return from Badasht. Before departing from Mashhad, Mullá Husayn received large groups of visitors, along with approximately two hundred Bábí men who committed to traveling with him. Before they were able to leave the city, Mullá Husayn received a message from the Báb containing new directions. The Báb informed him that Quddús had been imprisoned in his hometown of Barfurush, and ordered Mullá Husayn and his companions to come to his aid. Further, Mullá Husayn was, in apparent fulfillment of Islamic eschatological predictions, to don the Báb's own green turban, and lead his companions under a black flag. The Báb also granted Mullá Husayn a new name: Siyyid ʻAlí. The granting of a new name was significant because the wearing of a green turban was forbidden in Shia Islam to anyone but a siyyid—a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatimah. Mazandaran Upheaval (1848–1849) Skirmish in Barfurush Mullá Husayn and his two hundred Bábí companions departed from Mashhad for Barfurush on 21 July 1848, and gathered additional followers along the way. On the third day, after a warning from Mullá Husayn about the danger of their mission to free Quddús, twenty members of the party left the group to return home. The group marched under a black banner prepared by Mullá Husayn which they raised in reference to the Black Standard, an element of prophecy in Islamic eschatology about the end of days. The march was rebuffed outside the town of Barfurush by an armed group of residents led by the chief cleric. Mullá Husayn reportedly ordered his men to discard their possessions and at first made them withhold from engaging in battle, saying: The first casualty of the encounter was Siyyid Ridá—Mullá Husayn's attendant—who was shot in the chest from a distance. After Siyyid Ridá's death, Mullá Husayn allowed his followers to begin defending themselves. Although most sources agree that Mullá Husayn was physically weak and suffered from chronic illness, narratives of the battle depict him as an almost insurmountable combatant. One popular story from Nabil's Narrative describes him engaging the soldier who shot Siyyid Ridá and with a single blow of his sword cutting through the trunk of an intervening tree, the man's musket, and the soldier's body. A combatant in the Barfurushi force sent half of the severed musket by messenger to the Prime Minister as evidence of the Bábis' ferocity—attempting to allay criticism from