On His return to Bu_sh_ihr great excitement was caused by the announcement of His Babhood.
The fire of His eloquence, the wonder of His rapid and inspired writings, His extraordinary wisdom and knowledge, His courage and zeal as a reformer, aroused the greatest enthusiasm among His followers, but excited a corresponding degree of alarm and enmity among the orthodox Muslims.

The _Sh_i'ih doctors vehemently denounced Him, and persuaded the Governor of Fars, namely Husayn _Kh_an, a fanatical and tyrannical ruler, to undertake the suppression of the new heresy.

Then commenced for the Bab a long series of imprisonments, deportations, examinations before tribunals, scourgings and indignities, which ended only with His martyrdom in 1850.
Claims of the Bab The hostility aroused by the claim of Babhood was redoubled when the young reformer proceeded to declare that He was Himself the Mihdi (Mahdi) Whose coming Muhammad had foretold.

The _Sh_i'ihs identified this Mihdi with the 12th Imam( 9) who, according to their beliefs, had mysteriously disappeared from the sight of men about a thousand years previously.

They believed that he was still alive and would reappear in the same body as before, and they interpreted in a material sense the prophecies regarding his dominion, his glory, his conquests and the "signs" of his advent, just as the Jews in the time of Christ interpreted similar prophecies regarding the Messiah.