“He was a very mild and delicate-looking man, rather small
in stature and very fair for a Persian, with a melodious soft voice, which
struck me much. Being a Siyyid, he was dressed in the habit of that sect, as
were also his two companions. In fact his whole look and deportment went far to
dispose one in his favour. Of his doctrine I heard nothing from his own lips, although
the idea was that there existed in his religion a certain approach to
Christianity. He was seen by some Armenian carpenters, who were sent to make
some repairs in his prison, reading the Bible, and he took no pains to conceal
it, but on the contrary told them of it. Most assuredly the Musulman fanaticism
does not exist in his religion, as applied to Christians, nor is there that
restraint of females that now exists.”
- Dr. Cormick (From a letter to a
fellow practitioner in an American mission in Persia, given in Professor E. G.
Browne’s ‘Materials for the Study of the Bábí Religion’, quoted by Shoghi
Effendi in ‘Introduction to Dawn-Breakers’)