VII. AKĪM ‘ALĪ.*

He is sister's son to akīmn-l-Mulk and was the pupil of his uncle and of Shāh Fatḥu-'llah of Shīrāz, in medicine, and studied traditional learning under Shaikh ‘Abdu-n-Nabī. Notwith­standing his great learning in the holy law and in Sunnī theo­logy, his malignancy in adhering to the Zaidī* sect and his obstinacy in the Shī‘ah heresy, in which matters he resembles the other physicians of the age, are as great as ever they were.* His excellence in acquired knowledge, and especially in the science of medicine, is extreme, and he is passionately devoted to the practice of the healing art, but as he is but a youth, self-opinion­ated 167 and of limited experience, it sometimes happens that a patient, after taking one of his draughts speedily has a taste of the draught of extinction, and notwithstanding the fact that he was the pupil of Shāh Fatḥu-'llāh of Shīrāz, he ordered him, when he was in an ardent fever, a diet of thick pottage,* thereby handing him over to death, the executioner.

“To drink with him is death to the senses.”