Kawākib al-durriyya, 1: 129. Awarah erroneously writes Maku instead of Chahriq. Probably due to the bastinado inflicted on the Bab, the Babis determined to rescue their leader. See Hidayat, Rawżat al-ṣafā-yi Nāṣirī, 10: 428.Google Scholar

61. ^ᶜAla^˒i, ed. Tārīkh-i Samandar, 168.

62. Hidayat, Rawżat al-ṣafā-yi Nāṣirī 10: 422, 428-29Google Scholar; cf. Browne, A Traveller's Narrative, 2: 189.Google Scholar

63. Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 235-36; Mazandarani, Fazil-i, Ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, 3: 75.Google Scholar MacEoin refers to this incident, but confuses Sulayman Khan-i Afshar-i Sa^˒in-Qal^ᶜa^˒i with Sulayman Khan-i Afshar, later entitled Sahib Ikhtiyar, who, as he writes, was “one of the country's leading military men” (“Babi Concept of Holy War,” 106). It was this Sulayman Khan who fought against the Babis at Shaykh Tabarsi. For Sahib Ikhtiyar, see Bamdad, Mahdi, Sharḥ-i ḥāl-i rijāl-i Īrān dar qarn-i 12 wa 13 wa 14 hijrī (Tehran, 1968-69), 2: 116–18Google Scholar; for Sulayman Khan-i Sa^˒in-Qal^ᶜa^˒i, see Mazandarani, Fazil-i, Ẓuhūr al-ḥaqq, 3: 74–75.Google Scholar

64. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 88; cf. Browne, ed., Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf, 166; Sipihr, Nāsikh al-tawārīkh, 3: 1014Google Scholar; Hidayat, Rawżat al-ṣafā-yi Nāṣirī, 10: 431.Google Scholar

65. See Momen, “Trial of Mullā ^ᶜAlī Basṭāmī.”

66. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 14.

67. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 20-21.

68. Cf. ^ᶜAla^˒i, ed., Tārīkh-i Samandar, 504.

69. Anonymous letter, dated September 12, 1848, “Translation: Extract of a letter from a person sent to M. [Mazandaran] by Colonel F. [Farrant],” “Enclosed Farrant's No. 85 of 1848,” Public Record Office, FO 60/138, London; cf. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 25-26.

70. Dorn, “Nachträge zu dem Verzeichniss,” 206-207.

71. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 54.

72. Cf. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 61; Mahjur, Waqā^˒i^ᶜ-i mīmiyya, 37.

73. ^ᶜAla^˒i, ed., Tārīkh-i Samandar, 504.

74. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 36.

75. Mir Abu Talib, untitled narrative, 3.

76. Sipihr, Nāsikh al-tawārīkh, 3: 1017Google Scholar; Hidayat, Rawżat al-ṣafā-yi Nāṣirī, 10: 433.Google Scholar

77. Browne, ed., Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf, 160; cf. Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 345.

78. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 87; Mahjur, Waqā^˒i^ᶜ-i mīmiyya, 42.

79. Cf. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 43-44, 80.

80. It is always factors outside the fortress that decide the success or failure of the defenders in a siege. “In war history, there is no known case of a defender, once encircled in a fortress, being able to compel the attacker to call off a siege alone and with his own resources. Defense of a fortress is always a battle to gain time.” Bode, Gert, “Siege,” in International Military and Defense Encyclopedia (Washington D. C. and New York, 1993), 5: 2417.Google Scholar

81. Sipihr, Nāsikh al-tawārīkh, 3: 1019.Google Scholar

82. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 18-19; cf. Browne, ed., Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf, 155-56; Nabil, Dawn-Breakers, 326.

83. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 83-84. This indicates that the prince governor believed the Babis were intent on insurrection.

84. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 84-85. The request of the Babis at Shaykh Tabarsi for a meeting with the ^ᶜulamā^˒ is also reported in Mir Abu Talib's eyewitness account (untitled narrative, 12). See also Browne, ed., Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf, 163.

85. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 85-88.

86. Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 88-89.

87. In his paper “Babi Concept of Holy War” (115-17), MacEoin provides an analysis of the objectives of the Babis at Shaykh Tabarsi. He cites passages from Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza's history regarding this exchange, and comments that Mulla Husayn refused to leave Mazandaran as “requested” by the prince (116). MacEoin gives the impression that the Babis would not listen to reason. To call the prince's demand that the Babis should leave Mazandaran a “request” is misleading. The prince had received emphatic instructions from Nasir al-Din Shah in person to eradicate the Babis, and shortly afterwards the shah had issued a royal decree ordering him to “cleanse the realm of this filthy and reprobate sect, so that not a trace of them remains” (cited in Mehrabkhani, Mullā Ḥusayn, 251). The Babis had heard about the prince's mission and knew that Mazandarani troops had been ordered to assist him. Some of the local people who had initially expressed their support for the Babis had now reneged. The prince's message was phrased in harsh language and accused the Babis of stirring up mischief (Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 82-83). This cannot be called a “request.” MacEoin refers to Mulla Husayn's statement about not departing from Mazandaran “until the cause of God is manifested,” (“Babi Concept of Holy War,” 116) but leaves out his remark that he had once been deceived by ^ᶜAbbas Quli Khan in Barfurush, and that he would not be deceived again (Lutf ^ᶜAli Mirza, untitled chronicle, 89). All this makes it clear that Mulla Husayn believed that the prince's “request” was a trick, and that if the Babis agreed and left the fort, they would be killed.

88. Browne, ed., Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf, 163, 166. The translation is cited from MacEoin, “Babi Concept of Holy War,” 116.

89. Browne, ed., Nuqṭatu^˒l-Kāf, 162-63.