# Hajji Sulayman Khan Tabrizi

*Exported from [Holy-Writings.com](https://www.holy-writings.com/) on 2026-06-21 — 1 clipping.*

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> Source: Bahá'í Library Online (bahai-library.com), curated by Jonah Winters. Used by permission of the curator. Original citation: Mohammad Norozi, Hajji Sulayman Khan Tabrizi, bahai-library.com.
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> Hajji Sulayman Khan Tabrizi: a devout follower of the Bab with
> Qajar court connections
> 
> What follows is a brief account of one the heroes in the Babi
> history who followed the Bab earnestly and finally sacrificed his
> life in His path (extracted and modified from “To dance like
> Solomon: imitation and martyrdom in a Qajar ghazal” by Dominic
> Parviz Brookshaw).
> Compiled by: Mohammad Norozi
> 
> Hajji Sulayman Khan Tabrizi (d. 1852), the prominent Babi was the son of Yahya Khan,
> a nobleman of Tabriz and commander of the royal stewards of the Crown Prince,
> ‘Abbas Mirza (d. 1833), who subsequently served in a similar capacity under
> Muhammad Shah (r. 1834-1848). From an early age, Sulayman Khan showed no
> interest in government or court position, preferring to journey to Karbala where he
> frequented Sayyid Kazim Rashti’s lectures. Though he may have met the Bab in
> Mecca while on Hajj in 1844, Sulayman Khan is thought to have become a Babi later,
> possibly during a second journey to Iraq. Back in Tabriz, Sulayman Khan openly
> praised the Bab in verse and proclaimed the new religion. He was arrested and was
> to be taken to Tehran when his mother, Hajjiya Khanum, who was much respected by
> the local authorities, appealed to the governor and demanded her son be allowed to
> stay in Tabriz. After the Bab was transferred to the remote fortress at Chihriq in
> Azerbaijan in the spring of 1848, Sulayman Khan managed to disguise himself and
> enter the prison to enjoy an audience with the Bab. In early 1849, Sulayman Khan
> ventured to join his fellow Babis in their struggle at Shaykh Tabarsi but by the time he
> reached Tehran, the siege was over. Sulayman Khan remained in Tehran but refused
> government position and associated continually with other leading Babis, seeking out
> the few that had survived Shaykh Tabarsi.
> In 1850, in collaboration with Baha’ullah, Sulayman Khan tried to reverse the death
> sentence imposed on the Bab. When Sulayman Khan learned that the Bab was due
> to be executed, Baha’ullah urged him to hurry to his hometown. Sulayman Khan
> arrived in Tabriz on 10th July 1850, the day after the Bab was martyred. Learning that
> the Bab’s remains had been deposited beside the moat beyond the city walls where
> they were under armed guard, Sulayman Khan approached the city’s mayor, Hajji
> Mirza Mihdi Baghmisha’i, for help. The mayor, a Sufi who was an old friend of
> Sulayman Khan, enlisted the assistance of a certain Hajji Allahyar Khan. A much-
> feared gang leader, Allahyar Khan intimidated the guards and facilitated Sulayman
> Khan’s retrieval of the Bab’s remains on the second night following his execution.
> Sulayman Khan took the remains to a silk factory owned by a Babi where he wrapped
> them in silk and placed them in a wooden casket. From Azerbaijan, under Baha’ullah’s
> instructions, Sulayman Khan transferred the wooden casket to Tehran where it was
> hidden in various shrines and private homes in and around the capital for more than
> four decades before being transported to Palestine and ultimately buried on Mount
> Carmel in Haifa in 1909.
