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The soldiers who fell among the Túránians could not be numbered, but the Persians lost fifty thousand men. Loud neighed the steeds, and their resounding hoofs. Shook the deep caverns of the earth; the dust Rose up in clouds and hid the azure heavens Bright beamed the swords, and in that carnage wide, Blood flowed like water. Night alone divided The hostile armies.
The carnage was in consequence terrible, and the remaining Túránians were in such despair that they flung themselves from their exhausted horses, and placing straw in their mouths to show the extremity of their misfortune, called aloud for quarter.
Both armies now engaged, and the Túránians made many desperate efforts to recover their gigantic leader, but all their manoeuvres were fruitless. The struggle continued fiercely, and with great slaughter, till it was dark, and then ceased; the two kings returned back to the respective positions they had taken up before the conflict took place.
The Parthian country it mentions under the name of Nisaya or Nisaea, implying apparently that the Parthians were not yet settled in it. The only ready way of reconciling the geography of the Zendavesta with that of later ages is to suppose the Parthians a non-Arian nation who intruded themselves among the early Arian settlements, coming probably from the north, the great home of the Turanians.
The Túránians are the Scythians of the Greek Historians, who are said, about the year B.C. 639, to have invaded the kingdom of the Medes. Túrán, which is the ancient name of the country of Turkistán, appears from Des Guignes, to be the source and fountain of all the celebrated Scythian nations, which, under the name of Goths and Vandals, subsequently overran the Roman empire.
The old antipathy between the Iranians and Turanians, the Schiite Persians and the Sunnite Turks, was afterwards carried into Europe by the Ottoman Moslems. THE ABBASSIDES: BAGDAD. Misgovernment embittered the faithful against the rule of the Omayyads in Damascus, although Syria had become a source of higher culture for the Arabians: there they became acquainted with Greek learning.
Everywhere success attended him, except against a domestic foe. Hyrcania seceded during his reign, and it may be doubted whether Parthia ever afterwards recovered it. An example was thus set of successful Arian revolt against the hitherto irresistible Turanians, which may have tended in no slight degree to produce the insurrection which eventually subverted the Parthian Empire.
In race they were probably Tatars or Turanians, and their descendants or their congeners are to be seen in the modern inhabitants of these regions. According to Ctesias, their women took the field in almost equal numbers with their men; and the mixed army which resisted Cyrus amounted, including both sexes, to half a million.
Banners, all gorgeous, floating on the breeze, And horns shrill echoing, and the tramp of steeds, Proclaimed to dazzled eye and half-stunned ear, The mighty preparation. The hostile armies soon met, and there was a sanguinary conflict, but the Túránians were obliged to give way. Upon this common result, Pírán-wísah declared to Afrásiyáb that perseverance was as ridiculous as unprofitable.
It is conjectured that these provinces lay towards the north and the north-west, the one being that of the Turanians proper, and the other that of the Aspasiacae, who dwelt between the Jaxartes and the Oxus. But there is scarcely sufficient ground for forming even a conjecture on the subject, since speculation has nothing but the names themselves to rest upon.
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