Iran: Empire of the Mind

by Michael Axworthy

  As pursued later by the western Christian church in medieval Europe, the full grim panoply of Manichaean/Augustinian formulae emerged, blighting millions of lives and still exerting their sad effect today: the distaste for the human body, the disgust for and guilt about sexuality, the misogyny, the determinism (and the tendency to irresponsibility that emerges from it), the obsessive idealisation of the Spirit and disdain for the Material—all distant indeed from the original teaching of Jesus. One could argue that the extreme Manichaean duality of evil materiality/ good spirituality emerged most strongly in the heresies like those of the Cathars, the Bogomils and the rest, that the Church pursued most energetically (the same Bogomils from whom the English language acquired the term ‘bugger’). The great scholar and Persianist Alessandro Bausani (from whom I have taken much of my account of Manichaean beliefs) doubted the connection with these western heresies,25 but many of their beliefs and practices showed a close identity with those of Manichaeism, which is not easily discounted. The energy of the medieval church’s persecution of the Cathars and others derived really from the dangerous similarity between their doctrines and orthodox ones—they merely carried orthodox doctrine to its logical extreme. The church was trying to destroy its ugly shadow (the Eastern Orthodox Church, sensibly, never embraced Augustinian theology to the same extent). The real opponent to Augustinian orthodoxy was Pelagianism—the simple, natural appeal of which was such that it never really quite died out—a golden thread, sometimes concealed, running through medieval thought, to emerge again in Renaissance humanism. If ever a Christian thinker deserved to be made a saint, then surely Pelagius did. If ever a pair of thinkers deserved Nietzsche’s title Weltverleumder26 (world-slanderers), then they were Mani and Augustine.

  To return to Persia from this excursion, we should remember that Manichaeism was condemned by the Mazdaean Magi as a heresy at an early stage, and that it is more correct to see it as a distortion of Iranian thinking, or indeed as an outgrowth of Christian Gnosticism dressed in Mazdaean trappings, than as representative of anything enduring in Iranian thought.

  Renewed War

  Shapur’s defeats of the Romans had contributed to the near-collapse of the Roman empire in the third century. For a while after the capture of Valerian in 260 the Romans were in no fit state to strike back, and it seemed as if the whole East was open to Persian conquest. But a new power arose in the vacuum, based on the Syrian city of Palmyra, led by Septimius Odenathus, a Romanised Arab, and his wife Zenobia (Zeinab). Odenathus swept through the Roman provinces of the east and some western sources have suggested that he campaigned successfully in the western part of the Sassanid empire also, but this has been disputed. Odenathus was assassinated in about 267 and succeeded by Zenobia, who conquered Egypt in 269, but she was defeated by the emperor Aurelian in 273, who was able to restore the fortunes of Rome in the region. By that time Shapur was dead; he probably died of illness in Bishapur in May 27027 (272 according to some). His reign had boosted the prestige of the Sassanid dynasty enormously, and had established the Persian empire as the equal of Rome in the east.

  After Shapur’s death several of his sons reigned for short periods in succession, but a Mazdaean priest called Kerdir gradually strengthened his position at court, seems to have been influential in securing the succession on at least one occasion, and eventually was in a position to begin asserting Mazdaean orthodoxy more aggressively, achieving not just the death of Mani and the persecution of his followers, but also the persecution of Jews, Christians, Buddhists and others. Not for the last time, the over-involvement of religious leaders in Iranian politics led to the persecution of minorities (and perhaps too, at length, to the discrediting of the persecutors). In 283 the Romans invaded Persian territory again, and the outcome of the war was a new settlement, dividing Armenia between the two rival empires and losing some frontier provinces that Shapur had conquered. The Persians made further concessions in 298 after some less than successful fighting under Narseh, another of Shapur’s sons, but the peace treaty signed then lasted for many years. Armenia was confirmed as an Arsacid kingdom under Roman protection. A rock-relief at Naqsh-e Rostam shows Narseh being invested with royalty by Anahita, the traditional patroness of the Sassanids. It has been suggested that this signified a return to a traditional, more tolerant religious policy after the Kerdir episode.28

