130 A systematic campaign against the new Faith had been launched in
Persia by the civil and ecclesiastical authorities combined. The
believers, cut down wherever they were isolated, banded together
when they could, for protection against the Government, the clergy,
and the people. Betrayed and surrounded as they passed through the
forest of Mazindaran, some 300 believers, mostly students and
recluses, built the Fort of _Sh_ay_kh_ Tabarsi and held out against
the armies of Persia for eleven months. Cf. The Dawn-Breakers,
chapters XIX and XX; God Passes By, p. 37 et seq.
131 On August 15, 1852, a half-crazed Babi youth wounded the _Sh_ah with
shot from a pistol. The assailant was instantly killed, and the
authorities carried out a wholesale massacre of the believers, its
climax described by Renan as "a day perhaps unparalleled in the
history of the world." Cf. Lord Curzon, Persia and the Persian
Question, pp. 501-2, and God Passes By, p. 62 et seq.