SHAPOUR. 
equally unknown to both ; but to the Greek authors these defects 
were in a certain degree qualified by their comparative nearness to the 
events which they recorded; while the Mussulmans , in treating of the 
history before the time of Mahomed, were writing the annals of a 
conquered and contemned race, in an age when its language, polity, 
and religion were alike forgotten. It is therefore astonishing that 
De Sacy should have selected Mirkhokd, an author of this class, to 
accompany his own able memoirs on the antiquities of Persia. What¬ 
ever may be the relative superiority of Mirkhond to other Oriental 
annalists, the value of his authority is in itself very low, and is suffi¬ 
ciently depreciated by the internal evidence of his own work. He 
begins his account of the Sassanidn kings by saying that the Messiah 
was born in the reign of Ardeshir or Artaxeuxes, the first Prince of 
that house, whose reign which did not commence till the two hundred 
and twenty-sixth year after Christ * He continues, that Ardeshir 
received a message from the Messiah, and secretly professed his 
religion. Independently of the gross fabulousness of the chronology, 
the story itself is totally abhorrent to every other evidence, by which it 
is clear that Ardeshir, so far from professing or favouring a foreign 
religion, regarded the revival of the native worship as the glory of his 
reign; and combined in one re-establishment the religion and the 
empire of ancient Persia.-j- 
The idle tale of the birth of his son Sapor, J is another proof of the 
manner in which the imagination of an Eastern historian has supplied 
the defects of his materials; if indeed it be not derived from the 
stor} 7 of Astyages in Herodotus. Without discussing the proba¬ 
bility of the fact or the accuracy of the chronology, it is impossible to 
* Mirkhond, in De Sacy, p. 273. 
+ De Sacy, p. 42. A. C. 226, according to Vaillant : Tab. ChronoL 
| Mirkhond, p. 282-6. 
