The population, 2500 in 1881, when the Russians seized it, was 19,428 in 1897, onethird Persians, many of them belonging to the Babi sect.
More recent works are: - Browne, The New History of the Bdb (Cambridge, 1893) and " Catalogue and Description of the 27 Babi Manuscripts," Journal of R.
It has a population of about 25,000 and post and telegraph offices, and was one of the original strongholds of the BabI sectarians, who held it against a large Persian force from May 1850 to the end of the year, when most of them were massacred.
