[56] Transoxiana was never included in the kingdom of the Sāsānides; the possessions of Achemenides stretched far farther east than those of the Sāsānians.
[57] Cf. p. 21, note 2, supra.
[58] Here we follow Malcolm (History of Persia), who bases his account on those of various well-known Persian historians, such as Mīrkhwānd and Khwāndamīr.
[59] We are told that when Bahrām Gūr returned from this expedition to his capital, Ctesiphon, he appointed his brother Governor of Khorāsān, designating Balkh as his residence.
[60] According to the Persian historians, the Khākān was named Khush-Nawāz. Nöldeke, however, disapproved of this reading, the invention he thinks of Firdawsi, and employs that of Akh-Shunwar.
[61] Tabari tells us that Pīrūz had previously ceded to the Khākān the important frontier town of Tālikān.
[62] Some of the means would hardly commend themselves to modern economists. Pīrūz remitted taxes and large sums from the treasury; but he also compelled the rich to feed their poorer neighbours from these taxes.
[63] The more ancient form is Kavadh.
[64] I.e. Ctesiphon.
[65] We are told that this made him look upon Anūshirawān as a talisman, and the interesting detail is added that the mother and the boy were conducted back to Madā´in in a cart as became a princess. Wheeled traffic is unknown on these roads, but Professor Nöldeke refers us to Plutarch’s Artax. 27, where we are told that the king’s wife used that means of locomotion. In recent times Europeans have taken their carriages from Meshed to Teheran on Kobād’s route.