Mir-Weis, or Meriwitz, intendant of the province, whose office was only to collect the tributes, assassinated the prince of Candahar, armed the militia, and continued master of the province till his death, which happened in 1717. His brother came quietly to the succession, by paying a slight tribute to the Persian court. But the son of Mir-Weis, who inherited the ambition of his father, assassinated his uncle, and began to erect himself into a conqueror. This young man was called Mir-Mahmoud, but he was known in Europe only by the name of his father, who had begun the rebellion. Mahmoud reinforced his Aghwans, by adding to them all the Guebres he could get together. These Guebres were an ancient race of Persians, who had been dispersed by the caliph Omar, and who still continued attached to the religion of the Magi (formerly flourished in the reign of Cyrus), and were always secret enemies to the new Persians. Having assembled his forces, Mahmoud marched into the heart of Persia, at the head of a hundred thousand men. At the same time the Lesgians or Albanians, who, on account of the troublesome times, had not received their subsidies from the court of Persia, came down from their mountains with an armed force, so that the flames of civil war were lighted up at both ends of the empire, and extended themselves even to the capital. These Lesgians ravaged all that country which stretches along the western borders of the Caspian Sea, as far as Derbent, or the Iron Gate. In this country is situated the city of Shamache, about fifteen leagues distant from the sea, and is said to have been the ancient residence of Cyrus, and by the Greeks called Cyropolis, for we know nothing of the situation or names of these countries, but what we have from the Greeks; but as the Persians never had a prince called Cyrus, much less had they any city called Cyropolis. It is much in the same manner that the Jews, who commenced authors when they were settled in Alexandria, framed a notion of a city called Scythopolis, which, said they, was built by the Scythians in the neighbourhood of Judea, as if either Scythians or ancient Jews could have given Greek names to their towns. The city of Shamache was very rich. The Armenians, who inhabit in the neighbourhood of this part of the Persian empire, carried on an immense traffic there, and Peter had lately established a company of Russian merchants at his own expense, which company became very flourishing. The Lesgians made themselves masters of this city by surprise, plundered it, and put to death all the Russians who traded there under the protection of shah Hussein, after having stripped all their warehouses. The loss on this occasion was said to amount to four millions of rubles.