In process of time Seleucia and Ctesiphon became united, and identified under the name of _Al Modain_, or the two cities. This union is attributed to the judgment of Adashir Babigan (the father of the Sassanian line). It afterwards continued a favourite capital with most of his dynasty, till the race perished in the person of Yezdijerd; and Al Modain was rendered a heap of ruins, by the fanatic Arabs, in the beginning of the seventh century. At that period (A.D. 637), those walls, which had resisted the battering rams of the Romans, yielded to the darts of the Saracens. Said, the lieutenant of Omar, passed the Tigris without opposition; the capital was taken by assault; and the disorderly resistance of the people gave a keener edge to the sabre of the Moslems, who shouted in religious transport, "This is the white palace of Chosroes: this is the province of the apostle of God." "The spoils," says Abulfeda, "surpassed the estimate of fancy, or numbers;" and Elmacin defines the untold and almost infinite mass by the fabulous computation of three thousands of thousands of thousands of pieces of gold[209]. One of the apartments of the palace was decorated with a carpet of silk, 60 cubits in length, and as many in breadth; a paradise, or garden, was depicted on the ground; the flowers, fruits, and shrubs, were imitated by the figures of the gold embroidery, and the colours of the precious stones; and the ample square was encircled by a verdant and variegated border. The conqueror (Omar) divided the prize among his brethren of Medina. The picture was destroyed; but such was the value of the material, that the share of Ali was sold for 20,000 drachms. The sack was followed by the desertion and gradual decay of the city. In little more than a century after this it was finally supplanted by Bagdad under the Caliph Almanzor.