This work completes the Ancient History of the East, to which the author
has devoted his main attention during the last eighteen years. It is a
sequel to his "Parthians," published in 1873; and carries down the
History of Western Asia from the third century of our era to the middle
of the seventh. So far as the present writer is aware, no European
author has previously treated this period from the Oriental stand-point,
in any work aspiring to be more than a mere sketch or outline. Very many
such sketches have been published; but they have been scanty in the
extreme, and the greater number of them have been based on the authority
of a single class of writers. It has been the present author's aim to
combine the various classes of authorities which are now accessible to
the historical student, and to give their due weight to each of them.
The labors of M. C. Muller, of the Abbe Gregoire Kabaragy Garabed, and of
M. J. St. Martin have opened to us the stores of ancient Armenian
literature, which were previously a sealed volume to all but a small
class of students. The early Arab historians have been translated or
analyzed by Kosegarten, Zotenberg, M. Jules Mohl, and others.
The coinage of the Sassanians has been elaborately--almost
exhaustively--treated by Mordtmann and Thomas. Mr. Fergusson has
applied his acute and practised powers to the elucidation of the
Sassanian architecture. By combining the results thus obtained with the
old sources of information--the classical, especially the Byzantine
writers--it has become possible to compose a history of the Sassanian
Empire which is at once consecutive, and not absolutely meagre. How the
author has performed his task, he must leave it to the public to judge;
he will only venture to say that he has spared no labor, but has gone
carefully through the entire series of the Byzantine writers who treat
of the time, besides availing himself of the various modern works to
which reference has been made above. If he has been sometimes obliged