British and Russians were seriously interested in the Babis

It is undeniable that the British and Russians were seriously interested in the Bābīs (as they were in any movement of potential significance in the Middle East at this period) and that later contacts between Bāhāʾīs and British and Russian government officials or missionaries were often cordial and of mutual benefit, but the sort of evidence that would lead to the far-reaching conclusions of the polemical literature is lacking.

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Whatever the truth behind these events in Nūr and Tehran, the arrests and executions that followed the attempt on the Shāh’s life seem to have put an effective end to the Bābī network in that region. Mullā Shaykh ʿAlī Turshīzī ʿAzīm, ḥusayn Mīlānī, Ḥājj Sulaymān Khān Tabrīzī, Mīrzā Rafīʿ Nūrī, and the four men from Tākur mentioned above, all perished in the period immediately following the attempt. Subh-i Azal succeeded in escaping to Baghdad, where he was followed in 1853 by his brother Ḥusayn ʿAlī, who chose to go there after he had been released from prison in Tehran on the intervention of the Russian Minister.

-Denis MacEoin, The Messiah of Shiraz