The Persian Empire

by Kia, Mehrdad;

  Further Reading

  Daryaee, Touraj. Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire. London and New York: I. B. Tauris, 2013.

  Farrokh, Kaveh. Shadows in the Desert: Ancient Persia at War. Oxford: Osprey, 2007.

  Minovi, Mojtaba, ed. Nameh-ye Tansar. Tehran: Kharazmi Publishing House, 1976.

  Pourshariati, Parvaneh. Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian-Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran. London: I. B. Tauris, 2008.

  Procopius. History of the Wars, Books I–II. Translated by H. B. Dewing. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.

  Rosen, William. Justinian’s Flea: The First Great Plague and the End of the Roman Empire. London: Penguin, 2008.

  Shayegan, M. Rahim. Arsacids and Sasanians: Political Ideology in Post-Hellenistic and Late Antique Persia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.

  Tabari. Tarikh-e Tabari, Vol. 2. Translated from Arabic into Persian by Abol Qassem Payandeh. Tehran: Asatir Publications, 1984.

  Khosrow II Parvez

  Khosrow II Parvez (the Victorious) was the ruler of the Persian Sasanian Empire from 590 to 628 CE. He was the son of the Sasanian monarch Hormozd IV (r. 579–590 CE) and the grandson of Khosrow I Anushiravan (r. 531–579 CE). Through his paternal grandmother, Kayen, Khosrow II was the great-grandson of the khagan of the Hephthalites. Khosrow’s mother was from the powerful and influential landowning family of Espahbadh.

  Khosrow II was born around 570 CE. As a young man he served his father as the governor of Albania in the southern Caucasus. Whether the young prince played any role in his father’s military campaigns as the Sasanian armies fought the Romans to the west and the Turks to the northeast is not clear. The campaign against the Romans did not result in a victory, but the Persians were victorious in their war against the Turks. The Persian commander Bahram Chobin (Chubin), who hailed from the powerful Mehran family, inflicted a devastating defeat on the Turk Empire, reestablishing Sasanian control over northern Afghanistan and the southern regions of Central Asia. Instead of recognizing the brilliance of his general and acknowledging his impressive victories, Hormozd sent an insulting message, which angered and alienated Bahram from his royal master. The victories of Bahram on the battlefield had aroused the jealousy of Hormozd IV, who appointed his brilliant general to the difficult task of conquering the kingdom of Lazica. Lazica was situated on the eastern shores of the Black Sea, corresponding with the western region of the present-day Republic of Georgia. The king of Lazica ruled as a vassal of the Byzantine emperor, who viewed the province as an important geographical barrier, one that denied the Persians an access route to the Black Sea. Despite his usual display of courage and bravery, Bahram suffered defeat at the hands of the Romans. The defeat provided Hormozd IV with the convenient justification to dismiss his charismatic commander from his post. Humiliated by the king’s decision, Bahram rose in rebellion against his royal master, who had become increasingly unpopular among the ruling elite because he had cut the salaries paid to army officers and executed powerful members of the Persian nobility and the Zoroastrian religious hierarchy.

  With support from his army, Bahram began to march to Azerbaijan and from there southward toward Media and the Sasanian capital, Ctesiphon, in present-day southern Iraq. As Bahram’s rebellion gained momentum, a group of court dignitaries, including the two maternal uncles of Khosrow, Bendoy and Bestam, staged a revolt and removed Hormozd IV from the throne. The humiliated king was detained and shortly thereafter blinded. Khosrow, who was apparently in Azerbaijan at the time of the palace coup, rushed to the capital and ascended the throne in June 590 CE. The new king tried to diffuse Bahram’s rebellion through diplomacy but failed. Recognizing the superiority of Bahram’s forces, Khosrow, together with his wives, maternal uncles, and a small number of supporters, fled the Sasanian capital and sought refuge in Roman territory. The Persian king appealed for military assistance from the Roman emperor Maurice (r. 582–602 CE). With Khosrow temporarily gone from the scene, Bahram entered the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon. He was crowned the king of kings in March 591.

  Bahram’s reign, however, was short-lived. In return for promising the Byzantine state significant territorial concessions in Mesopotamia and the Caucasus, Khosrow secured military support from Emperor Maurice. Khosrow’s uncles also mobilized additional loyal units in Azerbaijan. In a multipronged campaign, Khosrow and his commanders marched against Bahram and defeated him at Ganzak, near Lake Orumiyeh in present-day northwestern Iran. Bahram fled the battlefield and sought refuge with the Turks in Central Asia, where he was murdered by Khosrow’s agents.