  In 310 a young boy ascended the throne as Shapur II, after some dispute over the succession. He reigned a long time, until 379. One notable aspect of this reign is that it appears to have consolidated the process of revision, collation and codification that the Mazdaean religion had been undergoing since the accession of Ardashir, and perhaps before. According to a later Zoroastrian tradition, (following the similar earlier attempt by the Arsacid, Vologases) Ardashir instructed his high priest to reassemble and to complete the dispersed fragments of text and oral tradition that were preserved. Shapur I ordered that these should be augmented by all the knowledge of science, philosophy and so on that could be gathered in from sources outside Persia—notably India and Greece. Finally, Shapur II organised an extended discussion and debate between the various disputing sects of Mazdaism in order to establish a single, authorised doctrine. A priest called Adhurpat endured an ordeal by fire in order to prove the validity of his arguments, emerged safely and was permitted to make final, liturgical additions to the Avesta. This seems to have been the decisive moment at which the previous differences were resolved and Zoroastrian religion coalesced from its previous disparate elements into a single, unitary orthodoxy, from which in turn modern Zoroastrianism derives. From this point (although the choosing of any particular date or phase for a transition that is gradual, complex and evidentially uncertain is bound to be somewhat arbitrary, and there was a persistence later of Zurvanist tendencies) it makes sense to speak of Zoroastrianism rather than Mazdaism.29

  Shortly before Shapur II became Shah, Armenia turned Christian (at least officially) and during Shapur’s reign the Emperor Constantine designated Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire too, claiming in addition to be the protector of all Christians everywhere. Thus Christians within Persia became suspect as potential spies and traitors, and gradually made the previous tolerance of most of the earlier Sassanid kings difficult to sustain. The new orthodoxy of Zoroastrianism, with its political connections and influence, became intolerant of rivals within Persia, and religious strife resulted. Tension also increased because Constantine was keeping at his court one of Shapur’s brothers, Hormuzd, as a potential claimant to the Persian throne. After learning the trade of war in campaigns against the Arabs (in which he was successful, resettling some defeated tribes to Khuzestan) Shapur demanded the restitution of the provinces won by Shapur I in northern Mesopotamia and subsequently lost by his successors. War broke out again, rolling back and forth between 337 and 359, with the Persians eventually taking Amida (modern Diyarbekir in Turkey).

  In 363 the Emperor Julian, one of the most interesting of the later Roman emperors, a scholar and a pagan, who did his best to overturn Constantine’s establishment of Christianity in the empire and had been a successful military commander in the west, launched a campaign to restore Rome’s position in Syria and to put the Persians in their place. Accompanied by the pretender Hormuzd he brought an army of over 80,000 men down the Euphrates as far as Ctesiphon, but he was dissuaded from a siege and (perhaps by accident) burned his boats. Soon the problems of heat, thirst, supply and demoralisation began to bite in a way that Crassus would have found familiar, and the Romans began to retreat. Eventually Julian was killed in battle (perhaps by his own men) and his successor (Jovian) made a peace favourable to the Persians, restoring the frontiers as they had been at the end of the reign of Shapur I, with a few additions. Shapur II was also given a free hand in Armenia, which he proceeded to annex, but desultory fighting continued until his death in 379. The achievements of Shapur II’s reign are all the more remarkable for the fact that at several points he had to switch
fronts to the east to deal with attacks from the Chionite Huns, who had established themselves in Transoxiana and Bactria.30

