ABSTRACT
Meanwhile in the capital the coronation festivities were over. King Nasir al-Din Shah had assumed full control of the government. Hajji Mirza Aqasi, ousted from a position he had spent his time making a mockery of, had retired to Karbala, and saw out his final days there making fun of the mullahs and also somewhat of the memory of the holy martyrs. His successor, Mirza Taqi Khan, Amir Nizam,1 one of the most able men Asia has produced in this century, was determined to put an end to the disorder. He closed the cafés, where too many people were ranting against the government and, in order to put a stop to the habit of hacking each other to death with gamas in the quarter around the Gate of Dulab in the middle of the afternoon, a practice introduced by the Makui Kurds, countrymen of the former prime minister, he had several of the killers bricked into the wall of the mosque at Shah Abd al-Azim and their heads ripped off by means of ropes attached to wild horses. So the Amir Nizam, with his frenzied approach to putting things in order, soon had Mazandaran under control, and when the great men of that province, in Tehran to pay court to the king, were about to return home, he ordered them to take the necessary measures to cut short the Babi sedition. They promised to do their best.
