o of the town.'

I have mentioned the prerogative of the Shah to raise whomsoever he
chooses from the lowest to the highest position, except under
restrictions in the military tribes. This quite falls in with the
democratic spirit which lies dormant among the people, ready to be
displayed in willingness to accept a Sovereign of signal power who
springs from the lower ranks of life. The social equality which Islam
grants to all men was nothing new to Persia in forming ideas regarding a
popular leader and elected King. The descent of such a man is deemed of
little consequence in the minds of a people who look to personification
of power as the right to rule. In fact, with them it is said that the
fame of such a man is in proportion to the lowness of his origin. They
know of notable instances of the nation being delivered from terrible
tyranny and degrading foreign subjection, and being made gloriously
great, by men of the people. They point to Kawah, the blacksmith, who
headed a revolt against the monstrously cruel usurper King Zohak, using
his apron as a banner, and finally overthrew and slew him, and placed
Faridun, a Prince of the Peshdadian dynasty, on the throne which he
might have occupied himself. This blacksmith's apron continued for ages
to be the royal standard of Persia. In the ninth century,
Yacub-bin-Leis, called the Pewterer, as he had worked when young at that
(his father's) trade, made his way to the throne by sheer force of
strong character and stout courage. He remained the people's hero to the
last, was noted for his simple habits, for keeping with his name his
trade appellation (Suffari, the Pewterer), and for never having been
wantonly cruel or oppressive. In the tenth century, when the great
Sabuktagin rose from soldier to Sovereign, we see the principle of
selection in preference to hereditary succession practised and accepted
by the nation. And the choice was justified by the glory he gave to the
Persian arms in extending the empire to India, and in the further
conquests of his soldier-son, Mahmud, who succeeded to his father's
throne, and added still more to the greatness of the kingdom, till it
reached from Baghdad to Kashgar, from Georgia to Bengal, from the Oxus
to the Ganges.

When the country was groaning under the Afghan yoke, it was the daring
spirit of one from the ranks of the people, Nadir Kuli (Shah), who
conceived the overthrow of the oppressor and the recovery of Persian
independenc