  Strife, Revolution and Free Love

  Shapur was a strong, successful king with enormous prestige. But his successors, who inclined to tolerance of religious minorities, a peace-oriented foreign policy, and (in some cases) measures to uphold justice and protect the poor, had trouble restraining a priesthood and a noble class who were inclined (perhaps in some sense conditioned) to intolerance and war, and disliked any attempt to mitigate their social supremacy. Ardashir II, Shapur III and Bahram IV were all murdered or died in suspicious circumstances (Bahram was shot full of arrows by mutinous commanders).31 Their successor, Yazdegerd I, ruled from 399, and kept a peace with the Romans throughout his reign. So much so that the Roman Emperor of the East, Arcadius, asked him to become the guardian of his son, Theodosius; neatly symbolising the parity of the two empires, which now entered on a phase of partnership. Shahs and emperors cooperated, (albeit warily and at a distance), against the internal and external instabilities that menaced them both. The heroic period of ambition-driven warfare was over, and even when war broke out again between the two empires in the sixth century it was waged not by glory-hungry emperors themselves, but by their generals.

  Yazdegerd I also followed a tolerant religious policy. He was friendly to the Jews (who hailed him as ‘the new Cyrus’), and employed Jewish officials; and it was during his reign that a distinct Persian Christianity emerged, to become what is normally called the Nestorian church, the first synod of which was held in 410 (the Nestorians later distanced themselves from the western Christians over the natures of Christ, and by banning celibacy for priests; thereby probably appeasing the Zoroastrians, who strongly disapproved of celibacy). This wise measure would have had the obvious beneficial effect of detaching Persian Christians from the taint of being a fifth column for the Romans. But as before these policies made the shah unpopular with the clergy (later Zoroastrian accounts labelled Yazdegerd ‘the sinner’), some of whom he had executed, and it seems Yazdegerd was murdered like his immediate predecessors. But the fact that his name was taken up by several later successors suggests that his memory was respected in court circles.

  The reigns following that of Shapur II are significant because they indicate the emergence of a theory of kingship that went beyond a system of alliance or identification with a particular religion or class, to assert that the shah had a duty to uphold justice for all his subjects. That such a theory existed we know from post-Islamic sources, who advised rulers of later times on the basis of patterns and ideas that had been the standard under the Sassanids. The king ruled on the basis of divine grace (kvarrah in Middle Persian/Pahlavi—a concept that goes back to the Avesta and the Achaemenid period; evidenced primarily by success in war), and was allowed to raise taxes and keep soldiers, but only on the basis that he ruled justly and not tyrannically. Injustice and tyranny would break the peace that permitted productive agriculture and trade, in turn reducing the tax yield, the king’s ability to reward soldiers, and the stability of his rule. Justice was the key that turned a vicious circle into a virtuous circle. But in practice, the attempts of a king like Yazdegerd to rule justly according to his judgement, might not accord with the ideas of the Zoroastrian priests about what was just in any given situation. The abstract principle could be used a weapon by either side.

  After some confusion Yazdegerd was succeeded by his son, Bahram V, also known as Bahram Gur (wild ass) after his enthusiasm for hunting those animals. Bahram became a legendary figure, around whom many popular stories were told that elaborated on his love of women, music and poetry; and his generosity and bravery. He had been brought up in Hira by an Arab foster-father, and there is evidence that this again was a cause for dislike by the over-mighty clergy. Bahram Gur was successful in wars to protect Persian frontiers in the east, re-established Persian control of Armenia, and made a treaty with the Romans that provided for religious tolerance in both empires. But his love of hunting was his downfall; he is believed to have disappeared into quicksand after a mishap while pursuing game in marshland in Media in 438/439. Yazdegerd II, who followed him, seems to have been a ruler more to the liking of the Zoroastrian priesthood. He attempted to reimpose Zoroastrianism on Armenia, provoking a civil war there, and seems also to have permitted renewed persecution of Christians and Jews in Persia proper. Touraj Daraee suggests that he also inclined to the more east Persian, kingly mythology, derived from the Avesta and its references to the Kayanid kings (later to reappear as heroes in Ferdowsi’s Shahname) rather than the west Persian, sub-Achaemenid version32.

