The defeat of the Sasanian dynasty at the hands of the Hephthalites, the continuing wars with the Romans, the heavy taxes imposed on the empire’s subjects, and the growing suffering and exploitation of peasant masses resulted in the emergence of a social movement that demanded fundamental reforms and severe restrictions on the powers and privileges of the empire’s ruling classes. The situation worsened to the point that even the Sasanian monarch Kavad I (r. 484–496 and 498/499–531 CE) and some members of the royal family began to advocate for institutional reforms and the curtailment of the enormous power of the Persian nobility and the Zoroastrian priesthood. It is not surprising therefore that Kavad I was attracted to the teachings of Mazdak, a member of the Zoroastrian religious hierarchy who preached against greed, arrogance, and unfettered power.
Mazdak was a follower of a reform movement within Zoroastrianism that preached peace and justice and opposed violence and bloodshed. As a Zoroastrian leader and preacher, Mazdak believed in the constant struggle between the forces of good and evil. According to his interpretation of Zoroastrianism, the triumph of good over evil required the human soul to strive for compassion, brotherhood, and equality and to refrain from wickedness, malice, competition, and conflict, as represented by greed and the drive to accumulate property and women. According to Mazdak, the source of evil and suffering in the world was the human fixation with satisfying self-centered desires without any regard for the hardships and needs of fellow human beings. To liberate the human soul from the forces of evil and to create a just and peaceful society free of competition and violence, human beings had to abandon greed and selfishness and share the resources of their society, including private property and women.
Mazdak’s ideas and Kavad’s support for them posed a direct threat to the established privileges of the empire’s ruling classes, particularly the nobility and the Zoroastrian priesthood. This opposition was sufficiently powerful to depose Kavad in 496 CE and force him to seek refuge with the Hephthalites who had defeated and killed his father, Peroz. In 498/499, Kavad managed to convince the Hephthalites to assist him with raising an army and regaining his throne. Kavad returned to power, but he realized that his authority would not be fully secure unless he appeased the anti-Mazdak nobility and priests. The ruling dynasty was itself divided from within among the pro-Mazdak and anti-Mazdak factions. Among the contenders to the throne, Mazdak and his followers favored the older son of Kavad I, Kavus, who sympathized with the ideas and objectives of their movement. The younger son, Khosrow, a fervent opponent of Mazdak, was the preferred candidate of the anti-Mazdak nobility and the Zoroastrian religious establishment. To appease the Persian nobility and the Zoroastrian priesthood, Kavad appointed Khosrow as his crown prince.
When Kavad I died, he was succeeded on the throne by his son Khosrow I (r. 531–579 CE). Khosrow unleashed a campaign of terror against Mazdak and his followers. The religious leader was denounced, detained, and executed, and the movement was forced underground. The murder of Mazdak, who had gained popularity among the masses, was followed by a campaign of repression. Thousands of Mazdakites were imprisoned, and many were executed. The movement was forced underground, but it did not die. Despite the harsh repression it suffered at the hands of the Sasanian state, the Mazdakite movement survived and enjoyed a revival after the fall of the Sasanian dynasty and the introduction of Islam in 651.
Though he suppressed the Mazdakites, Khosrow recognized that repression alone could not save and prolong the life of the Sasanian monarchy. He therefore introduced a series of governmental reforms. These included the completion and implementation of tax reforms that already had been introduced by his father, Kavad, to alleviate the financial burdens imposed on the peasantry. Khosrow’s reforms were intended to expand the size of the Sasanian bureaucracy and strengthen the position of the Sasanian king of kings vis-à-vis the Persian nobility and the provincial power centers. The first and perhaps most important of these reforms was restructuring the archaic tax system of the empire. In the traditional system, taxes were levied on the yield of land. Therefore, from year to year the amount of the tax varied. Khosrow abolished the system based on yearly variation and replaced it with a fixed sum. The Sasanian king also reorganized the administrative structure of his empire. He established a governmental system based on a council of ministers, or divan, headed by a prime minister. For much of his reign, the wise and capable chief minister, Bozorg Mihr, played a central role in running a well-oiled and highly efficient bureaucracy for his royal master. Khosrow also empowered the lower gentry or the dihgans and reduced the power of the great feudal families who enjoyed enormous influence in the royal court.
