REBELLION OF THE SALAR. 363 cession to power of Nasser-ed-deen Shah. But the sole exploit of this paltry pretender to regal power was to roh a courier of the Eussian Mission of the sum of three thousand five hundred ducats. His forces were soon afterwards routed, and he himself made prisoner by some horsemen of the Affshar tribe, who brought him, tied with cords, to Tehran. But the most formidable opponent whom the young Shah had to put down was, as might have been expected, the gallant son of Allah-yar Khan. Some of his fol- lowers having taken sanctuary in the great mosque of Meshed, the servants of the governor of Khorassan, actuated by imprudent zeal, desired to drag them out from the holy precincts, or to slay them over the tomb of the saint. Such sacrilegious talking shocked the feelings of the priests and pilgrims, and they called on the people to assist in saving from insult the shrine of the blessed Imam. The appeal was not without effect, and the people of Meshed drove the impious soldiers from the mosque, and were from that hour devoted to the cause of the Salar. On the receipt of the news of the Shah's death, that chief lost no time in taking possession of the city of Meshed, and he forced the governor to take refuge in the citadel. During the interval which elapsed between the death of Mahomed Shah and his son's arrival at the capital, the city of Tehran was a scene of intrigues and counter- intrigues which were planned in quick succession. No effort was spared by the ambitious and the unworthy to undermine those in whom it seemed likely that the Shah would place confidence. A priest named Nasrullah was now the chief of the Azerbaeejan party, and as he also
