After the death of the Bab a great persecution took place (in 1852); there were many Babi martyrs, and for some years the general followers were scattered. But in time they gathered themselves together again; successors to the original prophet were appointed--though not without dissensions--and a Babi church, chiefly at Acca or Acre in Syria, began to be formed. It was during this period that a great number of legends grew up--legends of miraculous babyhood and boyhood, legends of miracles performed by the mature Bab, and so forth; and when the newly-forming Church came to look into the matter it concluded (quite naturally!) that such a simple history as I have outlined above would never do for the foundation of its plans, now grown somewhat ambitious. So a new Gospel was framed, called the Tarikh-i-Jadid ("The new History" or "The new Way"), embodying and including a lot of legendary matter, and issued with the authority of "the Church." This was in 1881-2; and comparing this with the original record (called The point of Kaf) we get a luminous view of the growth of fable in those thirty brief years which had elapsed since the Bab's death. Meanwhile it became very necessary of course to withdraw from circulation as far as possible all copies of the original record, lest they should give the lie to the later 'Gospel'; and this apparently was done very effectively--so effectively indeed that Professor Edward Browne (to whom the world owes so much on account of his labors in connection with Babism), after arduous search, came at one time to the conclusion that the original was no longer extant. Most fortunately, however, the well-known Comte de Gobineau had in the course of his studies on Eastern Religions acquired a copy of The point of Kaf; and this, after his death, was found among his literary treasures and identified (as was most fitting) by Professor Browne himself. Such in brief is the history of the early Babi Church (1)--a Church which has grown up and expanded greatly within the memory of many yet living. Much might be written about it, but the chief point at present is for us to note the well-verified and interesting example it gives of the rapid growth in Syria of a religious legend and the reasons which contributed to this growth--and to be warned how much more rapidly similar legends probably grew up in the same land in the middle of the First Century, A.D. The story of the Bab is also interesting to us because, while this mass of legend was formed around it, there is no possible doubt about the actual existence of a historical nucleus in the person of Mirza Ali Muhammad. (1) For literature, see Edward G. Browne's Traveller's Narrative on the Episode of the Bab (1891), and his New History of the Bab translated from the Persian of the Tarikh-i-Jadid (Cambridge, 1893). Also Sermons and Essays by Herbert Rix (Williams and Norgate, 1907), pp. 295-325, "The Persian Bab."