Page:Early Christianity in Arabia.djvu/190

178 From Medina Muhammed had directed letters to the sovereigns of the various kingdoms around, to invite them to embrace the new religion, and among the rest to the king of Persia. The Khosroës treated his proposals with contempt, and dispatched an order to the governor of Hamyar to send him either the head or the body of the impostor. But Muhammed was safe amongst his followers from the distant threats of his enemies; Badhân, perhaps, was little inclined to perform the commands of his master, and the dominions of the great king were devoted to future division and destruction by the malediction of the prophet. The latter part of the reign of Khosroës Parviz was clouded by his crimes and his imprudence; he became hateful to his subjects; they revolted against him, confined him in a subterraneous apartment where he had kept his treasures, and raised his son Shoruïa or Siroës to the throne, who commenced his reign by the murder of his father. Muhammed, who had been early informed of this event by his emissaries, before it could have reached the peninsula, pretended to have received the news by supernatural means the same moment in which it occurred, and immediately sent an account of it to the governor of Yaman, who,