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fought. The occasion of Cai-Khosru's invasion of Turau, accord- 

 ing to Mirkhond in D'Herbelot*, was the murder of his father 

 Siavek, an appellation in which we can find no traces of the Cam- 

 by ses of the Greeks, at the court of Afrasiab, where his newly mar- 

 ried wife Franghiz was delivered of Cai-Khosru, after the death of 

 that father. Franghiz was the daughter of Afrasiab, and from her 

 Cyrus derived that hereditary claim upon the throne of Turan which 

 he afterwards so successfully exerted. The rival armies were led 

 by the two greatest monarchs that the East ever saw, assisted by the 

 two greatest generals it ever produced. The name of the Tartar 

 general was Peiran Visseh, (the same person mentioned above in 

 the extract from Ferishta,) and Rostam still, at an advanced age, 

 headed the Persians. In this contest Schangal, king of India, is 

 expressly mentioned by Mirkhond as an all} 7 of Afrasiab, and as fight- 

 ing on his side, together with the Kah-Khan of Great Tartary, and 

 this offensive step of Schangal was probably the cause of the conse- 

 quent descent of Rostam upon India, which both the Indian and 

 Tartar histories enumerate, among the conquests of that great war- 

 rior. The long and sanguinary contests which had agitated the two 

 branches of the family of Feridun, were to be terminated for a time, 

 at least, if not for ever, by the approaching battle between the great 

 surviving chiefs of it. The Tartar sovereign, owing to his vast su- 

 periority in numbers, was at first victorious, and drove the Persians 

 back into their own province of Chorasan, where they fortified them- 

 selves in its mountainous districts, till powerful reinforcements ar- 

 rived ; but the result was the total discomfiture of Afrasiab and the , 

 destruction of half his army. Retiring, however, into his own do- 

 minion, he soon recruited the waste of battle, and rushed with ncu 

 vigour on the forces of Khosru. But in this second engagement he 



* See D'Herbelot Bibliotb. Orient, under the article Siavek and Rostam. 



