Sykes' History of Persia - Heritage Institute

xLiii OVERTHROW OF PERSIAN EMPIRE 543
a foregone conclusion, but the Arabs term it the « or Victories.
Victory ^
The Annexation
of the Provinces
of P^n/^.—Tabari
describes at some length the rapid annexation of the
various provinces of Persia, and incidentally shows that
each province was left to organize its own resistance
without any help from the fugitive Great King. By
instructions received from Omar, the Arab army, after
gaining its decisive victory at Nahavand, marched on
Isfahan, and this
important city capitulated after a battle
in which the aged Persian
general was killed. In the
following year the Arab army advanced into Kerman and,
gaining a victory on the frontier of the province, marched
as far as the fertile valley of Jiruft to the south-east and
as (ar north as the province of Kuhistan and the town of
Tabas. Yet another column was directed on Sistan.
Zaranj, the capital, was not captured, but when the
Moslems occupied the province it was surrendered.
Finally, the irresistible Moslem arms were turned against
barren Makran, which Omar fixed as the eastern limit
\ of conquest.
To the north-east, the Persian governor of Rei collected
a force from the Gurgan, from Tabaristan and from
Kumis, but, partly owing to treachery, he was defeated.
Xhe Moslem troops subsequently marched east by the
great highway along which the last monarch of the
Achaemenian dynasty had fled before Alexander, and,
crossing the Elburz, received the submission of the
governor of Gurgan. Two columns moved on Azerbaijan,
which then stretched as far north as the famous fortress
of Derbent, and all this rich, desirable country submitted.
The conquest of Khorasan was apparently undertaken
last of all. Tabaristan alone, thanks to its pathless forests,
maintained an independent existence under hereditary
princes termed Sipahbud^ or Commanders-in-Chief, until
about A.D. 760.^
The Semites had held sway in the Babylonian and
1 Assyrian empires until they were succeeded by the Aryans
1 Vide Ibn Isfandiyar's History of Tabaristan^ edited by Browne (Gibb Memorial) j
also Chapter XLIX.