  Khosrow’s first priority was to consolidate his power within the Sasanian state. He therefore adopted a conciliatory policy toward Iran’s traditional enemies, particularly the Byzantine Empire. This foreign policy of peaceful coexistence and cooperation allowed him to eliminate powerful and ambitious courtiers and consolidate power in his own hands. Five years after he had regained the throne, Khosrow arrested and executed all the nobles and courtiers who had played a role in overthrowing his father. Among them was his maternal uncle Bendoy, who was detained and executed in Ctesiphon. Khosrow’s other uncle, Bestam, fled to the Caspian province of Gilan, where he organized a rebellion against his nephew. Bestam’s revolt was finally suppressed after he was murdered in 600/601. By the end of 601 and the beginning of 602, Khosrow had emerged as the uncontested ruler of the Sasanian Empire.

  Equestrian relief of the Sasanian king of kings Khosrow II Parvez (the Victorious) with his favorite horse, Shabdiz, inside a large grotto, or ivan, at Taq-e Bostan near the city of Kermanshah in western Iran. The Sasanian Empire reached its greatest territorial expansion during the reign of Khosrow II, who captured the city of Jerusalem before conquering Egypt. (DeAgostini/Getty Images)

  Khosrow’s long reign was marked by a series of military campaigns, including one that would stretch the borders of Sasanian rule farther westward than at any time since the reign of the Achaemenid Empire. Khosrow embarked on the first of these in 602, when he began a campaign to destroy the Arab Lakhmid monarchy in southern Mesopotamia. Since the third century CE, the Lakhmid rulers had functioned as clients of the Sasanian kings, protecting the Persian state from raids by Arab tribes from the south. The reasons behind Khosrow’s decision to attack, imprison, and execute the Christian Nestorian Lakhmid ruler No’man III (r. 580–602 CE) are unclear, but one consequence of Khosrow’s policy was a fundamental change in the balance of power among Arab tribes in the Arabian Peninsula and the removal of a buffer state that had protected the southern borders of the Sasanian state. Although Khosrow replaced the Lakhmid ruler with the chief of the Tayy tribe, new tribal alliances began to pose a threat to the Sasanian state. In the Battle of Dhi Qar in 604, an Arab tribal army defeated the Sasanians and their Arab allies.

  In 602, the relationship between the Sasanian and Byzantine Empires, which had remained peaceful for over a decade, broke down. The conflict originated from the overthrow and assassination of Emperor Maurice and five of his sons by a group of rebels who subsequently crowned an army officer, Phocas, as the new ruler. Maurice’s oldest son and co-regent, Theodosius, fled to Sasanian territory and pleaded for support from Khosrow II. Theodosius was now in the same situation Khosrow had encountered between 590 and 591 as he fought Bahram Chobin to retain his throne. The Persian king could not have forgotten the generosity and support he had received from Emperor Maurice in 590, when he assisted the young and dethroned Persian king by organizing an army that defeated Bahram and allowed Khosrow to regain his throne. As with Maurice 11 years before, Khosrow welcomed Theodosius with open arms. Theodosius was coronated in the Sasanian capital, Ctesiphon, as the new Roman emperor.

  By 603, the Persian armies were prepared to attack Mesopotamia and Asia Minor. The Sasanian forces quickly marched to upper Mesopotamia and laid siege to the well-fortified Byzantine fortress of Dara, which was finally captured a year and a half later in 604. Another Sasanian army a
ttacked Byzantine forces in Armenia and, after suffering heavy losses, managed to defeat them. Thus, the first successful campaign against the Romans came to an end in 605. Khosrow II, however, remained dissatisfied with his territorial gains. In 607 the Sasanian armies struck again, this time seizing Theodosiopolis (present-day Ra’s al-Ayn in northern Syria on the border with Turkey) in 608 and the important city of Edessa (modern-day Urfa) in present-day southeastern Turkey in 609. In 611, Khosrow took advantage of the internal conflict in Byzantium and captured Caesarea (modern-day Kayseri) in the central Anatolian region of Cappadocia (present-day Kapadokya in central Turkey). In 611 the new emperor, Heraclius (r. 610–641 CE), sent a delegation to the Sasanian court, but Khosrow refused to recognize Heraclius as the legitimate Byzantine ruler and ordered the execution of his ambassadors. Meanwhile, the Sasanian forces continued with their attack on Syria. They quickly seized Antioch (modern-day Antakya in southern Turkey on the country’s border with Syria) and shortly thereafter reached the Mediterranean coast in 612. A year later in 613, Persian forces defeated a Byzantine army led by Heraclius and occupied Syria and Palestine, including the holy city of Jerusalem. The victorious Persians seized the True Cross of Christian tradition and transported it back to the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon in 614. To the north, the Sasanian armies moved from Cappadocia and quickly reached the Asian shores of the Bosporus in 614. Byzantium, the capital of the powerful East Roman 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 second Byzantine embassy arrived in the Sasanian court and pleaded for peace. Emperor Heraclius likewise arrived in the Persian camp with a plea for negotiations. Khosrow, however, rejected a peace settlement.