Despite Khosrow’s best efforts, the internal decline continued. The long military campaigns during the reigns of Khosrow I and his grandson, Khosrow II Parvez (r. 590–628 CE), against the Roman Empire exhausted the financial resources of the Sasanian state. Khosrow II embarked on an ambitious campaign against the Byzantine Empire. In 613, Persian armies captured Syria and Palestine. There they seized the True Cross of Christian tradition and transported it back to the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon. To the north, the Sasanian forces moved west from Cappadocia in central Asia Minor and quickly reached the Asian shores of the Bosporus in 614. The capital of the Byzantine Empire was now within their sight. Since the time of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, no Iranian ruler had extended the borders of his empire so far westward. At this point, a Byzantine embassy arrived in the Persian court and pleaded for peace. The new Byzantine emperor, Heraclius, likewise arrived in the Persian camp with a plea for negotiations. Khosrow II, however, rejected a peace settlement. In 619, Khosrow’s armies invaded and occupied Egypt. Territorially overextended, financially exhausted, and militarily overstretched, the Sasanian armies disintegrated when the Byzantine state organized a counterattack. The aging and increasingly inflexible and obstinate Khosrow II refused to recognize the gravity of the situation. Instead of assuming responsibility for his own poor decisions, he blamed his army commanders for the defeats he had suffered and ordered their execution. This only exasperated the crisis and resulted in a revolt by his commanders, who opened direct negotiations with Heraclius, the Byzantine emperor. The conflict between the Persian monarch and his opponents was finally resolved when a group of conspirators, including one of the king’s sons, Shiruya (Shiroy), staged a coup. Shiruya ascended the Sasanian throne as Kavad II. The new monarch first imprisoned and then executed his father and all of his brothers. The Sasanian state never recovered from this murderous rampage. The death of Shiruya a few months after he had seized the throne left a vacuum that could not be filled by the young and inexperienced princes and princesses of the royal family, including two daughters of Khosrow II, Boran (Puran) (r. 630–631) and Azarmidokht (r. 631 CE), who ascended the throne one after another in quick succession. In the anarchy that followed the death of Shiruya, the authority of the Sasanian central government began to disintegrate rapidly. Army commanders acted as independent rulers, and at least one, Shahrbaraz, seized the throne for several months, declaring himself the king of kings before being murdered. Finally, in 633 the members of the Persian nobility agreed to install a grandson of Khosrow II as the new monarch. The new king, Yazdegerd III (r. 633–651), was just eight years old when he ascended the throne. He had no real power and could not restore order to the empire. Thus, when the Muslim Arabs invaded in 636 CE, a Persian army was defeated at Qadisiyyah in present-day Iraq. Yazdegerd tried desperately to rally his forces, but the Sasanian army suffered another humiliating defeat at the hands of the invading Arabs at Nahavand (Nihavand) in western Iran in 642. The ill-fated Persian monarch had no other alternative but to flee. He first traveled from Media to Ray, south of present-day Tehran, and then to Isfahan. From Isfahan, Yazdegerd set out for Istakhr in southern Iran, but when the province of Fars was invaded by an Arab army, Yazdegerd fled to Kerman in southeastern Iran. From Kerman, he went to Sistan in eastern Iran but could not stay there either. In his last despera
te attempt to save his life and rescue the Sasanian state, Yazdegerd III fled to northeastern Iran. He was most probably trying to reach Central Asia and China and seek support from the Turks and the Tang emperor of China to whom he had sent his son, Peroz, with pleas for assistance. In 651 near the city of Marv in the northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan, Yazdegerd III was murdered by a miller with whom he had sought sanctuary. The miller apparently found the jewels, which the royal fugitive carried with him, too irresistible. The death of the last Sasanian king and the disintegration of the Persian armies allowed the Muslim Arabs to complete their conquest of Iran with relative ease.
