His mother had taken refuge there, and had fed the child with the milk of a buffalo-cow (_Kaw_, _cow_), the head of which, sculptured on Feridun’s mace, has become no less celebrated among the national insignia, than the leathern apron. It was, then, from the mountains of Thaberistan, that the young hero commenced the fight for freedom, which the smith (Kawe) maintained in the capital. Sohak was made prisoner near Babylon, and confined in the village of Weregi, at the foot of Demawend, whence freedom issued, and where tyranny expired. Feridun divided his kingdom among his three sons, Iredj, Turan, and Salem, and retired into his native land, to Temishe Kuti; which, according to the Shah Nameh, formed a triangle with the cities, Sari and Kurgan, the ancient Astrabad. Iredj having fallen in a contest with his brothers, his son Menutshehr, excited by his grandfather Feridun, undertook to avenge him. The bones of the three brothers repose at Sari, under an edifice of stone, which has resisted the efforts of centuries, and of thousands of men, who have endeavoured to destroy it. The plains and glens of Thaberistan were the scene of the splendid battles of Menutshehr and Afrasiab, when Iran resisted the irruption of Turan: the whole country is, in fact, as may be perceived from this cursory topographical notice, the classic ground of ancient Persian history. Besides the descendants of Nushirvan’s brother, and of the liberator, Feridun, and the families of Bawend and Kawpara, whose origin mounts to the highest Persian antiquity, that of Keyumers,[237] which reigned from the fall of the Kawpara, to the foundation of the empire of the Sefi, trace their descent from the king of the same name, who appears so darkly through the remote clouds of historical traditions, that many writers actually confound the first Persian king with the first man. Nevertheless, this family is, as far as we know, the last which has traced its origin, authentically, to the ancient Persian kings. Chance has, in the conformity of the names of the first and last sovereign, repeated the play of words, which appears in history, in the fall of several great kingdoms. The first and last rulers of the eastern and western Roman empires, of the Seljukides, of the governors of Thaberistan, of the prophets of the Moslimin, and of the last of his successors of the family of Abbas, had similar names. The names of Augustus, Constantine, Mohammed, Togrul, Keyumers, commence and terminate the series of Roman, Byzantine, Arabian, Seljukian, and Persian royal families; and, perhaps, the European Turkish empire will end, as it began, with an Othman.