, an early work on the Bābī [q.v.] movement.

In 1910, E.G. Browne published a work entitled Kitáb-i Nuqṭatu ’l-Káf , a Persian history of the early Bābī movement, based on a “unique” manuscript (Suppl. persan 1071) in the Bibliothèque Nationale. This manuscript had been bought by the library in 1884, in a sale of books belonging to the late Comte de Gobineau. Authorship of the history was ascribed by the Bābī leader Ṣubḥ-i Azal [q.v.] to Ḥād̲j̲d̲j̲ī Mīrzā D̲j̲ānī, a Kās̲h̲ānī merchant killed in 1852.

Browne’s text soon became the centre of a controversy that still continues. The …