In pre-Moslem Arabia the high development of the civilisation of Sasanian Persia was well known. Among the subjects of the great Persian sovereigns in the western provinces of their empire there were a large number of Arabs who in commercial intercourse carried, to tribes of the Syrian desert and further south to the Arabian peninsula, reports regarding the great _Iran Shahar_. Not only legends of the heroic figures of the Iranian epic--Rustam and Isfandiar--but religious views and persuasions of the Persians found a place and were spread among the Arab clans. Thus we know that "fire-worshippers" were settled among the Arab tribe of the Temim.[1] [Footnote 1: _See_ for example Ibn Rustah (B.G.A. VII, p. 217, 6-9).] As regards the political influence of the Persians on the tribes of Arabia a vast deal has been related in the pre-Moslem epoch. As is well-known, thanks mainly to the Persian influence, there was a small Arab kingdom of the Lekhmides in the South-Western portion of the Sasanian empire[1]. It played its part, most beneficial for Persia, holding back on the one hand Roman-Byzantine onrush from the West, and on the other restraining the perpetual attempts at irruption into Persian territory by Arab nomadic tribes. Not long before the appearance of Islam, Sasanian influence was extended to the Arabs and the South as well as Yemen passed into the sovereignty of the Persians. Khusro and his Court appeared to the Arab an unattainable ideal of grandeur and luxury. [Footnote 1: _Die Dynastie der Lekhmiden in al-Hira, Ein Versuch zur arabisch-persischen Geschichte zur Zeit der Sasaniden Berlin_, 1899.] The rapid conquest of Persia by the Arab warriors proved a complete catastrophe to the Sasanian empire. But Persian culture was not to be extirpated by the success of Arab arms. Persia was overwhelmed only externally and the Arabs were compelled to preserve a considerable deal of the past. Having lost the position of rulers, the Persian priesthood preserved intact its control of the indigenous populace in the eyes of the latter as well as of the foreign Government. The same remark holds good of the class of landed proprietors.[1] Iranian tradition continued to live In and with them. Not only what was preserved but all that was destroyed for long left vestiges in the memory of the conquerors. [Footnote 1: Regarding the part played by this class in the times of the Khalifs, see A. Von Kramer _Culturgeschiche des orients unter den Chalifen_ II. pp, 150, 62.]