Mullá ʻAlí-i-Bastámí (died 1846) was the second Letter of the Living in the Bábí movement. He is also probably the first and one of the best known martyrs of the early Bábí period. Biography Early life He was born near the small city of Bastam in northwestern Persia during the reign of the Qajar dynasty. He married in his youth and had at least one child. As a young man gained a reputation for his interest in religion and studied as a Mullah in the shrine city of Mashhad as a young man. In Mashhad he became familiar with local clerics who were associated with the millenarian Shaykhí denomination of Shia Islam and was attracted to Shaykhí doctrine. Eventually he moved to Karbala in the Ottoman Empire and studied under Siyyid Kazim Rashti then the leader of Shaykhism for at least seven years. Conversion to Bábism Shaykis expected the imminent arrival of the Qa'im or Mahdi, and after the death of Siyyid Kazim in January 1844, Bastámí led a group of Shaykhís who—along with a group led by Mullá Husayn sought out the expected Mahdi. On May 22, 1844 Mullá Husayn became the first Shayki to accept a Shirazi merchant named Siyyid ʿAli Muhammad as the Mahdi predicted in Islamic eschatology; Bastámí reportedly converted rapidly after hearing some verses of the Qayyúmu'l-Asmáʼ written by Ali Muhammad. ʿAli Muhammad would later take on the title of the Báb, meaning "gate" in Arabic and declare himself to be a Manifestation of God founding the new religion of Bábism. Bastámí accepted the Báb as the Mahdi on their first meeting and was appointed by him to the position of one of eighteen Letters of the Living and identified as the allegorical return of the Shia Imam 'Ali. Most sources identify him as the second Letter of the Living, but a minority say he was the fourth. A tablet was addressed by the Báb to each of the Letters of the Living, including Bastámí; no translation of this tablet into English exists at present. Trial in Baghdad The Báb gave Bastámí the very specific mission of leaving Persia and travelling to the holy Shiʻa shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala in modern-day Iraq about the summer of 1844. It was here he was to announce the Báb's mission to mujtahid Shaykh Muhammad Hasan, a senior member of the Shiʻa clergy. He was put on