Page:Early Christianity in Arabia.djvu/166

154 and superstitious every uncommon event is full of mystery and terror, an ominous intimation of the events of futurity, and thus the revolutions of comets drag with them those of kingdoms and empires, and every meteor or planetary motion is the precursor of misery of famine, or of massacres. Abundance of such inauspicious appearances, if we believe the historians of the time, announced the coming of the future scourge of Rome and Persia. The hour which gave him birth extinguished the eternal fires on the idolatrous altars of Persepolis: and at the same time fourteen towers of the royal palace of Noushirwan at Modaïne (Al Madayn) fell with a terrible crash, portending by their downfall that of the empire of the Khosroës. The confidential minister of the Persian king, Al Mûbedhân, in addition to these prodigies, dreamt that he saw his camel beaten by an Arabian horse, and that the