'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎348] (399/714)

PERSIA
traditional names. This we may dismiss. In the Vendidad, how
ever, occur the names of Kagha and Varena among the stations in
Ancient the wanderings of the Aryans, which have an undeniable
1 iages resemblance to Rhages and Veramin. Next comes what
may be termed the nebulous period, of which little definite is
known, but echoes of which, loud though uncertain, have echoed
down the galleries of time. The Rhages of this period was con
temporary with T3abylon and Nineveh, and was reported to be
a great city containing over a million souls. This was the Rages
to which the Tobias of the Apocrypha set forth from Nineveh,
guided by an angel in disguise, to recover the ten talents deposited
with Gabael by his father. 1 This, too, is supposed to have been
the Ragan ot Judith, 2 where Nabuchodonosor smote Arphaxad in
the mountains. It is mentioned in the Behistun inscription as the
place where the troops of Darius son of Hystaspes captured the rebel
Mede Phraortes. Hither too came Alexander, in pursuit of Darius,
on the eleventh day of his march from Ecbatana (Hamadan). The
city is said to have been rebuilt by Seleucus Nicator, and in the
succeeding century to have been made his capital by Ashk, or
Arsaces, the founder of the Parthian empire, about B.C. 250. Finallv
comes the third, or historical, period, dating from the Arab conquest,
when, if we are to believe one tithe of what Arab and Persian
histories have related, it was a most phenomenal place. One such
chronicler, a native of Rhey himself, fired by a patriotism which
exulted in the lordly manipulation of figures, has left on record
that the city contained 9G quarters, each with 46 wards, each with
40,000 dwelling-houses and 1,000 mosques, and in each mosque
1,000 lamps of gold and silver, the total population amounting to
8,000,396 persons. By other writers it was termed the First of
( ities, the Spouse of the World, the Market of the Universe. Of
more certain knowledge are the facts that it was the birthplace and
one of the favourite residences of the renowned Harun-er-Rashid;
that it was captured by Mahmud of Glmzni from the Buyah
dynasty in a.d . 1027 ; that it became one of the two great cities
of the Seljuk sovereigns, the residence and the sepulchre of Togrul
1 Tobit, i. 14, ix. 5.
2 Judith, i. 5, ' King Nabuchodonosor made war with King Arphasad in the
great plain^ which is the plain in the borders of Ragan;' and ihid. v. 15, 'He
took also Arphaxad in the mountains of Ragan.' It has been conjectured, if the
book of Judith is to be regarded as historical, that this refers to the campaign of
Darius against Phraortes.
Its mini