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As soon as the emissaries arrived in the quarter in which Hujjat was living, they were unexpectedly confronted by Mír Saláh one of his most formidable supporters, who, together with seven of his armed companions, strenuously opposed their advance. He asked Asadu’lláh whither he was bound, and, on receiving from him an insulting answer, unsheathed his sword and, with the cry of “Yá Sáhibu’z-Zamán!” sprang upon him and wounded him in the forehead. Mír Saláh’s audacity, in spite of the heavy amour which his adversary was wearing, frightened the whole band and caused them to flee in different directions.
The cry which that stout-hearted defender of the Faith raised on that day was heard for the first time in Zanján …30_ACT14
The First Martyr in Zanján: 16 May 1850
The remnants of the dispersed group that had set out to arrest Hujjat were heading back to the governor when they came across one of the Bábís, Shaykh Muhammad-i-Túb-Chí 31_ACT14 . Nabíl recounts:
Finding him unarmed, they fell upon him and, with an axe one of them was carrying, struck him and broke his head. They bore him to the governor, and no sooner had they laid down the wounded man than a certain Siyyid Abu’l-Qásim, one of the mujtahids of Zanján who was present, leaped forward and, with his penknife, stabbed him in the breast. The governor too, unsheathing his sword, struck him on the mouth and was followed by the attendants who, with the weapons they carried with them, completed the murder of their hapless victim. … He was the first among the believers of Zanján to lay down his life in the path of the Cause. His death, which occurred on Friday, the fourth of Rajab, in the year 1266 AH [16 May 1850], preceded by forty-five days the martyrdom of Vahíd and by fifty-five days that of the Báb. 32_ACT14 ,
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