Christian Metropolis captured by the Turks nearly five hundred years
ago and ever since retained by them, was a simple crescent. And there
is no doubt whatever that the dual symbol of the Moslems was adopted by
them, not when they brought about the downfall of Constantinople as a
Christian city, but centuries before, as a result of the conquest of
Persia.

It was in the year A.C. 641 that the battle of Nehavend, ever after
called by the Moslems the _Victory of Victories_, laid at the feet of
the followers of the Prophet the kingdom of Iran or Persia, and brought
to an end the Sassanian Monarchy.

Now the coins of the Sassanian kings then and for the previous two
centuries bore upon them, with scarcely an exception, the so-called
"_star_ and crescent"; and it was as the symbol of this Zoroastrian
dynasty and of the fair land of Iran, that the Moslems adopted it as
their own. What the star-like object (star-like, that is, in _our_
opinion) represented upon the coins of Iran or Persia when placed
within the horns of a crescent, was, of course, the Sun. The
supposition of certain writers that the dual symbol represented the two
crescent-presenting orbs, Venus and the Moon, is entirely mistaken. For
though the conjunction of the two crescent-shaped and feminine lights
of heaven, was of old, like the combination of the symbol of the
Sun--as representing the Male Principle--with that ever feminine symbol
the Crescent, held to signify Increase and Life, we are dealing with
what was admittedly a Mithraic symbol. And not only was the star-like
object in question the symbol of the Sun-God Mithras, but it was, as
any student of the coins of the Sassanian dynasty can see, substituted
for the disc.