So at this time, the latter end of the 6th century, we have a pleasant enough picture of Persia excellently ruled by a monarch of broad views, whose queen and eldest son were Christians; whose courtiers, doctors, and advisers counted in their ranks men of the same faith; whose principal college, the glory of his life, was a Christian institution. Small wonder, then, that the Chaldeans looked with high hope upon the future, when Zoroastrianism should pass away to give place to a Christian Persia.[37] But while Nushirvan dreamed of empire, and the Christians of religious supremacy, there was born he who would sweep before him the Persian Empire and the priests of Zoroaster, leaving but a remnant in their original domains. For Muhammad Mustafa--“The Prophet”--was born about this time, and mentioned it himself later--“I was born,” said he, “in the time of the just king,” _i.e._, Nushirvan, shah of Persia. [Sidenote: ADVENT OF ISLAM] Nushirvan died 578 A.D., and was followed by a number of weak monarchs till the ill-fated Yazdijird III., last Zoroastrian king of Persia, who, defeated at Qadasiyya by the Arabs in A.D. 635, died, an exile, in Khurasan, in A.D. 651. At this, one of the most important turning-points in the history of the East, and the occasion of the inception of a doctrine that numbers among its adherents a large portion of the total population of the world, it is advisable to turn aside for a moment from the history of the Eastern Christians to ascertain in what condition the Church was at that time. Most commentators upon Islam and the Christianity of this period agree that the Church of Jesus Christ had, by its adoption of various heterodox ideas, become split up into little more than a widely spread religion, which, while nominally one in faith and aim, was actually nothing more than a number of sects at war with one another upon points of dogma, and generally sunk in corruption. This certainly was the case among the Christians of the West under the Byzantine Emperors, and the Syrian or Arab Christians of Western Arabia and Damascus. In such confusion was the Christian Church in these parts that Muhammad in seeking between the two great faiths of his land, Judaism and Christianity, for material wherewith to compile the Quran, turned away from the involved and contradictory views of the Christian priests, to the more comprehensible doctrine of the Jews. But we are concerned with the Nestorians alone, and of all the sects, or schisms, this was the least corrupted in fundamental idea, and we find that it compared very favourably in organisation and unity of purpose, with the almost idolatrous sects of the Syrian and Coptic Churches.