The militia of Tabríz, malicious, corrupt, oppressive, and obstinate, and ever skilful in stirring up rebellion, have always been disposed to throw off the authority of their governors. The vezír Ja’fer Páshá, who was this year governor of Tabríz and Azerbáíján, contrived and executed a stratagem against them however, which ought to have taught them ever afterwards to conduct themselves with propriety and good order. It was this: Ja’fer Páshá, under the pretext of being obliged to go and take cognizance of some other garrisons, left Tabríz, having secured a sufficient number of troops from the Kúrd chiefs to come and assault Tabríz. The Tabrízians on learning that an army of Kurds was come to attack them rushed forth to give it battle, but were defeated with the loss of 1,500 of their number. Ja’fer Páshá, on learning the success of the Kurds, joined them with the volunteers under his own command, and commenced a general slaughter of the Tabrízians, and thus punished them most severely for their wickedness and insubordination. _The Muftí Effendí, Bostánzádeh, deposed, and Zekeríá Effendí appointed in his stead._ Husain Beg Zádeh says (in his history), that several disgraceful complaints had been lodged with the emperor against the acute poet Bákí Effendí, the military judge of Anatolia. As soon as Bákí Effendí was made acquainted with this fact, and conjecturing that the mufti, in order to get his own brother, cazí of Constantinople, appointed in his room, would be excited to raise an accusation against him; he, with great boldness, raised his voice in the diván and demanded what these Bostáns (the mufti and his brother) wanted with him? The elder of them, he said, was forty years of age, and was not yet able either to repeat or read correctly. None of the decrees, continued he, which he (the mufti) has written are in accordance with those already collected and registered. Would it be just or wise, in order to get Jamús, the mufti’s brother, put into his office, and for which he was unfit, he asked, that complaints should be invented against him? This speech was communicated to the mufti, who was so much nettled that he instantly exhibited two hemistiches from Bákí’s poetical works, which he declared evident blasphemy. A man, he said, who did not keep himself free from that corruption ought by no means to hold any office, sacred or profane. If Bákí, continued he, be not deposed, and not only deposed but prosecuted, he (the mufti) would wander away to the utmost bounds of the empire. Bákí Effendí, seeing the mufti had commenced his vexatious proceedings against him, appealed to the grand vezír and Khoja Sudur-úd-dín Effendí, and proposed to them to raise Zekeríá Effendí to the office of mufti: or else to give that office to himself, assuring them that he was competent to give forth daily, if requisite, 500 fetvás (judicial or religious decrees).