A literary history of Persia

174 THE SASANIAN PERIODthe Staff 1 be found and the hosts shall seethe in the Vale of Samdwa,*and dried up shall be the Lake of Sdwa, and the Holy Fire of Persiashall fail, no more for Satih shall Syria avail ! Yet to the numberof the turrets 3 your kings and queens shall reign, and their empire"that which is to come cometh amain Iretain, thoughThese tales of portent and presage must, however, be regardedrather as pious after-thoughts than as historical facts. Thebirth of the Arabian Prophet, likemany another momentousevent, was announced, we may be sure, by no such blare ofcelestial trumpets, and did not for a moment occupy theattention even of the men of Mecca, for whom the " Year ofthe Elephant " afforded ample food for thought and anxiety.In the early part of the sixth century the political positionof the Arabs was as follows. In the west the kingdom ofGhassan and in the east the kingdomPtonsofof Hira acknowledgedmore or less the suzerainty of Byzanethe" tium and persia respectively.bulk The of theArabs of Central Arabia, secure in their desertsrrixufcwitwy.and broken up into numerous more or less hostiletribes, fought and sang and robbed and raided much as do theBedouin of to-day, with little regard for the neighbouring states.In the south the rich and ancient kingdom of Yaman enjoyed,under its own Tubba's or kings, a larger measure of wealth,prosperity, and civilisation. The infamous usurper Lakhi'a,called Dhu Shandtir, met his well-merited doom at the handsof the young prince Dhu Nuwas, who for since the days of1I.e., the Caliph 'Umar, in whose reign (AJX 634-644) the conquest ofPersia was chiefly effected.2A place near Hira, in the neighbourhood of which was fought thefateful battle of Qadisiyya.3 I.e., the fourteen turrets or battlements which, in Nushirwan's dream,fell from the palace. Nushirwan's fourteen successors are presumably to bereckoned as follows :(i) Hurmazd IV ; (2) Khusraw Parwiz ; (3) Shiru'e ;(4) Ardashir III ; (5) Shahrbaraz ; (6) Puran-dukht ; (7) Gushnaspdeh ?(8) Azarmi-dukht ; (9) Khusraw, son of Mihr-Gushnasp ; (10) Khurrazadh-Khusraw ; (n) Piruz, son of Gushnaspdeh; (12) Farrukhzadh-Khusraw ;(13) Hurmazd V; (14) Yazdigird III.