Part 2: Shapur and the Ghassanids

When some time had passed for the king, the world-lighting crown grew bright and radiant. From the Ghassanids came Tayer, brave as a lion, whose sword could break the heart of heaven itself. An army drawn from the Romans and from Qadisiyya, from Bahrain, from the Kurds, and from the Persians. He marched to the outskirts of Ctesiphon, a host beyond all counting. He gave that whole land to plunder; whoever could walk or run or fly, none escaped him. There was a survivor of Narsi's line, a keepsake of his house, and her name was Nushah, fresh as spring. That moon-faced woman came to the palace hall, and all of Ctesiphon filled with talk of her. They took her from her palace and made her captive, for those people were neither wise nor open to wisdom. For nearly a year she stayed close to Tayer, her heart drowned in blood from her sorrows. By Tayer she bore a daughter lovely as the moon; you would say Narsi himself had returned with crown and throne. Her father named her Malika when he saw the girl was worthy of a kingdom. When Shapur turned twenty-six, he had become a king like the moon in beauty, radiant as the sun. He came out to the plain and reviewed his army, and chose twelve thousand of his finest warriors. Each rode a swift-footed camel, and before them went a hundred guides. They mounted the camels, leading their horses by hand, and the king-loving champions set out. Then Shapur mounted with his chosen men and, in kingly fashion, girded himself for the raid. He set off in pursuit of the king of the Ghassanids, the proud Tayer, that raging lion. He killed many of Tayer's soldiers, and when Tayer saw this, he turned and fled. The uproar of the chase and the battle rose up, and they took many of them prisoner. No one could reckon their number; then those who remained fled away. That army shut themselves up in a fortress in Yemen, and cries went up from child and man and woman. Shapur brought so vast an army that he blocked the road even to the ant and the gnat. He found Tayer and his men trapped in the fortress, with no way to fight and no way to flee. For a whole month, day and night, the fighting went on, and inside the fortress the army ran short of provisions.