The Babis did not refrain from burning villages...

The eyewitness accounts indicate that the Babis did not refrain from burning villages to stop the army from using them for cover or acquiring provisions from them. In a siege, such measures are part of the defence of the fortress.

E.G. Browne and other scholars, such as Hamid Algar and Denis MacEoin, propose different interpretations of the Babi-state clashes that emphasize the religious, as opposed to socio-economic, basis of the conflict. According to Browne, the objective of the Babis was nothing less than the replacement of Qajar rule with a Babi theocracy in the immediate future. He writes: The original Babis who fought so desperately against the Persian Government at Shaykh Tabarsi, Zanjan, Nayriz and elsewhere in 1848–50 aimed at a Babi theocracy and a reign of the saints on earth; they were irreconcilably hostile to the existing government and Royal Family, and were only interested for the most part in the triumph of their faith, not in any projects of social or political reform.

-SIYAMAK ZABIHI-MOGHADDAM, STUDIES IN MODERN RELIGIONS, RELIGIOUS
MOVEMENTS AND THE BABI-BAHA'I FAITHS, Edited by Moshe Sharon, Page 195