what afterwards happened, his sons, Aly Mirza and Ismail, were taken prisoners. Yacoob is supposed to have been poisoned at Tauris, in the year of

He was succeeded by

the Hejira 896 (A.D. 1490). his son, Bisancoor; who was stripped of his dominions, by his father's former prisoner, Ismail, the son of Haidar.

I have already stated, that the irruption of Timur into Western Asia was one of the causes of the future elevation of Ismail Seffee to the throne of Persia. This monarch's ancestor, Shaikh Seffee, resided in those days at Ardabil; and was not only acknowledged to be directly descended from the Caliph Aly, by Fatima the daughter of Muhammed, but was held in the highest veneration for his peculiar sanctity of conduct.

Timur entertained for him a prodigious veneration and respect: and on his return out of Asia Minor, he dragged in chains a great number of prisoners, whom he had made in his wars with Bajazet, and whom he had resolved to put to death. In the course of his route, he visited Shaikh Seffee at Ardabil. At this interview, the proud conqueror prevailed on the Shaikh to accept a gift from him. Seffee humanely, and perhaps politically, asked that the lives of these prisoners might be spared. The request was granted; and the gratitude of the prisoners was equal to the benefit they had received: they made frequent visits afterwards, in bodies, to Ardabil: they carried to their liberator gifts of much value; and they promised, and performed, future service and devotion to the Shaikh and his family. By means of their descendants, Ismail, the descen

dant of Seffee, was enabled to seat himself on the throne of Persia.

The period which has now briefly passed under review presents considerable difficulties, to any one who attempts to abridge its history, or to reduce an account of the different potentates and dynasties which appear on the stage, to a regular chronological order.

I am willing to admit, that the sketch I have given of the different persons and families to whose lot the government of Persia and its provinces fell, from the time of its conquest by the Muhammedans under the Caliph Omar, to the commencement of the reign of Shah Sultan Ismail Seffee, is hasty and imperfect. I must be permitted to say, however, that such a sketch only came within the scheme I proposed to myself in this volume; which was, to present the reader with an outline of the Muhammedan Rulers of Persia, as might introduce that portion of their history which is now offered in translation. I repeat, I have executed this imperfectly; and therefore I stand greatly in need of the reader's indulgence. But perhaps in this outline, and the Notes which will follow in the next volume, I may have the good fortune to throw under the eye of young Gentlemen proceeding to India, matter, concerning Persia and the neighbouring countries, which they would otherwise have to search for through a variety of volumes, some rare and scarce, and others, if more able, more ponderous than mine. If this should happen to one such person, my chief object will happily be accomplished: and I can safely declare, that in another, which was, to amuse myself, and prevent

me recurring to thoughts almost too painful to bear, I have not been disappointed:

"Si quid novisti rectius istis

"Candidus imperti; si non, his utere mecum.

THE SEFFEE DYNASTY.

We now arrive at a race of Princes, who, according to any notions we entertain of good government, morality, or decency, have as little claim to our respect as the most despicable set of despots, villains, and profligates, presented to us in any History whatever, and whose actions fully justify the spirited description of their character given by the late Sir William Jones.

The founder of this dynasty was Ismail Seffee or Sofy, whose genealogy, true or false, is generally set forth as follows. Ismail, the son of Shaikh Hyder, the son of Sultan Juneid, the son of Shaikh Ibrahim, the son of Shaikh Aly, the son of Shaikh Musa, the son of Shaikh Seffee, who was esteemed to be the 13th in descent, in a right line, from Aly, the son-in-law of Muhammed. The princes of this House commenced to reign over Persia in the person of Ismail, about the year A. D. 1500; and ended in an infant in his cradle, set up by Tahmasp Kooly Khan, afterwards Nadir Shah, under the name of Abbas III. A. D. 1733; making a period of something like 233 years. That the atrocities they committed should so long have been borne by the Persians, I can only explain, by imagining that the Persians considered the direct descent they claimed from the Family of the Prophet to be true and

correct and indeed it frequently happened, when I conversed with intelligent natives, to whom I expressed a free opinion on this subject, that I have heard from them in reply: "Aye; but consider "from whom they were descended, and what they "did to establish and support the true and holy faith," i. e. the Shiah.

I will not trouble the reader with a detail of Ismail's successive victories over the Governors or Princes of different Persian provinces; nor will I exercise his patience to read a catalogue of uncouth names, belonging to persons whose celebrity and importance was confined to a very limited space. It is enough to mention, that during the twentyfour years which Ismail reigned, he had the good fortune to reduce to his obedience the greater and certainly the richer part of what we are accustomed to consider the Persian empire: though it seems not improbable, that if Selim I., after the battle of Khoïe, between the Turks and the Persians, which ended so unfortunately for the latter, had not been tempted to turn his arms against Egypt (considering it as the richer prize), the dynasty of Seffee might have begun and ended in the person of Ismail.

The character of Ismail, as given by historians, is pretty much the same as generally belongs to men of his class;-courage, blemished with a total absence of all humane feeling; political acuteness, little careful of what means it employed to ensure success; a complete and thorough perception of the advantages arising from exact and severe military discipline; and an unbounded ambition;-which last will easily be believed, if the saying reported as his be true: "As there is but one God in

"heaven, so there ought to be but one king on "earth." He died in 1523, and was succeeded by his eldest son,

SHAH TAHMASP.

On the death of Ismail, the tranquillity of several parts of his dominions was disturbed by an irruption of the Uzbeg Tartars; but the most formidable enemy the new monarch had to oppose, was Suleiman, emperor of the Turks, surnamed The Magnificent. Suleiman penetrated Persia, with a great force, as far as Tauris, the capital of the province of Azarba'ijan; which city he took, and sacked, in a most relentless manner. He afterwards proceeded to Sultaniyah; and whilst encamped on that beautiful plain, his army experienced a storm so dreadful, that no parallel to it is mentioned in Persian History: he then withdrew from Persia, and took up his quarters at Diarbekr, leaving behind him 17,000 men, as a sort of rear-guard. Tahmasp attacked and defeated this body of troops, and then recaptured Tauris. To prevent the future incursions of the Turks, the Persian monarch adopted a measure, of all others the most distressing to a humane prince: he devastated, for many leagues, the Persian frontier towards Turkey.

Ismail had reduced Georgia to the condition of a tributary State; and Tahmasp, taking advantage of the dissension between the sons of Luarzab, prince of Karduel, or Eastern Georgia, on their father's death contrived to get both these princes into his power. The elder he confined in a fortress near the Caspian, whilst he artfully prevailed on David. the younger, to change his religion. This done, he