Islam in India and the Middle East

When the armies of the state had been routed the mass of the people offered little resistance the reign of the last representatives of the Sassanid dynasty had been marked by terrible anarchy and the sympathies of the people had been further alienated from their rulers on account of the support they gave to the persecuting policy of the state religion of Zoroastrianism. [...] it is not the coming of the Satan or the mandates of the kings of the earth or the orders of the governors of the provinces that have laid the wastes and in ruins—but the feeble breath of one contemptible who was not deemed of the worthy of the honour of demons who sent him on his erand nor was endowed by Satan the seducer with the power of diabolical deceit that he might display it in your l [...] For the Persians could find in the Quran many of the fundametal doctrines of his old faith though in a rather different form: he would meet again Ahurmazda and Ahiraman under the name of Allah and Iblis the creation of the world in six periods; the angels and the demons the story of primitive innocence of man the resurrection of the body and the doctrine of heaven and hell. [...] In the descendents of Shahrbanu and Husayn the Persians saw the heirs of their ancient kings and the inheritors of their national traditions and in this patriotic feeling may be found the explanation of the itense devotion of the Persians to the Alid faction and the first beginning of Shiism as a separate sect. [...] Taing advantage of the eager looking forward to a deliverer that was common to so many faiths of the time they declared to the Mussulmans the approachingPEACEFUL PENETRATION 41 advent of the Imam Mandi to the Jews that of the Mesiah and to the Christians that of the Comforter but taght that the aspirations of each could alone be realised in the coming of Ali as the great deliverer.