Acanthia - 1907 Author:William Stigand Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: ZOHRAB AND RUSTEM INTRODUCTION Rustem came of a feudal family, who under the Kai or Emperor of Iran (Persia) were mediatised sovereign princes of Zabulistan.... more » Zabulistan appears to have been Beloochistan. The princes of Zabulistan were feudally subject to the Kai in much the same way as the Electors of Brandenburgh and Bavaria owed fealty to the German Emperor in the days of the Holy Roman Empire. At the beginning of the legendary part of Firdusi's great poem, the Shah Nameh, the Iranian or Persian Empire appears to have comprised the greater part of Asia outside the limits of the Byzantine Empire, styled Roum. The empire of the Kai seems to have comprised even China, for Chinese princes served in the armies of the Kai. But Feridun, the founder of the Sassanide dynasty, when he felt his end approaching, divided his empire among his three sons, in the same fashion as the Carlovingian Empire was divided at the death of Charlemagne, and this division gave cause to the endless wars which occupy the first part of the Shalt Namch. Finally the empire was divided into Iran, the country of the Persians or Iranians, and Turan, the country of the Turks. The river Oxus formed the boundary between the two empires. The feeling of enmity, which was inherited from two hostile brothers, sons of Feridun, was heightened by the fact that the Iranians were, in the ancient fire religion of Asia, the worshippers or favourites of Ormuzd, the God of Light, while the Turks and their Sultans were worshippers and favourites of Ahriman, the Spirit of Darkness. During the greater part of the legendary half of the Shah Nameh Ahriman with his evil inspirations incites Afrasiab, the faithless and cruel tyrant and Soldan of the Turks, to conceive evil designs against the Iranians, and to effect them either by o...« less