I [Avarih] myself heard directly that the late Sepahsālār, four years before his death, on a day when the writer together with Sayyid Naṣrallāh Bāqerāf had gone to his house—and Bāqerāf was inclined to proselytize him to the Bahāʾī faith—that late man listened to his words, smiled, and said: My father used to say: I was in the house of Mīrzā Āqā Khān, the Ṣadr-i Aʿẓam, when they brought Mīrzā Ḥusayn-ʿAlī Nūrī to me under guard, on the very day that Nāṣir al-Dīn Shāh had been shot. When they brought Mīrzā in, the Ṣadr-i Aʿẓam became angry with him and said: ‘Out of shared homeland ties I was a friend of your father, and he was not a bad man. It was possible that you might have taken his place and attained a position of chancery and courtly administration. But you are so wretched that you attach yourself to Sayyid-i- Bāb—about whom it is not even known what madness possessed him—and now you are also inciting the killing of the Shāh!’
Mīrzā immediately replied that he did not believe in Sayyid-i-Bāb, nor even in his ancestors … —but he immediately restrained his tongue. The Ṣadr-i Aʿẓam also rebuked him sharply and said, ‘Do not be impertinent,’ and gestured that they should take him away; so they took him. After his departure from the assembly and his entry into confinement, the Ṣadr-i Aʿẓam said: This statement which Mīrzā Ḥusayn-ʿAlī uttered involuntarily was in fact true—that he does not even believe in the Bāb’s ancestors [i.e. the Fourteen Infallibles]—because he is absolutely not upon the path of religion and has no aim other than misuse and exploitation.
[Kashf-al-Ḥīl, Vol. 1: 26 by Abd al-Husayn Ayati (Avarih)]
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