Amazon.com description: Product Description: In the middle of the nineteenth century Iran, then remote from the West, was roused and convulsed by the appearance of the Martyr-Prophet, the Bab, whose brief ministry of six years (1844-50) ended in his own martyrdom and that of many thousands of his followers. The Bab was a youthful merchant who fulfilled wide expectation in East and West by his declaration that 'He whom God shall make manifest' would soon arise to guide mankind into a new epoch of spiritual civilization. The Bab his religion were observed at first-hand by Western diplomats-British, Russian, French, and Austrian, in particular-whose official reports and accounts in books provide unparalleled data for the study of the birth and rise of a faith which, in the words of a Cambridge scholar, Edward Granville Brown, 'may not impossibly win a place amidst the great religions of the world". Mr Balyuzi has made use of many official documents from governmental records, and also cites material gathered from family archives, accessible to him as a relative of the Bab. His illustrations include several items from these archives.