bled at Koofah, and thence marched to the plains of Na haound, about forty miles to the south of Hamadan, on which the Persians had established a camp, surrounded by a deep entrenchment. During two months these great armies continued in sight of each other, and many skirmishes occurred. At the end of that time, Noman drew up his army in order of battle, and thus addressed the soldiers; "My friends, prepare yourselves to conquer, or to drink of the sweet sherbet* of martyrdom. I shall now call the Tukbeer three times : at the first, you will gird your loins; at the second, mount your steeds; at a third, point your lances, and rush to victory or to paradise. As to me," said Noman, with a loud voice, "I shall be a martyr! When I am slain, obey the orders of Huzeefah-ebn-Aly-Oman."

The Tukbeer (Allah-Akbar, or, "God is great") was sounded; and when it had ceased, the Mohammedans charged with a fury that was irresistible. Noman was slain, as he predicted; but the Persians sustained a total overthrow. The empire of Persia was for ever lost; and that mighty nation fell under the dominion of the Arabian khaliphs.

Jezdegerd protracted for several years a wretched and precarious existence. He first fled to Segistan, then to Khorassan, and lastly to Merou, on the river Oxus, or Gihon. The governor of this city invited the khakan of the Tartarst to take possession of the person of the fugitive monarch. The invitation was accepted; his troops entered Merou, (the gates of which were opened to them by the treacherous governor,) and made themselves masters of it, after a brave resistance from the inhabitants. Jezdegerd escaped from the town dur ing the contest, and reached a mill eight miles from Merou, and entreated the miller to conceal him. The man promised his protection; but, yielding to the temptation of making his fortune by the possession of the rich arms and robes of the unfortunate prince, he treacherously murdered him. The governor of Merou, and those who had aided him, in a few days began to suffer from the tyranny of the khakan, and to repent of their treachery. They encouraged the citizens to rise upon the Tartars; and they not only recovered the city, but forced the khakan to fly with great loss to Bokharah.

* In warm countries, where wine is forbidden, sherbet or lemonade is the beverage in which they delight.

+ Khondimir says it was the king of the Hiatila, of "White Huns," whom he invited; but Ferdosi says it was a chief or Turan, who ruled at Samarcand.

The fate of Jezdegerd was now discovered, and the rapacious and treacherous miller fell a victim to the popular rage; and the corpse of the monarch was embalmed, and sent to Istakhr, to be interred in the sepulchre of his ancestors, A. D. 652.

Jezdegerd possessed the royal title nineteen years; ten of which he was a fugitive, reckoning from the battle of Nahaound, A. D. 642. He was the last sovereign of the house of Sassan, a family which governed Persia during 411 years; and the memory of which is still cherished by a nation whose ancient glory is associated with the names of Artaxerxes, Sapor, and Chosroes.

Thus closes the ancient history of Persia. So rapid a declension, from A. D. 614, when the Persian empire was at its height, and larger than it had been since the days of Alexander the Great, is unexampled in history. But the rod had blossomed, pride had budded, and violence had risen up into a rod of wickedness; and hence its doom went forth from Heaven, that it shauld be destroyed. The extraordinary Saracen* power was the instrument by which its overthrow was effected; but the seeds of destruction were found in its own bosom. That impious monarch, Chosru Parviz, by his rapacity and cruelty, alienated the affections of his generals from his family, while his rage for war had drained the country of its ablest defenders, and left it wasted and distracted; thus it became an easy prey to the needy and ferocious Saracens. They came upon the Persians as an overflowing flood, and swept their power from off the earth. Animated by an enthusiasm which made then despise the most fearful odds, as the ministers of vengeance, they sought battle as a feast, and counted danger a sport. They had ever in their mouths the magnificent orientalism, traditionally ascribed to Mohammed, "In the shades of the scimitars is paradise prefigured;" and under the influence of these feelings, their power was irresistible. Such is the ever-changing nature of all mundane af

* Concerning the etymology of the word Saracen, there have been various opinions; but its true derivation is Sharkeyn, which means, in Arabic," the eastern people." This was first corrupted into Saracenoi, by the Greek, and thence into Saraceni, by the Latin writers. The name seems to have been applied by Pliny to the Bedouin Arabs, who inhabited the countries between the Euphrates and the Tigris, and separated the Roman possessions in Asia from the dominions of the Parthian kings. In course of time, it became the general name of all the Arab tribes who embraced the faith of Islam, and spread their conquests widely through Asia and Africa, and part of Europe.

fairs. In this age, power and empire are in the hands of one people; in the next, a nation unheard of before comes forth, and rudely plucks it from their hands. By whose direction

do these things occur?

