A literary history of Persia

172 THE SASANIAN PERIODwas at once seized, bound and buried alive head downwards inthe midst of a largemound of earth specially prepared for himin the middle of the garden. A contemporarycontemporary account of the massacre by an eyewitness.testimony.* 'Timotheus the Persian, has been preserved to usat thisby Theophanes and John Malalas. The presencehorrible scene of the Christian bishop Bazanes, who was alsothe King's physician,finds a curious parallel in recent times, forDr. Polak, court-physiciantopresentthe late Nasiru'd-Dm Shah, wasat the cruel execution of the beautiful Babi heroineQurratu'l-'Ayn in 1852.However great the number of Mazdakites who perished inthis massacre (which took place at the end of A.D. 528, orthe beginning of 520) may have been, the sectSubsequent his- .tory of the can hardly have been exterminated in a day. and'Mazdakites.there are reasons for believingthat a fresh persecutiontook place soon after Nushirwan's accession to thethrone (A.D. 531).After that, even, the sect,though no longermanifest, propably continued to exist in secret ;nor is itunlikely that, as is suggested by some Muhammadan writers,its doctrines, like those of the Manichaeans, passed over intoMuhammadan times, and were reproduced more or less faithfullyby some of those strange antinomian sects of later dayswhich will demand our attention in future chapters. Thisview is most strongly advanced by the celebrated Nizamu'l-Mulk, who, in his Treatise on Government [Siydsat-nAma]endeavours at great length to show that the Isma'ilis andAssassins towards whom he entertained so violent an antipathy(amply justified in the event by his assassination at their handson October 14, 1092) were the direct descendants of theMazdakites.4. The Decline and Fall of the Home of Sas&n.In the long and glorious reign of Nushlrwan (A.D. 531-578),