But all the various lines of Persian thought once more find a synthesis in that great religious movement of Modern Persia--Bābism or Bahāism, which began as a S̱ẖī‘ah sect, with Mirzā ‘Alī Muḥammad Bāb of S̱ẖīrāz (b. 1820), and became less and less Islamic in character with the progress of orthodox persecutions. The origin of the philosophy of this wonderful sect must be sought in the S̱ẖī‘ah sect of the S̱ẖaiḵẖīs, the founder of which, S̱ẖaiḵẖ Aḥmad, was an enthusiastic student of Mulla Ṣadrā's Philosophy, on which he had written several commentaries. This sect differed from the ordinary S̱ẖī‘ahs in holding that belief in an ever present Medium between the absent Imām (the 12{th} Head of the Church, whose manifestation is anxiously expected by the S̱ẖī‘ahs), and the church is a fundamental principle of the S̱ẖī‘ah religion. S̱ẖaiḵẖ Aḥmad claimed to be such a Medium; and when, after the death of the second S̱ẖaiḵẖī Medium--Ḥājī Kāzim, the S̱ẖaiḵẖīs were anxiously expecting the manifestation of the new Medium, Mirzā ‘Alī Muḥammad Bāb, who had attended the lectures of Ḥājī Kāzim at Karbalā, proclaimed himself the expected Medium, and many S̱ẖaiḵẖīs accepted him. The young Persian seer looks upon Reality as an essence which brooks no distinction of substance and attribute. The first bounty or self-expansion of the Ultimate Essence, he says, is Existence. "Existence" is the "known", the "known" is the essence of "knowledge"; "knowledge" is "will"; and "will" is "love". Thus from Mulla Ṣadrā's identity of the known and the knower, he passes to his conception of the Real as Will and Love. This Primal Love, which he regards as the essence of the Real, is the cause of the manifestation of the Universe which is nothing more than the self-expansion of Love. The word creation, with him, does not mean creation out of nothing; since, as the S̱ẖaiḵẖīs maintain, the word creator is not peculiarly applicable to God alone. The Quranic verse, that "God is the best of creators",[188:1] implies that there are other self-manifesting beings like God. [188:1] Sūra 23; v. 14.