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 devoted to their chief, who was on this account a man of great influence throughout Persia. Some of his servants having quarrelled with some shopkeepers of the city, the latter pursued them to their master's house. The affray soon increased in dimensions, and the shopkeepers, being headed by one Moolla Hassan, succeeded in overpowering the Ismaïlites, whose chief they put to death. The news of this event was received with the greatest concern by the Shah, who dreaded lest he should be held responsible by the dangerous sect of Ismaïlites for the death of their sacred chief. Accordingly the ringleader of the disturbance was sent for to Tehran, and was flogged and otherwise severely punished in the Shah's presence. The actual perpetrators of the assassination of Shah HalilullahKhalilullah [sic], who boasted descent from him from whom the assassins are named, had met their death by the hands of his followers, and Fetteh Ali adopted his son Aga Khan, Mahalati, and added a considerable property to the estates which the boy had inherited from his father.

In the same year the port of Mahooya on the coast of the Persian Gulf was added to the dominions of the Shah, having been taken by Mahomed Zeki Khan.

In the earlier portion of the following year the attention of the Shah's government was again engrossed by the appearance of a most formidable combination of the powers of Herat, Central Asia, and Khorassan. Feerooz-ed-Deen Meerza, the Prince of Herat, had no sooner agreed to hold his principality under the King of Persia than he began to shrink from the consequences of having offended his brother, the Shah of