[Sidenote:  The Kohan Nameh and the Ain Nameh.]

The Persians have a book called the Kohan Nameh in which are mentioned all the officers of the Persian monarch amounting to 600 and classed according to their respective ranks.  This book formed part of the Ain Nameh.[1] The meaning of Ain Nameh is the ‘Book of regulations’.  It is a book containing several thousands of leaves and no one can find a copy of it anywhere except among the mobeds and others invested with authority.  The mobed of the Persians at the moment of writing this history, that is in the year 364, for the country of Jabal in Iraq and for the countries of Ajam, is Ammad son of Ashwahisht.  Before him these countries had for their mobed Isfandiyar, son of Adarbad, son of Anmid, who was killed by Radi at Baghdad in 325.

[Footnote 1:  A remarkable passage from this Pahlavi treatise has been embodied in a close Arabic version in Ibn Kutayha’s Uyun-al-Akhbar. The credit of discovering and translating this unique passage into a European language belongs to M.K.  Inostranzev.]

I have seen in the city of Istakhar in Fars in the year 303 in the house of a high noble Persian, a large book in which were set out along with the descriptions of several sciences the histories of the kings of Persia, their reigns and the monuments which they had erected,—­fragments which I have not been able to find anywhere else in Persian books, neither in the Khoday Nameh, nor in the Ain Nameh nor in the Kohan Nameh or anywhere else.

[Sidenote:  Portrait of Sasanian kings taken just before their demise.]

[Sidenote:  Persian Imperial archives:  Translation into Arabic.]

In this book were pictures of the kings of Persia belonging to the house of Sasan, twenty seven in number, twenty five men and two women.  Each of them was represented as at the moment of death, whether old or young with the royal ornaments, with the tiara, hair, beard, and all the features of his face.  This dynasty reigned over the country for 433 years one month and seven days.  When one of these kings died his portrait was painted and it was deposited in the treasury in order that the living princes may know the features of the dead kings.  The representation of every king who was painted as a warrior was in a standing posture; that of every king who was occupied with government affairs was in the sitting posture.  To it was joined the biography of each, of them detailing his public and private life together with the important events and facts concerning the most interesting incidents of his reign.  The book which I saw was redacted according to the documents found in the treasuries of the kings of Persia and it was completed in the middle of the second Jamada of the year 113.  It was translated for Hisham son of Abdal Malik son of Merwan from Persian into Arabic.  The first of the kings of this dynasty whom one sees there is Ardeshir.