171
Tabari 174
Dinawari 177
Ibn al Athir 179
Masudi 182
Shahrastani 187
Ibn Hazm 192
Ibn Haukal 195

APPENDIX VIII.

Ibn Khallikan 199
Mustawfi 203
Muqadasi 204
Thaalibi 205

PREFACE

The facile notion is still prevalent even among Musalmans of learning
that the past of Iran is beyond recall, that the period of its history
preceding the extinction of the House of Sasan cannot be adequately
investigated and that the still anterior dynasties which ruled vaster
areas have left no traces in stone or parchment in sufficient quantity
for a tolerable record reflecting the story of Iran from the Iranian's
standpoint. This fallacy is particularly hugged by the Parsis among whom
it was originally lent by fanaticism to indolent ignorance. It has been
credited with uncritical alacrity, congenial to self-complacency, that
the Arabs so utterly and ruthlessly annihilated the civilization of Iran
in its mental and material aspects that no source whatever is left from
which to wring reliable information about Zoroastrian Iran. The
following limited pages are devoted to a disproof of this age-long
error.

For a connected story of Persia prior to the battle of Kadisiya, beside
the Byzantine writers there is abundant material in Armenian and Chinese
histories. These mines remain yet all but unexplored for the Moslem and
Parsi, although much has been done to extract from them a chronicle of
early Christianity. The archaeology of Iran, as I have shown elsewhere,
can provide vital clue to an authentic resuscitation of Sasanian past.
Pre-Moslem epigraphy of Persia is yet in little more than an inchoate
condition. Not only all Central Asia but the territories marching with
the Indian and Persian frontiers, where persecution of the elder faith
could not have been relatively mild, the population professing Islam
have been unable to abjure in their entirety rites and practices akin to