At the time of the second invasion of Mahmood he persuaded the Zoroastrians of Yezd and Kirman to join his troops, and avenge the wrongs they had suffered for centuries. [50] It is needless to say that these unfortunates, too confiding, allowed themselves to be convinced and enlisted. What do we know of their ultimate fate? What became of them under the standard of Mahmood after the victory of Ispahan? (October 21, 1722, H. 1135 [51]). Were they better treated, and did they receive any recompense? There is reason to believe that their condition, far from being ameliorated, became worse. It is said that under the reign of Nadir-Shah and his successors, they had again to elect between the frightful alternative of conversion or death. At the time of the siege of Kirman, of which we have spoken (p. 55), many Zoroastrians were put to the sword, and their quarters laid waste and destroyed for ever. This series of vicissitudes and misfortunes accounts for the small number of the survivors, their precarious life, their difficulties in the exercise of their religion, and the dispersion of their sacred books. In the time of Ibn Haukhal each village had its temple, its priests, and its sacred book. According to Mr. Dosabhai Framji Karaka, in 1858 there were thirty-five Fire Temples in Yezd and its environs. At present there are four in Yezd itself, eighteen in the neighbouring village, and one at Kirman. As for the sacred books there are only those that are to be found in India. Westergaard, who visited Persia in 1843, writing to his friend the late Dr. Wilson of Bombay, to inform him of his disappointment, says, [52] "I have stopped in Yezd for eleven days, and although I have mixed in their gatherings, I have seen but sixteen or seventeen books in all; two or three copies of the Vendidad Sade and of the Izeschne, which they call Yasna, and six or seven copies of the Khorda-Avesta. I have only been able to obtain two and a portion of a third, a part of the Bundahish and of another Pehlvi book. That is all that I have succeeded in obtaining, in spite of all my efforts to get more--for instance, the fragments of the Izeschne with a Pehlvi or Pazend translation, of which there is only one copy in Europe, that at Copenhagen." The same traveller, speaking of the Zoroastrians who at present reside in Kirman, expresses himself in these terms: "The Guebres there are more maltreated than their brethren in Yezd. They have only two copies of the Vendidad and of the Yasna and a rather large number of the Khorda-Avesta, with which, however, they will not part. Here nobody reads Pehlvi. They complain bitterly of Aga Mahomed Khan having given up the city to plunder, of the destruction of most of their sacred books, and of the massacre of the faithful."