Sykes' History of Persia Vol 2 (pdf) - Heritage Institute

I.XXVHI THE PERSO-AFGHAN (Jl
1 I ION
Two years
later the life of the Shah was attet;
447
four Babis who posed as petitioners.
II
in the thigh, and the report was spread of his death. UKpunishment
inflicted on the conspire barbarous.
At first ten prisoners were executed. In the case of t
lighted candles were stuck into them, and after suffer
this torture, they were hacked asunder with a hatchet.
A reign of terror then ensued, and the Chief Minister,
avoid concentrating on himself the vengeance of the Babis,
distributed the prisoners among the officers of the st,
who did them to death.
The Babis, including their famous poetess, the Kurratul-Ayn,
or " Coolness of the Eyes," displayed such bra\
that they gained sympathy not only among
their fellowcountrymen,
but also among the Europeans resident in
Teheran, and probably their heroic behaviour gained many
converts to the new religion.
Foundation of the Russian Naval Station at Ashurada,
1
840. The peculiarity of the southern coast of the Caspian
littoral consists in salt lagoons formed by narrow spits of
land.
That of Enzeli, the port of Resht, has already been
referred to, and at Astrabad there is another. In this
latter case the long narrow promontory runs out for thirty
miles from the western coast and terminates in three small
islands, the most easterly of which is close to the eastern
coast of the Caspian Sea. In 1836 the Persian Government
had applied
to the Tsar for naval assistance against
Turkoman pirates,
who raided the coasts of Mazanderan
with impunity. This was granted, and the Russians, JT
realizing the advantage of founding a permanent naval
station in the south-east corner of the Caspian, occupied
the island of Ashurada 2 about the year 1840. The
Government of the Shah remonstrated against
this seizure
of Persian soil,
but without success. The Russian
Minister, without denying the validity of the Persian
claim to the island, pointed out that pirates could be held
1
The Shah's French doctor excused himself from hacking a Babi to pieces by saying
that he killed too many men professionally to increase the number by homicide !
2 In 1893 I anchored off the island, and I was surprised
at its smallncss, which is
such that during a storm spray sweeps right across it. It is notoriously unhealthy, and
the life of the officials posted on it must be trying
in the extreme.