[Footnote BJ: Official courier.] Meanwhile, as early as February, Major Rawlinson came to an erroneous conclusion about the Báb, which subsequent events belied. He wrote to Canning on the 18th: ... the excitement which has been for some time prevalent in this vicinity among the Sheeah sect in connection with the expected manifestation of the Imam Mehdi, is beginning gradually to subside, the impostor who personated the character of the forerunner of the Imam ... having been deterred by a sense of personal danger from a further prosecution of the agitation, which he set on foot at Kerbela in the Autumn on his passage from Persia to Mecca.[14] He was also in error in stating to Sheil, ten days later, that 'the impostor ... joined as a private individual the Caravan of pilgrims which is travelling to Persia by the route of Damascus and Aleppo'.[15] In considering this episode of the arrest, imprisonment and banishment of the first Bábí martyr, there are four aspects which deserve special note. First is the fact that while the Bábís in [_Sh_]íráz were being punished by Ḥusayn [_Kh_]án, Governor of the province of Fárs,[BK] the Persian Government was trying to rescue Mullá `Alí in Ba[_gh_]dád. Secondly, whereas the [_Sh_]í`ah divines were demanding a light punishment, the Sunnís were clamouring for the death penalty. A third point, important to students of the Bábí Faith, is that from the earliest stage of its history rumours and misinformation about the Báb abounded. It is also of considerable interest that this episode was reported to Lord Aberdeen, the British Foreign Secretary in London. [Footnote BK: Mullá `Alí was before long caught up in a furore of agitation and oppression, was apprehended, put on trial and condemned to death. It has always been assumed that he was put to death somewhere in `Iráq (either in Mosul or beyond), while being taken to Istanbul, because nothing more was ever heard of him after he reached Mosul. But recent research in official archives has established the fact that he arrived in the Ottoman capital, was once again put on trial and was condemned to hard labour in the dockyards, where he died towards the end of 1846. (For most of this information the author is much indebted to Mr Sami Doktoroglu.)] As to Mullá `Alí, what precisely happened to him, how and where he died and where he was interred, have all remained mysteries. It has been said that he died in the prison of Karkúk, but no definite proof exists. He was the first of the concourse of martyrs whose numbers were soon to swell into hundreds and thousands. CHAPTER 5 PILGRIMAGE TO MECCA: THE HOUSE OF KA`BAH Vaunt not thyself, O thou who leadeth the pilgrims on their way, That which thou seest is the House, and that which I see is the Lord of that House. --Ḥáfiẓ