A literary history of Persia

1 82 THE SAsANIAN PERIODwrath againstthis wicked king.iHis infant son, Ardashir, aboy seven years old, succeeded him, but was besieged andslain in his capital Ctesiphon by the usurper Shahrbaraz,who in turn was assassinated some forty days later (June 9,A.D. 630) by three of his bodyguard. Piiran-dukht, daughter ofKhusraw Parwiz, next ascended the perilous throne, and seemedby her wisdom and good intentions destined to inaugurate abrighter epoch, but, after restoring the wood of the TrueCross to the Byzantine Emperor, she too died after a reign ofsixteen months. She was succeeded by a distant cousin of herfather, who, under the name of Piruz, reigned less than amonth, and was followed by her sister, the beautiful Azarmfdukht.She, to avenge an insult, compassed the death ofFarrukh-Hurmazd, the Spahbadh of Khurasan, and was inturn slain, after a brief reign of six months, by his son Rustam,the Persian general, who four yearslater (in A.D. 635) perishedin the disastrous defeat of Qadisiyya. Four or five otherephemeral rulers, some of whom were murdered and somedeposed, intervened between her and her father's grandson, theill-fated Yazdigird the Third, who, last of that royal and nobleHouse, perished miserably, a solitary fugitive, at the hands of awretched churl whose greed had been aroused by the jewelswhich alone remained to the hunted and ruined king to tell ofhis rank and riches. When Nushirwan had heard from'Abdu'l-Masih the intepretation of his vision he consoledhimself with the reflection that fourteen kings of his Houseshould rule after him ere the final catastrophe. The firstfourteen kings of the dynasty reigned in all more than twocenturies : who could suppose that the reigns of the elevenrulers who intervened between Khusraw Parwiz and Yazdigirdthe Third would not altogether amount to more than fiveyears ? xAnd all this time the enemy was thundering at the gates of1Shiru'e succeeded to the throne on February 25, A.D. 628 ; YazdigirdIII, the last king of the House of Sasan, at the end of A.D. 632 or the beginningof A.D. 633.