8. Kaukab in Arabic means ‘a star’.  Steingass (Persian Dictionary) defines Kaukaba as ’a polished steel ball suspended to a long pole, and carried as an ensign before the king; a star of gold, silver, or tinsel, worn as ornament or sign of rank; a concourse of people; a royal train, retinue, cavalcade; splendour’.

9.  Yezdegird III (Isdigerd), the last of the Sassanians, was defeated in A.D. 641 at the battle of Nahavend by the Arab Noman, general of the Khalif Omar, and driven from his throne.  The supremacy of the Khalifs over Persia lasted till A.D. 1258.  The subordinate Samani dynasty ruled over Khurasan, Seistan, Balkh, and the countries of Trans-Oxiana in the tenth century.  Two of the princes of this line were named Nuh, or Noah.  The author probably refers to the better known of the two, Amir Nuh II (Malcolm, History of Persia, ed. 1829, vol. i, pp. 158-66).

10.  The poor old blind emperor.  Shah Alam, when delivered from the Marathas in 1803 by Lord Lake, did all he could to show his gratitude by conferring on his deliverer honours and titles, and among them the ‘Mahi Maratib’.  The editor has been unable to discover the source of the author’s story of the origin of the Persian order of knighthood.  Malcolm, an excellent authority, gives the following very different account:  ’Their sovereigns have, for many centuries, preserved as the peculiar arms of the country,[e] the sign or figure of Sol in the constellation of Leo; and this device, a lion couchant and the sun rising at his back, has not only been sculptured upon their palaces[f] and embroidered upon their banners.[g] but has been converted into an Order,[h] which in the form of gold and silver medals, has been given to such as have distinguished themselves against the enemies of their country.[i]

Note e.  The causes which led to the sign of Sol in Leo becoming the arms of Persia cannot be distinctly traced, but there is reason to believe that the use of this symbol is not of very great antiquity.  We meet with it upon the coins of one of the Seljukian princes of Iconium; and, when this family had been destroyed by Hulaku [A.D. 1258], the grandson of Chengiz, that prince, or his successors, perhaps adopted this emblem as a trophy of their conquest, whence it has remained ever since among the most remarkable of the royal insignia.  A learned friend, who has a valuable collection of Oriental coins, and whose information and opinion have enabled me to make this conjecture, believes that the emblematical representation of Sol in Leo was first adopted by Ghias-ud-din Kai Khusru bin Kaikobad, who began to reign A.H. 634, A.D. 1236, and died A.H. 642, A.D. 1244; and this emblem, he adds, is supposed to have reference either to his own horoscope or to that of his queen, who was a princess of Georgia.

Note f.  Hanway states, vol. i, p. 199, that over the gate which forms the entrance of the palace built by Shah Abbas the Great [A.D. 1586 to 1628] at Ashraf, in Mazenderan, are ’the arms of Persia, being a lion, and the sun rising behind it’.