The first of Henry Martyn's public controversies with the Shi'ah doctors, as distinguished from the almost daily discussions already described in his _Journal_, took place in the house of the Moojtahid of Shiraz on July 15, 1811. The doctrine of Jesus, represented by such a follower, was beginning so to tell on Shi'ahs and Soofis, ever eager for something new, that the interference of the first authority of Islam in all Persia became necessary. Higher than all other Mohammedan divines, especially among the Shi'ahs, are the three or four Moojtahids.[57] They must be saintly, learned, and aloof from worldly ambition. In Persia each acts as an informal and final court of appeal; he alone dares to temper the tyranny of the Shah by his influence; his house is a sanctuary for the oppressed; the city of his habitation is often saved from violence by his presence. This was the position and the pretension of the man who, having first ascertained that the English man of God did not want demonstration, but admitted that the prophets had been sent, invited him to dinner, preliminary to a conflict. Martyn has left this description of the scene: About eight o'clock at night we went, and after passing along many an avenue we entered a fine court, where was a pond, and, by the side of it, a platform eight feet high, covered with carpets. Here sat the Moojtahid in state, with a considerable number of his learned friends--among the rest, I perceived the Jew. One was at his prayers. I was never more disgusted at the mockery of this kind of prayer. He went through the evolutions with great exactness, and pretended to be unmoved at the noise and chit-chat of persons on each side of him. The Professor seated Seyd Ali on his right hand, and me on his left. Everything around bore the appearance of opulence and ease, and the swarthy obesity of the little personage himself led me to suppose that he had paid more attention to cooking than to science. But when he began to speak, I saw reason enough for his being so much admired. The substance of his speech was flimsy enough; but he spoke with uncommon fluency and clearness, and with a manner confident and imposing. He talked for a full hour about the soul; its being distinct from the body; superior to the brutes, etc.; about God; His unity, invisibility, and other obvious and acknowledged truths. After this followed another discourse. At length, after clearing his way for miles around, he said that philosophers had proved that a single being could produce but a single being; that the first thing God had created was _Wisdom_, a being perfectly one with Him; after that, the souls of men, and the seventh heaven; and so on till He produced matter, which is merely passive. He illustrated the theory by comparing all being to a circle; at one extremity of the