doing. The hostile mullas, however, were stirred up to jealousy
because of the great popularity which Muhammad 'Ali had
acquired. Such was the beginning of the famous episode of Zanjan.


KURRATU'L 'AYN

Among the Heroes of God was another glorious saint and martyr of the
new society, originally called Zarrin Taj ('Golden Crown'), but
afterwards better known as Kurratu'l 'Ayn ('Refreshment of the
Eyes') or Jenab-i-Tahira ('Her Excellency the Pure, Immaculate'). She
was the daughter of the 'sage of Kazwin,' Haji Mulla Salih, an
eminent jurist, who (as we shall see) eventually married her to her
cousin Mulla Muhammad. Her father-in-law and uncle was also a
mulla, and also called Muhammad; he was conspicuous for his bitter
hostility to the Sheykhi and the Babi sects. Kurratu'l 'Ayn
herself had a flexible and progressive mind, and shrank from no
theological problem, old or new. She absorbed with avidity the latest
religious novelties, which were those of the Bab, and though not
much sympathy could be expected from most of her family, yet there was
one of her cousins who was favourable like herself to the claims of
the Bab. Her father, too, though he upbraided his daughter for her
wilful adhesion to 'this Shiraz lad,' confessed that he had not taken
offence at any claim which she advanced for herself, whether to be the
Bab or _even more than that_.

Now I cannot indeed exonerate the 'sage of Kazwin' from all
responsibility for connecting his daughter so closely with a bitter
enemy of the Bab, but I welcome his testimony to the manifold
capacities of his daughter, and his admission that there were not only