With the collapse of the Sasanian state the history of ancient Iran came to an abrupt conclusion, and a new era in the long and rich history of Iran commenced, this time within the framework of the Islamic civilization. The Arabs who overthrew the Sasanian dynasty introduced a new religion, Islam, that was eventually adopted by the majority of the Iranian people. Despite the fall of the Sasanian state and the eventual conversion of the majority of the population to Islam, however, Iranians preserved their unique historical, cultural, and linguistic identity. They also continued to observe many of their ancient cultural practices. Thus, Greater Iran did not become Arabized or Arabic-speaking, though Iranians played a central and leading role in the growth, maturation, and advancement of Islamic civilization.
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CHRONOLOGY OF ANCIENT IRAN
5500 BCE
The earliest settlements are established in Sialk near Kashan, central Iran.
2700 BCE
The Elamite Kingdom is established, with Susa in southwestern Iran as its capital.
1350 BCE
A mass migration of Iranian groups from Central Asia and present-day northern Afghanistan to the Iranian plateau occurs.
1244–1208 BCE
Wars break out between the Elamite Kingdom and Assyria.
1000 BCE
According to some scholars of ancient Iran, the Iranian prophet Zarathustra (Zoroaster) is born. (There is no consensus on the date of Zarathustra’s birth. Some have argued that he was born in 1200 BCE, while others have opted for 600 BCE.)
835 BCE
The Iranian Medes are mentioned for the first time on an inscription of the Assyrian monarch Shalmaneser III.
700–550/549 BCE: Median Empire
700 BCE
This year represents the height of Assyrian power.
700–675 BCE
Deioces rules. Other sources maintain that he ruled from 700 to 647 BCE.
675–653 BCE
Phraortes (Faravartish) rules. Other sources maintain that he ruled from 647 to 625 BCE.
669–627 BCE
Ashurbanipal rules the Assyrian Empire.
652–625 BCE
Scythians overrun Media.
639 BCE
King Ashurbanipal of Assyria attacks and defeats the Elamite Kingdom and sacks its capital, Susa.
627 BCE
Ashurbanipal dies.
626 BCE
Fighting breaks out between rival contenders to the Assyrian throne after the death of Ashurbanipal.
The Chaldaean commander Nabopolassar seizes the Babylonian throne.
625/624–585 BCE
Cyaxares (Huvakhshtra) rules.
624 BCE
The Medes defeat the Scythians.
615 BCE
The Medes join Babylonia in a united front against Assyria.
The Medes capture Arrapha near present-day Kirkuk in northern Iraq.
614 BCE
The Medes capture Ashur, the first capital of the Assyrian state.
The Medes conclude a treaty of peace with the Neo-Babylonian Empire.
612 BCE
The Medes and Babylonians sack Nineveh, the capital of the Assyrian Empire.
Ashuruballit proclaims himself king of Assyria at Harran.
610 BCE
The Medes and Babylonians attack Harran.
605 BCE
The Assyrian kingdom ends.
590–585 BCE
The Media-Lydia Wars take place.
587 BCE
Jerusalem is seized by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, who burns Jerusalem and its Temple.
585 BCE
Peace is established between Media and Lydia.
585/584–550 BCE
Astyages (Rishti Vega) becomes the king of Media.
584 BCE
King Cyaxares of Media dies.
561 BCE
Croesus becomes the ruler of Lydia.
559/558 BCE
Cyrus II becomes the king of Anshan (present-day southern Iranian province of Fars).
553/552–550/549 BCE
Cyrus II revolts against the Median king Astyages.
550 BCE
The Persian Empire Page 6