[66] Persian historians assert that he was converted by a sham miracle, and that he continued to believe in Mazdak during the rest of his life. But his motives were probably purely political, and not based on conversion.
[67] The famous Orkhon inscriptions which have been deciphered by MM. Radloff of St. Petersburg, and V. Thomsen of Copenhagen, belong to this branch of the Turks.
[68] De Guignes, ii. p. 374.
[69] Cf. De Guignes, vol. ii. p. 378.
[70] Persian and Roman writers assert that Anūshirawān conquered Transoxiana, but this seems most improbable. For, as Nöldeke points out (footnote to page 159 of his Sāsānides), Huen-Tsang, who visited the country soon after these events, speaks only of Turkish and other barbarian States. Moreover, the State of Transoxiana at the time of the Mohammedan invasion augurs strongly against the extension of Persian rule.
[71] For a full account of his life—historical and fictitious—we refer the reader to the Appendix of Nöldeke’s Sāsāniden, p. 474.
[72] It was reconquered in 629 by Heraclius, the Byzantine emperor, who set up the Cross in the city which had first beheld the emblem of salvation; and the Feast of the Elevation of the Cross is kept on the 14th September in memory of that event.
[73] The origin of this well-known expression is curious. The designation Yemen, or the “right hand,” was given by its northern neighbours to a strip on the south-eastern coast of the Red Sea. But in Arabic, as in the Latin and many other languages, the right hand is associated with good fortune. Hence by mistranslation the territory became known to the West as “The Blessed,” or “Felix.” It is well watered, and is better peopled than any other part of the Arabian peninsula.
[74] The Ka`ba is said to have contained 160 idols, each tribe having its separate God; and so great was the toleration in ante-Mohammedan times that on the pillars of the temples there were also to be found images of Abraham and of the Virgin and Child. In the sixth century the primitive religion had lost its old signification and had developed into fetishism.
[75] Swedenborg was fifty-eight ere he had his first vision.