Chehrīq

The fortress of Chehrīq or Chihríq is in the north-western part of the Western Azerbaïdjan, an Iranian province, and it is there that Siyyid 'Alí-Muḥammad Shírází (1817-1850), called the Bāb, was imprisoned during several years, of May 1848 in July 1850. He was the founder of the Babisme, a religious movement, and he is regarded as one of the two prophets by the Bahaïs.

Informed by his spies of the increasing influence that exerted the Bāb prophet, prisoner at the time in the prison of Māhkū, Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí, Top dog of the Shah of Persia Muḥammad Sháh Qájár (1810-1848), made it exile on April 10th, 1848 in a fortress located in the mountains, in Chehrīq.

In this place, which it called itself “Mountain of the Sufferings” (Jabal-i-Shadíd), Bāb was imprisoned under conditions more severe than in Māhkū and, after three months, was led under escort to Tabríz for a lawsuit chaired by the crown prince Náṣiri' d-Dín Mírzá-Dín (1831-1896). But then, in spite of the strict orders given by Amír-Niẓám (the Top dog) to the chief of the guards Yaḥyá Khán-i-Kurd, the influence of Bāb continued to develop and again gained all the hearts, so that a great number of eminent people in Persia converted with its faith.

At that time it accepted ésotériques revelations and more mystics that the preceding ones, but the martyrdom cruel of sound dear disciple Quddús, on May 16th, 1849, plunged it in such an affliction that for six months it was not any more in a position to write nor to dictate no matter what it was. Here some of its works which go back to this time:

Kitáb-i-Asmá' (the Book of the Names, that it revealed before its martyrdom)
Kit' ab-i-Panj-Sha' N (the Book of the five Degrees, revealed in spring of 1850)
Épître in Ḥájí Mírzá Áqásí
Lawḥ-i-Ḥurúfát (Epistle of the Letters)

Its increasing influence and the bloody revolts babists with Zenĝano, Mazandéran and Nayríz encouraged Taqí Khán (1807-1852), Top dog of the Shah of Persia Náṣiri' d-Dín Sháh Qájár (1831-1896), to make it carry out to extinguish the flame of the babism definitively. Bāb was thus shot in the court of the barracks of Tabriz on July 9th, 1850 (28 of Sha' bán in the year 1266 of Hégire.)

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