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Nature appears to have intended Zagros as a seven fold wall for the protection of the fertile Mesopotamian lowland from the marauding tribes inhabiting the bare plateau of Iran. North of Assyria lays a country very similar to the Zagros region.
The Cossæan king who seized on Babylon was named Gandish. He and his tribe came from the mountainous regions of Zagros, on the borders of Media. The Cossæan rule over the countries of the Euphrates was doubtless similar in its beginnings to that which the Hyksos exercised at first over the nomes of Egypt.
In remarkable contrast with the natural barrenness of this wide tract are certain favored districts in Zagros and Azerbijan, where the herbage is constant throughout the summer, and sometimes only too luxuriant.
Adenystrse, a place of great strength, was captured by a small knot of Roman prisoners, who, when they found their friends near, rose upon the garrison, killed the commandant, and opened the gates to their countrymen. In a short time the whole tract between the Tigris and the Zagros mountains was overrun; resistance ceased; and the invader was able to proceed to further conquests.
On the east the high mountain-chain of Zagros. penetrable only in one or two places, forms a barrier of the most marked character, and is beyond a doubt the natural limit for which we are looking.
The Lesser Zab has its principal source near Legwin, about twenty miles south of Lake Urumiyeh, in lat. 36° 40', long. 46° 25'. The source is to the east of the great Zagros chain; and it might have been supposed that the waters would necessarily flow northward or eastward, towards Lake Urumiyeh, or towards the Caspian.
Still the lower flanks of the mountains are in general cultivable, while the valleys teem with orchards and gardens, and the plains furnish excellent pasture. The region closely resembles Zagros, of which it is a continuation.
It is possible though we have no direct evidence of the fact that the Turanians of Zagros and the neighborhood had already formed for themselves the alphabet which is found in the second columns of the Achaemenian tablets, when the Arian invaders conquered them.
The difference here is due to the difference of physical conformation, which is as great as possible, the broad mountainous plains about Kasvin, Koum, and Kashan, divided from each other by low rocky ridges, offering the strongest conceivable contrast to the perpetual alternations of mountain and valley, precipitous height and deep wooded glen, which compose the greater part of the Zagros region.
Again, whereas the Zagros mountains present their gradual slope to the Mesopotamian lowland, and rise in higher and higher ridges as they recede from the mountains of Armenia ascend at once to their full heignt from the level of the Tigris, and the ridges then gradually decline towards the Euxine.