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 404 THE DECLINE AND FALL suit of the Magians, their remaining forces still hovered in the desert of Babylon. Battle of The indignation and fears of the Persians suspended for a cadesia. AD. j^,jj.^gj-^|. thgii" intestine divisions. By the unanimous sentence of the priests and nobles, their queen Arzema was deposed : the sixth of the transient usurpers who had arisen and vanished in three or four years since the death of Chosroes and the retreat of Heraclius. Her tiara was placed on the head of Yezdegerd, the grandson of Chosroes ; and the same sera, which coincides with an astronomical period/-' has recorded the fall of the Sas- sanian dynasty and the religion of Zoroaster. -^o 'j^hg youth and inexperience of the prince, he was only fifteen years of age, de clined a perilous encounter ; the royal standard was delivered into the hands of his general Rustam ; and a remnant of thirty thousand regular troops was swelled in truth, or in opinion, to one hundred and twenty thousand subjects, or allies, of the Great King. The Moslems, whose numbers were reinforced from twelve to thirty thousand, had pitched their camp in the plains of Cadesia ; ^1 and their line, though it consisted of fewer men, could produce more soldiers than the unwieldy host of the in- fidels. I shall here observe what I must often repeat, that the charge of the Arabs was not like that of the Greeks and Romans, the effort of a firm and compact inftintry : their militarj' foi'ce was chiefly formed of cavalry and archers ; and the engagement, which was often interrupted and often renewed by single com- bats and flying skirmishes, might be protracted without any de- i'* A cycle of I20 years, at the end of which an intercalary month of 30 days supplied the use of our Bissextile, and restored the integrity of the solar year. In a great revolution of 1440 years, this intercalation was successively removed from the first to the twelfth month ; but Hyde and Fr^ret are involved in a profound controversy, whether the twelve or only eight of these changes were accomplished before the Eera of Yezdegerd, which is unanimously fixed to the i6th of June, A.D. 632. How laboriously does the curious spirit of Europe explore the darkest and most distant antiquities! (Hyde, de Religione Persarum, c. 14-18, p. 181-211. Fr^ret in the M^m. de I'Acadc^mie des Inscriptions, torn. xvi. p. 233-267). [The queen's name was Azarmidocht (a.d. 631-2); and she is not to be confused with a previous female usurper, Horan (a.d. 630-1). Cp. Noldeke, Tabari, p. 433-4] -"Nine d.iys after the death of Mahomet (7th [3lh] June, A.U. 632), we find the Eera of Yezdegerd (i6th June, A.D. 632), and his accession cannot be postponed beyond the end of the first year. His predecessors could not therefore resist the arms of the caliph Omar, and these unquestionable dates overthrow the thought- less chronology of Abulpharagius. See Ockley's Hist, of the Saracens, vol. i. p. 130. [Eutychius states that Yezdegerd was aged fifteen at his accession ; but Tabari (p. 399, ed. Noldeke) states that he was only twenty-eight when he died (a.d. 651-2), so that he would have been only eight at his accession.] -'Cadesia, says the Nubian geographer (p. 121), is in margine solitudinis, 61 leagues from Bagdad, and two stations from Cufa. Otter (Voyage, torn. i. p. 163) reckons 15 leagues, and observes that the place is supplied with dates and water. [For date of the battle of al-Kadisiya, cp. Appendix 21.]