Persia from the Earliest Period to the Arab

HISTORY OF PERSIA. l8l
Some years before the war with Heraclius, Khosn'i
had received a letter from the "camel-driver oi
Mecca," enjoining him to abjure the faith of his
ancestors, and to embrace the worship of the " One
True God," of Whom he, Muhammed, professed himself
the Apostle. The indignant monarch, tearing the
letter in pieces, cast the fragments into the Karasu,
by the side of which he was then encamped. To
this action, Muhammedan writers attribute all the
subsequent misfortunes of this prince ; nor, indeed, has
this belief even now faded away. Malcolm, when him-
self halting at this river, in 1 800, remarked to a Persian
that its banks were very high, and its waters, therefore,
of little comparatively use for the purposes of irriga-
"
tion. It once fertilized the whole country," replied
the zealous Muhammedan " but its channel sank with
horror from its banks when that madman, Khosn'i,
threw our holy prophet's letter into the stream ;
which
has ever since been accursed and useless."
The first attacks of the Arabs were repelled ;
but the Khalif Omar continually supplying fresh
reinforcements, the battle of Kadesiah well retrieved
their former disasters ; and the glory of Persia,
as an independent country, ceased for ever, when
the famous Darafsh-i-Kawani was captured by the
Arabs. The sack of Madain (Ctesiphon), and the
carnage of Nehavend followed, and the empire of the
Sassanidae and with it the religion of Zoroaster, as a
national faith, fell from the grasp of Yezdigird III,
the last feeble ruler of this house. Thus ended, in A.D.
641, a dynasty who had ruled Persia for 415 years,
and which in the hands of Ardashir I, Shahpur II,