  In 615 Khosrow was forced to switch his focus from the west to the east, where a combined Kushan and Turkish army attacked Khorasan and defeated the Sasanian forces under the command of the Armenian general Smbat Bagratuni. The victorious Kushan–Turk army raided Iranian urban centers as far west as Isfahan and Ray, south of modern-day Tehran. In 616 the Sasanians organized a counterattack, and an army, again under the command of Bagratuni, fought and defeated a Kushan–Hephthalite force in Tokharestan (present-day northern Afghanistan).

  With the threat to their eastern borders checked, the Persian armies went back on the offensive in Asia Minor in 617. A year later in 618, Khosrow deployed his forces in Palestine with the goal of attacking Egypt. His invasion of Egypt succeeded, and the port city of Alexandria was captured in 619. Within a year, the Persian conquest of Egypt was completed. The fall of Egypt allowed Khosrow to concentrate his main forces in Asia Minor and attack the heartland of the Byzantine state and eventually its capital. To ensure the success of this campaign, Khosrow formed an alliance with the Avars, who were breaching Byzantine defense lines in the Balkans. When the Persian forces attacked Asia Minor in 622, they advanced rapidly. By 623 they had reached Ancyra (modern-day Ankara, the capital of Turkey), while the Persian naval forces seized the island of Rhodes and several other islands in the eastern Aegean Sea. At this historic juncture, Emperor Heraclius organized a counterattack and surprised the Persians with a swift and determined march against eastern Asia Minor and western Iran. As Khosrow’s army disintegrated and the Persian king fled, Heraclius entered Azerbaijan. He reached the important Zoroastrian temple at Shiz, which housed Adur Gushnasp (Azar Goshnasp), one of the three sacred fires of Sasanian Iran, and destroyed it. Heraclius also managed to form an alliance with the Turkish Khaganate, which agreed to join the emperor in a campaign of devastation. Though defeated, the Persian commanders fought back and forced Heraclius and his army to move out of Azerbaijan and into the southern Caucasus. Under relentless attack from Sasanian forces, Heraclius retreated to eastern Asia Minor. Determined to drive the Byzantine forces out of eastern Asia Minor, the Persian armies, under the command of the Sasanian general Shahrbaraz, attacked the enemy forces in southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria, forcing them to retreat. Shahrbaraz then continued with his westward march, targeting the Byzantine capital of Constantinople, which he reached in the summer of 626.

  The two battles fought in the summer of 626 proved devastating for the Sasanians and sealed the fate of Khosrow and his armies. The first confrontation in northern Asia Minor resulted in a humiliating defeat for the Persian side when a Byzantine army, led by Emperor Heraclius, defeated a Persian army, under the command of the Sasanian general Shahen. In the second confrontation, outside Constantinople in August 626, a Persian army supported by a large Avar force was routed by Byzantine forces. The Persian commander Shahrbaraz did not have any other option but to withdraw from his position on the Asian shore of the Bosporus. As the Persian armies suffered significant losses, an army of Turks allied with the Byzantine emperor invaded, devastating urban and rural communities in Albania and Azerbaijan.

