History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

12 HISTORY OF THE PARSTS. [CHAP. I. ee Khalud Ben Walid marched at the head of ten

thousand men, and Mosanna at the head of another eight thousand, against Hormaz, the Persian governor of the lower portion of Erak, and defeated him. After this victory Khalud marched further into the country and conquered Erak after fighting several battles ; but he soon lost it again in the battle called “the Day of the Bridge,” or of Marwaha and of Kirkis, near which place it was fought (a.p. 634). Four thousand Mussulmans lost their lives in the struggle and two thousand returned to Medina. If Behman Jaduyeh, the Persian commander on this occasion, had followed up his victory it would have been Impossible for the Arab army to have escaped complete destruction. But two Persian factions—one under Rustam, the generalissimo of the Persian empire, and the other under Prince Firuzan—being at feud, and a civil war seeming imminent, Behman, instead of fighting his country’s battles, hastened to support Rustam in Madayn, the capital of the kingdom, against Firuzan,

Encouraged by their first success and fired with religious zeal, the Arabs were not to be dismayed by a single defeat. They established their camp on the brink of the desert between Kalesiah and Kaffan, where they were gradually reinforced by nomadic hordes of Arabs who joined them by order of the Khalif. The rivals, Rustam and Firuzan, who had at last merged their differences and become colleagues,