  Throughout this period, the threat from tribal nomads from the north and east intensified (the Romans came under the same pressure, which is one reason why the wars with Rome abated at this time). Yazdegerd II was successful against them for the most part, but was forced to retreat in 454, and died in 457. After a dynastic struggle his son Peroz (Feruz) gained the throne with the help of the people known as the Hephtalite Huns, but was captured by them in battle in 469 and forced to pay a huge ransom and to yield territory in return for his release. This was also a time of hardship, drought and famine. Peroz renewed the struggle with the Hephtalites in 484, but was killed in battle and the Persians were utterly defeated. His successor could only fend off his eastern enemies by paying them tribute, and was eventually deposed and blinded.

  Kavad I came to the throne in 488 at a time of crisis. The Hephtalites had sliced off a swathe of Persia’s eastern provinces, and the peasantry were in a miserable state through repeated famines, the exactions of the arrogant nobility, and the taxes required to make tribute payments. Provinces in the west and south-west were in revolt. Then, on top of all this, a version of the Manichaean heresy reappeared in a new, revolutionary form, demanding that since wealth and the desire for women caused all the trouble in the world, wealth should be distributed equally and women should be held in common also (the latter is often thought to have been exaggerated by the sect’s enemies, but there is evidence that ‘shrines and inns’ were established where people could meet and make love freely).33 The movement has been named Mazdakism after its leader, Mazdak; though some have doubted how central to the phenomenon Mazdak actually was. Kavad himself was apparently converted to the new beliefs, seeing an opportunity to humble the nobles and the clergy. Granaries were thrown open to the people and land was redistributed, but the nobility and clergy managed to overcome Kavad, imprison him and replace him with his more malleable brother. The country (especially Mesopotamia, but also other parts) was in turmoil. At length Kavad was able to escape from prison and reimpose his authority with the help of the Hephtalites (in 498/499).

  Al-Tabari gives a story34 that Kavad escaped through the intervention of his daughter, who went to the prison commander and allowed him to sleep with her, to persuade him to let her see her father. She stayed with Kavad for a day, and then left with a sturdy servant, who was carrying a rolled-up carpet. The commander asked about the carpet, but the girl told him it was the one she had slept on, and since she was having her period, she was going to wash, and then come back. The commander did not investigate the carpet further ‘lest he become polluted by it’ and let the girl go on her way. But instead of returning, once they were out of the prison, Kavad rolled out of the carpet and they all escaped to the Hephtalites. The superstitious taboo about the impurity of menstrual blood was to prove damaging to the nobles and clergy—there is a kind of cosmic justice to it.

  In the remainder of Kavad’s reign and in that of his son and successor Khosraw (531-579) the two kings pushed through a number of important reforms that established the Sassanid Empire in something like its final shape. Both kings exploited the chaos caused by the Mazdakite revolution to diminish the power of the nobility and the clergy (this came across most clearly in Kavad’s later years, when Khosraw’s succession was in question—the clergy and nobility were forced to support Khosraw for fear that another of K
avad’s sons, a pro-Mazdakite, would become shah). Perhaps most importantly, the taxation system was reformed, a poll tax was established, and a survey of taxable land was carried out, to ensure the taxation was equitable.35 The empire was divided into four sectors, each under the command of a military commander (spahbod), and supported by a chancery (diwan) that kept his troops supplied. In addition, a new clerical office was established—a Protector of the Poor, to reinforce the moral duty of the priesthood to look after the interests of the lowest strata of society; a duty they had presumably neglected before. The reforms created, or certainly greatly strengthened, a new class of dehqans, rural gentry who collected tax in the villages and were themselves small landowners. The dehqans also provided the battle-winning Persian cavalry that dominated the shah’s armies; but from now on they were paid and retained by the Shah instead of the great noble families. Identifying closely with the Shah’s interest, and providing administrators and courtiers as well as soldiers, the dehqan class became the prime means by which the traditions and culture of Sassanid Persia were preserved and transmitted onward in time after the Islamic conquest.