ANARCHY AND CHAOS

N1o one could now dream of a real restoration of the fearfully distracted empire; but at least a grandson of Chosroes, who did not trace his descent from the parricide Sheroe, was sole king once more. He was consecrated at Istakhr, the home of the dynasty; and the mighty Rustem stood at his side. A change for the better seems really to have ensued, but it was no more than a brief respite. A foe destined to prove more formidable than Julian or Heraclius was already knocking at the gates of the empire. In the internal disorders which had distracted Ctesiphon, the loss of Yemen, and a few of the empire’s possessions in northeastern Arabia to the Moslems, had probably passed almost unnoticed.

2The Moslems, however, were soon close at hand. The Bekr Bedouins had made raids upon the royal dominions several times since the battle of Dhu Kar. After a while Muthanna, one of their bravest chiefs, became a convert to Islam, and with that force behind them their attacks grew bolder. Then (probably in 633) the mighty Khalid, after subduing the insurrections in Arabia, appeared with a small force on the lower Euphrates to conduct the operations of these same Bedouins. Persian Arabs and imperial troops were defeated in small engagements, and soon a number of border forts were in the hands of the Moslems. The inhabitants of the regions west of the Euphrates, who were all Christians, and, like all the Christians about the Euphrates and Tigris, felt little loyalty to the empire, submitted to the victors and even undertook to supply them with information.