continued the line of the national religious development. The majority
of Persians were Shi'ites; they regarded Ali and the 'Imams' as
virtually divine manifestations. This at least was their point of
union; otherwise they fell into two great divisions, known as the
'Sect of the Seven' and the 'Sect of the Twelve' respectively. Mirza
Ali Muhammad belonged by birth to the latter, which now forms the
State-religion of Persia, but there are several points in his doctrine
which he held in common with the former (i.e. the Ishma'ilis).
These are--'the successive incarnations of the Universal Reason, the
allegorical interpretation of Scripture, and the symbolism of every
ritual form and every natural phenomenon. [Footnote: _NH_,
introd. p. xiii.] The doctrine of the impermanence of all that is
not God, and that love between two human hearts is but a type of the
love between God and his human creatures, and the bliss of
self-annihilation, had long been inculcated in the most winning manner
by the Sufis.


SHEYKH AHMAD

Yet they were no Sufis, but precursors of Babism in a more
thorough and special sense, and both were Muslims. The first was
Sheykh Ahmad of Ahsa, in the province of Bahrein. He knew full
well that he was chosen of God to prepare men's hearts for the
reception of the more complete truth shortly to be revealed, and that
through him the way of access to the hidden twelfth Imam Mahdi was
reopened. But he did not set this forth in clear and unmistakable
terms, lest 'the unregenerate' should turn again and rend him.
According to a Shi'ite authority he paid two visits to Persia, in one
of which he was in high favour with the Court, and received as a