was betrayed by his servant, insulted by the
seditious inhabitants of Merou, and oppressed, defeated, and pursued by
his Barbarian allies. He reached the banks of a river, and offered his
rings and bracelets for an instant passage in a miller's boat. Ignorant
or insensible of royal distress, the rustic replied, that four drams of
silver were the daily profit of his mill, and that he would not suspend
his work unless the loss were repaid. In this moment of hesitation and
delay, the last of the Sassanian kings was overtaken and slaughtered by
the Turkish cavalry, in the nineteenth year of his unhappy reign. His
son Firuz, an humble client of the Chinese emperor, accepted the station
of captain of his guards; and the Magian worship was long preserved by
a colony of loyal exiles in the province of Bucharia. His grandson
inherited the regal name; but after a faint and fruitless enterprise, he
returned to China, and ended his days in the palace of Sigan. The
male line of the Sassanides was extinct; but the female captives, the
daughters of Persia, were given to the conquerors in servitude, or
marriage; and the race of the caliphs and imams was ennobled by the
blood of their royal mothers.

After the fall of the Persian kingdom, the River Oxus divided the
territories of the Saracens and of the Turks. This narrow boundary was
soon overleaped by the spirit of the Arabs; the governors of Chorasan
extended their successive inroads; and one of their triumphs was adorned
with the buskin of a Turkish queen, which she dropped in her precipitate
flight beyond the hills of Bochara. But the final conquest of
Transoxiana, as well as of Spain, was reserved for the glorious reign of
the inactive Walid; and the name of Catibah, the camel driver, declares
the origin and merit of his successful lieutenant. While one of his
colleagues displayed the first Mahometan banner on the banks of the
Indus, the spacious regions between the Oxus, the Jaxartes, and the
Caspian Sea, were reduced by the arms of Catibah to the obedience of the
prophet and of the caliph. A tribute of two millions of pieces of gold
was imposed on the infidels; their idols were burnt or broken; the
Mussulman chief pronounced a sermon in the new mosch of Carizme; after
several battles, the Turkish hordes were driven back to the desert; and
the emperors of China solicited the friendship of the victorious Arabs.
To their industry, the prosperity of the province, the Sogdiana of the