Happy the man who sees a God employ'd
In all the good and ill that chequer life;
Resolving all events, with their effects
And manifold results, into the will

And arbitration wise of the Supreme.-CowPER.

Reader, let it be your prayer, that you may enjoy this happiness, that you may see the Divine hand in past, present, and coming events!

A BRIEF SKETCH

OF THE

MODERN HISTORY OF PERSIA.

THE hand of the great Ruler of the universe may be as clearly traced in the modern, as in the ancient history of Persia. For more than two centuries after the Mohammedan conquest, the country was a mere province in the empire of the caliphs. With the decay, however, of the power of the caliphs, the spirit of independence revived, so that about A. D. 868, Yakub Ibu Lais threw off his allegiance to the caliph, founded the Soffarian dynasty, and fixed at Shiras the capital of a dominion including nearly all Persia.

His brother and successor, Amer, was subdued A. d. 900, by the Tartar family of the Samanides, who ruled Khorassan and Trans-Oxiana, till A. D. 999, while Western Persia again acknowledged allegiance to the caliph till A. D. 936, when the utter disruption of the Abbaside power threw it into the hands of the three sons of Bouyah, Amad-ed-doulah, Ruku-ed-doulah, and Moazz-ed-doulah, who shared the kingdom among them. 'These, with their successors, ruled Persia, with more or less success, till A. D. 1028, when Mahmood, who, thirty years before, had founded the dynasty of the Ghazneoides in Cabul and Khorassan, subdued their last successors in Eastern Persia.

The whole country was on the point of falling into the hands of this conqueror, when the Seljukian Turks, originally received as vassals by the Ghazneoide princes, snatched the prize from their hands. Pouring down from Central Asia, they defeated Massood, the son and successor of Mahmood, A. D. 1040, near Nishapur, and placed their own sultan, Togrul Beg, in possession of Persia, to which, A. D. 1055, he

added Bagdad and Irak, with the guardianship of the caliph ate, deposing the last of the house of Bouyah.

This Perso-Turkish monarchy rose to great splendour ; but civil wars commencing between the sons of Malek Shah, about A. D. 1120, and continuing their devastations to the nextgeneration, their power was gradually weakened, so that, A. D. 1194, Persia fell under the yoke of the Khorasmian sultan, Takash, who slew their last successor, Togrul m., and extended his sway from the Caspian and the sea of Aral, to the Indus and the Persian Gulf.

This mighty power, however, soon vanished. GengisKhan, the redoubtable ruler of the Moguls beyond the Jaxartes, invaded Persia, A. D. 1218, with a mighty host, and chased Mohammed, the successor of Takash, from his dominions. The son of Takash struggled manfully for the kingdom; but he dying, A. D. 1230, the Khorasmian power was dissolved, and Persia laid prostrate at the feet of the Moguls.

Gengis-Khan and his successors ruled in Persia during about ninety years, when Persia became divided and distracted by numberless petty dynasties perpetually at war with each other. This was the signal for another invader.

The celebrated Tamerlane, already master of Trans-Oxiana and Tartary, invaded Khorassan, in 1381, and in twelve years subdued Persia to his sway. In a few years after his death, however, Persia relapsed into a state of division and anarchy, worse than even that which had preceded his irruption. His son, indeed, ruled over Khorassan, Trans-Oxiana, and Tartary; but his descendants were expelled by the Uzbeks, at the end of the century, while the western provinces were contested by two races of Turkomans, distinguished by their emblems of the Black and White Sheep, the latter of which finally prevailed, A. D. 1469, under their leader, Hassan the Tall, ruler of Diarbekr.

The White Sheep dynasty was of brief duration. Hassan the Tall, encountering the superior power of the Ottoman sultan, Mohammed II., sustained a signal defeat in Anatolia, 1473, which greatly weakened his power, and his relatives and descendants were finally supplanted and crushed, in 1503, by Ismael Shah, the founder of the Seft, Sooffee, or Seffavean dynasty.

This race of sovereigns, by their rule and character, imparted to the Persian monarchy a greater degree of stability, and a more settled form of government, than it had enjoyed for some centuries. They sat on the throne of Persia during