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.
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.
Another of the victims of that day was Hajji Mirth Jani of Kashan, the author of the oldest history of the movement from the Babi point of view.