  Although the Sasanian forces already suffered significant losses in 626, the year 627 proved to be disastrous. A massive Turkish invasion from the north devastated the Caucasus region. The strategic town of Darband as well as the town of Partaw, the capital of Albania (Iranian Arran), were overrun. A Byzantine army led by Emperor Heraclius also entered Iberia (present-day Republic of Georgia). The Roman emperor and the Turkish khagan met near the Iberian capital of Tbilisi to reaffirm their alliance. As winter approached, the Turks returned home to the Eurasian steppes, while a Byzantine army pushed southward toward Azerbaijan, southeast Asia Minor, and finally northern Iraq where, in the Battle of Nineveh, it defeated the Persian army that had been sent to block Heraclius’s advance against the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon.

  Twenty-four years of incessant warfare had exhausted the Persian society, economy, and armed forces. Outraged by Khosrow’s setbacks, a group of army officers joined by sons of several prominent families organized a plot to overthrow the king and replace him with his son Kavad Shiruya (Shiroy). Shiruya joined the plot against his father because he feared that his half brother Mardanshah, the son of Khosrow’s favorite wife, Shirin, had been designated as the king’s successor. The coup organizers established contact with Emperor Heraclius as well as with Persian army commanders. On the evening of February 23, 628, the plotters carried out their coup against Khosrow. Shiruy was released from detention, and a herald proclaimed him the king of kings. The gates of the jails were also opened, and all prisoners, including Roman prisoners, were allowed to escape. Khosrow fled the palace but was later captured. Two days later, his son Shiruy ascended the throne as Kavad II. The new monarch, who had initially promised to restore peace and reverse the harsh policies of his father, unleashed a campaign of terror, murdering all his brothers and half brothers. He then ordered the execution of his father, Khosrow. The Sasanian Empire would never recover from this mad rampage of its new king.

  Throughout his reign, Khosrow displayed a high level of religious tolerance. He allowed Christian communities, particularly the Nestorian Christians, as well as the Jews to practice their religions freely. The king’s most powerful and famous wife, Shirin, was a Nestorian Christian. Within this general policy of toleration shown toward both Jews and Christians of all denominations and despite the strains introduced into the body politic and the economy by 24 years of war, even as the war approached its climax Sasanian Persia remained a multiethnic, multireligious, and multilinguistic society.

  See also: K&Q, Sasanian: Hormozd IV; Kavad II Shiruya

  Further Reading

  Greatrex, G. “Khusro II and the Christians of His Empire.” Journal of the Canadian Society for Syriac Studies 3 (2003): 78–88.

  Howard-Johnston, James. “Khosrow II.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2010, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/khosrow-ii.

  Kaegi, Walter E. Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

  Rewriting Caucasian History: The Medieval Armenian Adaptation of the Georgian Chronicles; The Original Georgian Texts and the Armenian Adaptation. Translated with introducti
on and commentary by Robert W. Thomson. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

  Shahbazi, A. Sh. “Bahrām VI Čōbīn.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1988, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bahram-the-name-of-six-sasanian-kings#pt7.

  Tabari. The History of al-Tabarī, Vol. 5, The Sāsānids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids, and Yemen. Translated by C. E. Bosworth. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999.

  Tabari. Tarikh-e Tabari, Vol. 2. Translated from Arabic into Persian by Abol Qassem Payandeh. Tehran: Asatir Publications, 1984.

  Theophanes. The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History, AD 284–813. Edited by Cyril Mango and Roger Scott. Oxford: Clarendon, 1997.

  Theophylact Simocatta. The History of Theophylact Simocatta. Translated by Michael and Mary Whitby. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

  Whitby, Michael. The Emperor Maurice and His Historian: Theophylact Simocatta on Persian and Balkan Warfare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.

  Narseh

  Narseh was a king of the Sasanian dynasty who ruled from 293 to 302 CE. He seized power after the Sasanian monarch Bahram III was deposed. After the Persian Sasanian monarch Bahram II died in 293 CE, his son, Bahram III, ascended the throne as the new king of kings. Bahram III enjoyed the support of a group of court dignitaries, led by a certain Wahnam. However, powerful members of the Persian nobility and the Zoroastrian religious hierarchy, including the powerful high priest Kartir, supported Narseh, one of the sons of Shapur I, the second king of the Sasanian dynasty, who at the time ruled Armenia. Before being appointed as the “King of Armenia,” Narseh had served as the ruler of Sistan with the title of Sakan Shah.

  Bas-relief at Naqsh-e Rostam in Fars in southern Iran shows the investiture of the Sasanian king of kings Narseh. A son of the Sasanian monarch Shapur I, Narseh served as the king of Armenia before seizing power in 293. (DeAgostini/Getty Images)