ABSTRACT
However, without knowing anything about what had happened at the castle of Shaykh Tabarsi the shahzada, Mirza Quli, had set off with all the troops he could muster to join the sardar Abbas Quli Khan Larijani. En route he met messengers of that lord, who presented him with several severed heads stuck on spears, some quite ambiguous letters, and swore by his head, by the revered head of the king and by Murtada Ali that the Babis had been utterly defeated and destroyed or that if by some chance a few remained, of that they could not be sure, it could certainly not be many. The prince, used to making similarly gratifying speeches to his superiors, was not convinced; but the sight of the heads at least seemed a good sign, and he went on, full of good cheer, viewing the taking of the castle as now a mere formality and fearing that the honour thereof would go to the sardar and be detrimental to his own position. He rode on, absorbed in these reflections, some quite agreeable, others less so, and eventually arrived at a port on the Kara-Su, near Aliabad, and stopped there for the night. Everyone was peacefully preparing his dinner when the confidant of the sardar arrived, Abdullah Khan, the Afghan, with the mission of supplying some serious explanations, and who, aware of the difficulty of his task, went first to Mirza Abdullah Navai, one of the prince’s advisors with whom he had a close relationship, and told him quite frankly, inasmuch as frankness is possible, all the details of what had happened hoping in that way to save some face and put the matter in as good a light as possible.
