zed fidelity as
a quality that deserved reward, and was sufficiently magnanimous to
forgive an opposition that had sprung from a virtuous motive, and,
moreover, had not succeeded. Sufrai accordingly governed Persia for some
years; the army obeyed him, and the civil administration was completely
in his hands. Under these circumstances it is not surprising that Kobad
after a while grew jealous of his subordinate, and was anxious to strip
him of the quasi-regal authority which he exercised and assert his own
right to direct affairs. But, alone, he felt unequal to such a task. He
therefore called in the assistance of an officer who bore the name of
Sapor, and had a command in the district of Rhages. Sapor undertook to
rid his sovereign of the incubus whereof he complained, and, with the
tacit sanction of the monarch, he contrived to fasten a quarrel on
Sufrai which he pushed to such an extremity that, at the end of it,
he dragged the minister from the royal apartment to a prison, had him
heavily ironed, and in a few days caused him to be put to death.
Sapor, upon this, took the place previously occupied by Sufrai; he
was recognized at once as Prime Minister, and Sipehbed, or
commander-in-chief of the troops. Kobad, content to have vindicated his
royal power by the removal of Sufrai, conceded to the second favorite
as much as he had allowed to the first, and once more suffered the
management of affairs to pass wholly into the hands of a subject.

The only war in which Persia seems to have been engaged during the first
reign of Kobad was one with the Khazars. This important people,
now heard of for the first time in Persian history, appears to have
occupied, in the reign of Kobad, the steppe country between the Wolga
and the Don, whence they made raids through the passes of the Caucasus
into the fertile provinces of Iberia, Albania, and Armenia. Whether
they were Turks, as is generally believed, or Circassians, as has been
ingeniously argued by a living writer, is doubtful; but we cannot be
mistaken in regarding them as at this time a race of fierce and terrible
barbarians, nomadic in their habits, ruthless in their wars, cruel and
uncivilized in their customs, a fearful curse to the regions which they
overrun and desolated. We shall meet with them again, more than once,
in the later history, and shall have to trace to their hostility some of
the worst disasters that befel the Persian arms. On this occasion it
is remarkable t