'The dynasty of the Kajars translated from the original Persian manuscript presented by His Majesty Faty Aly Shah to Sir Harford Jones Brydges ... to which is prefixed a succinct account of the history of Persia previous to that period illustarted with plates and a map of Western Persia' [‎20] (41/684)

XX
PRELIMINARY MATTER.
" number of books, now extremely scarce; which
" Mohsan had perused, and with the writers of
" which, or with many of them, he had con-
" tracted an intimate friendship: from them he
" learned that a powerful monarchy had been esta-
" blished for ages in Iran, before the accession of
" Kaiomars, that was called the Mahabadian dynasty,
" for a reason which will soon be mentioned ; and
" that many princes, of whom seven or eight are
" only named in the Dabistan, and among them
" Mahbul, or Maha Beli, had raised their empire to
the zenith of human glory. If we can rely on
" this evidence, which appears to me unexception-
" able, the Iranian monarchy must have been the
" oldest in the world; but it will remain doubtful to
" which of the three stocks, Hindu, Arabian, or
" Tartar, the first kings of Iran belonged, or whe-
" ther they sprang from a fourth race distinct from
" any of the others ; and these are questions which
" we shall be able, I imagine, to answer precisely,
" when we have looked carefully into the languages
" and letters, religion and philosophy, and inciden-
" tally into the arts and sciences of the Ancient
" Persians."
It must not be passed over, that after a great
deal of very learned reasoning on the subject of the
Mahabadian dynasty. Sir William, at the end of the
Discourse, appears to come, though from different
premises, to pretty near the same conclusion that
I have hinted at in the fourth paragraph of these
preliminary pages.
"We may therefore hold this proposition firmly
" established, that Iran, or Persia, in its largest