> In 1850, Sulayman Khan’s brother, Farrukh Khan, who was sent to Zanjan to crush
> the Babi uprising, was killed by followers of the town’s leading Babi, Hujjat
> (interestingly, Sulayman Khan and Farrukh Khan’s sister, Khan Qizi, was herself a
> committed Babi). The shah’s chief minister, Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir (1807-1852),
> though he knew of Sulayman Khan’s Babi leanings, tolerated him, and by 1851,
> Sulayman Khan was hosting large gatherings of Babis in his residences in Central
> Tehran and nearby Dizashib. Traumatized by successive massacres of Babis at
> Shaykh Tabarsi, Nayriz, and Zanjan, and the execution of the Bab himself, Tehran’s
> Babis gathered around various claimants to leadership. Many looked to Shaykh ‘Ali
> ‘Azim and to Husayn Jan Milani, who set about orchestrating the failed attempt on the
> life of Nasir al-Din Shah on 15 August 1852. Following this unsuccessful assassination
> attempt, Sulayman Khan’s Tehran house was raided and he was arrested along with
> twelve other Babis suspected of involvement in the regicidal plot. In all around thirty of
> Tehran’s leading Babis were soon put to death in frightful circumstances after being
> subjected to various judicial tortures. The majority of the mob lynchings and executions
> took place within a week of the attempt on the life of the shah (so between 16 and 22
> August 1852). Though cleared of all wrongdoing, Sulayman Khan was executed in a
> cruel and gruesome manner that, as Amanat notes, earned him a special place in the
> chronicles of the Babi martyrs.
> By 1850, the royal court concluded that the Babi movement constituted a dangerous
> revolutionary menace to the Qajar state that needed to be eradicated entirely. The
> Babi bloodbath that followed, Amanat says, “set new standards for cruelty and sadistic
> frenzy.” Thus began the ‘ulama’s extensive and comprehensive persecution of the
> Babis that at times involved the enforced participation of the Iranian people in the
> extermination of the Bab’s followers. The notorious Hajib al-Dawla (the chief court
> chamberlain, ‘Ali Khan Maragha’i; d. 1867) had been instructed by the shah that, if
> assured of Sulayman Khan’s innocence, he should persuade him to recant. If he did
> so, Sulayman Khan’s life was to be spared. The Hajib al-Dawla found Sulayman Khan
> to be innocent but, since he refused to deny his faith in the Bab, the shah ordered he
> be put to death; the one concession being that Sulayman Khan could choose the
> manner of his execution. Zarandi’s account of the tortures inflicted on Sulayman Khan
> and the gruesome details of his martyrdom is based largely on information provided
> to him by Baha’ullah’s full brother, Mirza Musa Nuri.
> Sulayman Khan was conducted southwards from the vicinity of the Gulistan Palace
> through the bazaar via the Darvaza-yi Naw (the southerly city gate built by Muhammad
> Shah also known as Darvaza-yi Muhammadiya), to an open area just beyond the walls
> that came to be called Maydan-i I‘dam (Execution Square). The bazaar quarter, with
> its many mosques, shrines, and takyas (buildings used for mourning rituals during
> Muharram), was the center of socio-religious life in early Qajar Tehran and, in effect,
> an open air public performance space for the Muharram mourning processions (dasta-
> gardānī). Given the popularity of such events at all levels of Qajar society, the
> spectacle of Sulayman Khan’s real-life martyrdom unfolding as he was paraded
> through the streets may have appealed to Tehran’s majority Shi‘i population. Sulayman
> Khan was taken on a long procession around the alleyways of the bazaar from morning
> until nightfall. And since the capital’s Azeri residents lived predominantly in the bazaar
> quarter, this meant that Sulayman Khan was marched to his death past throngs of his
> fellow Tabrizis.
> Being led around the city streets formed the basis of tashhīr, punishment by exposure
> aimed at publicizing the accused’s infamy with the goal of inciting ridicule.
> In accordance with Sulayman Khan’s wishes, burning candles were inserted into
> wounds made in his flesh in a barbaric torture method called sham‘-ājīn (lit. stitched
> or sewn with candles). Once the lighted candles had been inserted into the cuts in his
> body, Sulayman Khan asked to be conducted through Tehran so that the populace
> might witness his torment (his motivation being that the intensity of his suffering may
> inspire them to recognize the validity of the Bab’s claims). Though often used as a
> degrading torture method, sham‘-ājīn was also one of the more violent self- mutilations
> (alongside qama zadan and tīgh zadan [self-laceration performed with a short blade,
> typically on the forehead and scalp]) performed by men as pious penance or as a way
> of fulfilling a vow (nazr). This self-reflexive aspect of the devotional form of sham‘-ājīn
> potentially prompted Sulayman Khan to choose this specific form of torture for his own
> execution.
