was the return he met with! Weary of fighting, the Babis yielded
themselves up to the royal troops. As Prof. Browne says, 'they were
received with an apparent friendliness and even respect which served
to lull them into a false security and to render easy the perfidious
massacre wherein all but a few of them perished on the morrow of their
surrender.'

The same historian tells us that Kuddus, loyal as ever, requested
the Prince to send him to Tihran, there to undergo judgment before the
Shah. The Prince was at first disposed to grant this request, thinking
perhaps that to bring so notable a captive into the Royal Presence
might serve to obliterate in some measure the record of those repeated
failures to which his unparalleled incapacity had given rise. But when
the Sa'idu'l-'Ulama heard of this plan, and saw a possibility of his
hated foe escaping from his clutches, he went at once to the Prince,
and strongly represented to him the danger of allowing one so eloquent
and so plausible to plead his cause before the King. These arguments
were backed up by an offer to pay the Prince a sum of 400 (or, as
others say, of 1000) _tumans_ on condition that Jenab-i-Kuddus
should be surrendered unconditionally into his hands. To this
arrangement the Prince, whether moved by the arguments or the
_tumans_ of the Sa'idu'l-'Ulama, eventually consented, and
Jenab-i-Kuddus was delivered over to his inveterate enemy.

'The execution took place in the _meydan_, or public square, of Barfurush.
The Sa'idu'l-'Ulama first cut off the ears of Jenab-i-Kuddus, and
tortured him in other ways, and then killed him with the blow of an
axe. One of the Sa'idu'l-'Ulama's disciples then severed the head from
the lifeless body, and others poured naphtha over the corpse and set
fire to it. The fire, however, as the Babis relate (for