Page:Historyofpersiaf00watsrich.djvu/155

 to renew the blockade of the city. One of the king's sons accordingly marched to his aid, and pressed the men of Meshed to open their gates to the king's lieutenant. But Nadir Meerza was determined to hold out so long as he might have a chance of being able to resist the Shah's authority. Familiarity with the shrine of Imam Reza seems to have removed from his mind the superstitious dread with which even the most hardened Persians would contemplate an act of sacrilege against so holy a mosque. In order to enable him to defray the expense of maintaining troops for the defence of the walls, he boldly proceeded to the sacred precincts where the priests chanted the song of praise of the Imam whose ashes were there entombed. Entering the Holy of Holies at the head of a band of men as unscrupulous as himself, he hewed away the silver bars that kept off the crowd of devotees from pressing on the tomb of the Imam. The dome of the mosque itself, before which, as it glitters in the Eastern sun, thousands of pilgrims from the utmost parts of Asia bow their heads in silent awe, the dome itself was stripped of its golden splendours to supply the demands of the lawless soldiery. After the commission of an act so entirely in defiance of public feeling, Nadir seems to have become utterly reckless. The infuriated crowd rushed upon the band of despoliators, and, by superior numbers, forced them to desist from further aggression on the holy places.

Nadir attributed this resistance to his authority to the promptings of the venerable Syed Mehdi, the priest who a few weeks before had been the means of delivering his fellow-citizens from the blockade that had been established by Fetteh Ali Shah. This descendant