> When the executioner hesitated to make the incisions, Sulayman Khan attempted to
> snatch the knife to cut into his own flesh. The executioner then ordered his men to tie
> the victim’s hands behind his back and to cut a total of nine deep holes in Sulayman
> Khan’s naked flesh: two in his chest, two in his shoulders, one in the nape of his neck,
> and four others in his back. In each wound, the guards inserted a burning candle and
> then processed him with much pomp and gaiety through the bazaar to the rhythm of
> music played by minstrels blowing long horns and beating large drums. Some
> accounts say this carnivalesque cavalcade was accompanied by dancers, and even
> by trained monkeys and bears (used to humiliate the victims and entertain the crowds).
> Throughout his ordeal, Sulayman Khan displayed stoic fortitude. Followed on his
> march by a large crowd, Sulayman Khan was goaded by bystanders to dance. He is
> said to have been unperturbed by the screams of the curious male and female
> spectators who gathered in large numbers to watch the gory spectacle and hurl dust
> and ashes upon him. Active crowd participation was encouraged: spectators were
> prompted to insult and molest Sulayman Khan or to reward the executioners as a sign
> of their loyalty to the shah. Yet even the sight of his own blood gushing from his wounds
> did not diminish Sulayman Khan’s courageous resolve. Interrupting this macabre
> parade, Sulayman Khan frequently paused to address the bystanders, to glorify the
> Bab, and to recite verses from the Qur’an. A poet of some talent, Sulayman Khan is
> said to have recited poetry during his torture, including
> the following bayt adapted from the opening hemistich of a ghazal by Rumi:
> ‫باز آمدم باز آمدم از راه شیراز آ مد م‬
> ‫با عشوه و ناز آمدم هذا جنون العاشق‬
> I have returned, I have returned, I have come back by way of Shiraz.
> I have come with coquetry and charm; such is the lover’s insanity!
> Here Sulayman Khan alludes to his beloved, the Bab, by modifying Rumi’s az pīsh-i
> ān yār (“from the presence of that dear friend”) to az rāh-i Shīrāz (“by way of Shiraz”),
> an allusion to the Bab’s hometown and the birthplace of the Babi movement.
> According to another account, Sulayman Khan, appearing to delight in seeing the
> candles flicker in his bleeding wounds, whenever one of the candles fell, would pick it
> up, light it from one of the still burning candles, and reposition it. The breeze blowing
> through the bazaar increased the intensity of the burning of the candles and, as they
> melted and their flames reached the level of the incisions, those nearby could hear the
> sizzling of Sulayman Khan’s flesh. The wicks are said to have burned so deep that,
> “the fat flickered convulsively in the wound like a newly-extinguished lamp.” No longer
> sensitive to the sting of the fire and indifferent to the pain to which he was subjected,
> Sulayman Khan, enveloped by the flames, “walked as a conqueror might have
> marched to the scene of his victory.”
> The executioner mocked Sulayman Khan and asked him why he does not dance when
> he finds death so pleasant. Having arrived at the open space beyond Darvaza-yi Naw,
> Sulayman Khan once again addressed the crowd, prostrated himself in the direction
> of Imamzada Hasan, murmured something in Arabic, and instructed the executioner
> to do his work. It was then that his long and painful death reached its climax when he
> was sawn into two halves. His scorched, blood-soaked remains, as per his request,
> were then suspended on either side of the city gate. According to the Hungarian
> Persianist, Ármin Vámbéry (1832-1913), Sulayman Khan’s bare feet were shod with
> horseshoes, and his teeth were all pulled out shortly before he was cleaved in two.
> The cruelty, barbarity, and violence of the agonies inflicted on Babi victims prior to
> execution were noted by the British envoy to Iran, Sir Justin Sheil, in a dispatch dated
> 22 August 1852 in which he reports, “About ten persons have been executed, some
> with circumstances of great cruelty. Lighted candles have been stuck into the bodies
> of two or three, and after being allowed to linger, they have been halved with a hatchet
> while still alive …
> Of Sulayman Khan’s gory ordeal in the streets of south Tehran, Lady Sheil writes,
> “During these horrific tortures he is said to have preserved his fortitude to the last, and
> to have danced to the place of execution in defiance of his tormentors, and of the
> agony caused by the burning candles … ”
>
> — *Hajji Sulayman Khan Tabrizi (Used by permission of the curator)*