[5] ʿAli Muhammad would later take on the title of the Báb, meaning "gate" in Arabic and declare himself to be a Manifestation of God founding the new religion of Bábism.
Bastámí accepted the Báb as the Mahdi on their first meeting and was appointed by him to the position of one of eighteen Letters of the Living and identified as the allegorical return of the Shia Imam 'Ali.
The Báb gave Bastámí the very specific mission of leaving Persia and travelling to the holy Shiʻa shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala in modern-day Iraq about the summer of 1844.
He was put on trial for heresy on the basis of a copy of the Qayyúmu'l-Asmáʼ in his possession on 13 January 1845 by a combined panel of Shiʻa and Sunni clerics.
[1] Persian politicians continued insisting, but when the Ottomans finally agreed, 4 December 1846, it was found he had died a few days before, and was accounted to be the first Bábi martyr by Bábis and Baháʼís.