the latter as well as of the foreign Government. The same remark holds
good of the class of landed proprietors.[1] Iranian tradition continued
to live In and with them. Not only what was preserved but all that was
destroyed for long left vestiges in the memory of the conquerors.

[Footnote 1: Regarding the part played by this class in the times of the
Khalifs, see A. Von Kramer _Culturgeschiche des orients unter den
Chalifen_ II. pp, 150, 62.]

Many years after the Arab conquest the ruins that covered Persia excited
the admiration of the Arabs. Their geographers of the ninth and tenth
centuries considered it their duty to enumerate the principal buildings
of the Sasanians reminding the reader that here Khusro built in his time
in bye-gone days a castle, there a mountain fastness, again at a third
place, a bridge.[1] Regarding various ancient structures which had
survived the Sasanian times, we refer, _inter alia_, to Istakhri, (ibid
I), pp. 124; Ibn Hauqal (ibid II) 195; Ibn Khordadbeh (ibid VI) p. 43,
(text); Ibn Rusteh (ibid VII), 153, 162, 164, 165, 166, 167, 189; Yakubi
(ibid VII), 270, 271, 273, &c.

[Footnote 1: _See_ the enumeration of the noteworthy buildings of
ancient Persia as given in Makdisi (B.G.A. III), p. 399, and
Ibn-ul-Fakih (_ibid_ V), p. 267.]

The remains of the structures, monuments of art from the Sasanian times
and the ages preceding them attracted the attention of the Arabs and
they have left descriptions of the same in more or less detail.[1] From
the information of the same Musalman writers we possess accurate
accounts of the inhabitants of Persia and their religions. Thus, for
instance, Yakubi indicates that the inhabitants of Isfahan, Merv, and