Vahid's holy war (Babi Jihad) on Muslims with some nine hundred heavily armed supporters

The Yazd and Nayrīz upheavals of 1850, led by Sayyid Yaḥyā Dārābī Vaḥīd, although on a much smaller scale than that of Zanjān, exhibit many features similar to it. Dārābī was a highly popular religious leader who had the allegiance of large numbers in both towns. He himself seems to have been preparing for a holy war and is known to have tested the swords manufactured by Āqā Muḥammad Hādī Farhādī in Qazvīn. On his arrival at Nayrīz, in opposition to the orders of the local governor, Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn Khān, he made his way to the principal mosque of the city, accompanied by some nine hundred heavily armed supporters, many with swords drawn, and ascended the pulpit in order to preach to a congregation of about one thousand five hundred. There is good reason to believe that very few of Dārābī’s followers knew much of the teachings of the Bāb, and it seems likely that social and political motives dominated the struggle. In Yazd, for example, there had been serious civil disturbance in the town prior to Dārābī’s arrival, and at least one of those who lent him his support was a known agitator, In Nayrīz also, the people had already been rebelling against the governor at the time of Dārābī’s appearance in the town. Like Zanjānī, the latter seems to have been regarded as an independent authority over against the existing civil powers. In one instance, Hājī Sayyid Ismāʿīl, the Shaykh al-Islām of Bavānāt, ordered the arrest of a certain Mullā Bāqir, an ambassador en route from the governor of Nayrīz to Prince Fīrūz Mīrzā in Shīrāz; the unfortunate man was brought before Dārābī by the village chief of Rastāq and put to death.

(Denis MacEoin, The Messiah of Shiraz, p. 492)