History of the early kings of Persia, from Kaiomars, the first of the Peshdadian dynasty, to the conquest of Iran by Alexander the Great / Translated from the original Persian of Mirkhond, entitled the Rauzat-us-safa, with notes and illus. by David Shea.

  • Mīr Khvānd, Muḥammad ibn Khāvandshāh, 1433-1498.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: History of the early kings of Persia, from Kaiomars, the first of the Peshdadian dynasty, to the conquest of Iran by Alexander the Great / Translated from the original Persian of Mirkhond, entitled the Rauzat-us-safa, with notes and illus. by David Shea. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Historians of the East, will present a striking and amusing contrast with the history of these Monarchs as recorded by the Writers of Greece and Rome. Equally strong is the contrast between the views taken by Lucian, in his celebrated Treatise on the Mode of Writing History, and those of Mirkhond in his Preface, when treating of the dignity of History, and the qualifications required in the Historian: but the genius of Oriental eloquence, and the pecu¬ liar composition of the Persian language, rendered it impossible for our author to adopt the simplicity of style so happily inculcated by the Grecian critic. In comparing the Rauzat-us-Safa with the Da- bistan many passages shew that the Authors of these works derived the history of the two first dynasties of Persian monarchs from a common source. The paragraph in the Life of Alexander the Great which forms the commentary on the superiority of the Instructor over the Parent occurs, almost verbatim, in the Dabistan, although intro¬ duced on a different occasion. The Notes annexed to this work have been chiefly taken from the valuable and standard pro¬ ductions of Sir John Malcolm and Sir William OusELEY. To these has been added a condensed * See Appendix, p. 439.