Shahbazi, A. Sh. “Yazdegerd I.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2003, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/yazdegerd-i.
Tabari. Tarikh-e Tabari, Vol. 2. Translated from Arabic into Persian by Abol Qassem Payandeh. Tehran: Asatir Publications, 1984.
Theophylact Simocatta. The History of Theophylact Simocatta. Translated by Michael and Mary Whitby. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Yazdegerd II
Yazdegerd II was a Sasanian king of kings who ruled from 439 to 457 CE. He ascended the throne after the death of his father Bahram V, also known as Bahram-e Gor (Gur), who ruled from 421 to 439 CE. The fifth century CE was a period of rapid decline for the Sasanian state. Before Yazdegerd II’s grandfather, Yazdegerd I, ascended the throne, three consecutive Sasanian monarchs had been murdered by the Persian nobility. The reign of Yazdegerd I was characterized by a tense relationship between the king, who favored a peaceful rapport with the Romans and a tolerant attitude toward non-Zoroastrian religious minorities, and the Persian nobility and the Zoroastrian priesthood who denounced their king as a tyrannical “sinner.” The tension between the crown and the nobility and the priesthood reached such a point that Yazdegerd I ordered the execution of several priests who had complained about his tolerant policies toward Jewish and Christian communities of the Sasanian Empire.
Yazdegerd II’s father, Bahram V, fought the nobility and the priesthood to seize the Sasanian throne, but once on the throne, he adopted a conciliatory attitude toward them. Fully aware of the strain between his royal predecessors on the one hand and the nobility and priesthood on the other, Yazdegerd II attempted to reduce these tensions by adopting a policy of appeasement and reconciliation. It is not surprising therefore that he was praised by Persian sources, which had criticized his grandfather as hot tempered and cruel and his father as a pleasure-seeking ruler obsessed with hunting and feasting. Yazdegerd appears in these writings as a kind and compassionate king. In reality, however, he returned to the policy of persecuting the members of Jewish and Christian communities, the very approach rejected and denounced by his grandfather.
Because of the nomadic invasions from Central Asia and the absence of the king from his capital, the daily administrative affairs and responsibilities of the central government were handled by Mehr Narseh, the chief minister (wuzurg farmadār) who had emerged as the second most powerful man in the empire during the reigns of Yazdegerd I and Bahram V (Tabari: Tarikh-e Tabari, 2.627). Mehr Narseh was dispatched by his royal master to Armenia to reestablish Zoroastrianism as the religion of the country’s ruling classes. This campaign resulted in a major revolt by a group of Armenian nobles. The rebels killed Sasanian dignitaries and Zoroastrian priests, thus providing a justification for Yazdegerd to organize a military campaign to reimpose his authority over Armenia. A Sasanian army marched to Armenia and crushed the rebellion in 451 CE. The Armenian nobles and Christian priests who had led the revolt were killed, and those who survived were sent into exile in 454.
The Armenians were not the only group, however, to suffer persecution. Yazdegerd also unleashed the power of the Sasanian state against the Jewish communities of his empire. He prohibited his Jewish subjects from celebrating the Sabbath in public. He also went one step further and closed down Jewish schools. Several Jewish leaders were also executed. These harsh policies resulted in a Jewish rebellion. When the Jews in the city of Isfahan killed two Zoroastrian priests, the Sasanian authorities used the incident as a justification to clamp down and apply even harsher measures against the Jewish communities of the empire.
Much of Yazdegerd’s reign was spent in military campaigns against the Roman Empire and the invading Hephthalite hordes from Central Asia. Yazdegerd II began his reign by waging a military campaign against the Romans in 440 CE. The war between the two powers proved to be short and inconclusive. Forced to shift his focus to North Africa, which had been attacked and occupied by the invading Vandals, the Roman emperor Theodosius II (r. 408–450 CE) sued for peace and agreed to make payments to the Sasanian king, who was also given free rein in Armenia. Yazdegerd used this opportunity to complete his pacification of Armenia and reestablish Sasanian power in the southern Caucasus.
With his western frontiers secured, Yazdegerd II spent the rest of his reign fighting the Hephthalites, who were threatening the eastern provinces of his empire. Despite Yazdegerd’s best efforts to contain this threat, the eastern frontiers of the Sasanian state were repeatedly breached by the invading nomads after his death. After the death of Yazdegerd II, the Hephthalites also intervened in the Sasanian succession process by providing support for a pretender to the throne, Peroz. A son of Yazdegerd II, Peroz had refused to acknowledge the authority of his brother Hormozd III, who had proclaimed himself the king of kings after the death of their father. While Hormozd III began to rule from Ray south of present-day Tehran, Peroz seized Khorasan and Tokharestan (present-day northern Afghanistan) and began to raise an army to battle his brother. Meanwhile, the queen mother, Denak or Dinak, ran the daily affairs of the empire from Ctesiphon, the capital of the Sasanian Empire in today’s southern Iraq. In return for promises of territorial concessions, the Hephthalites provided Peroz with reinforcements. Peroz marched at the head of a large army and defeated his brother Hormozd, who was killed on the battlefield.
Both Persian and Arabic historical sources refer to Yazdegerd II as a mild and benevolent king who stood for justice and compassion toward his subjects. He was also praised for abandoning his father’s overindulgence in hunting and feasting and for displaying a genuine devotion to the Zoroastrian faith, which was reflected in his systematic persecution of his empire’s Jewish and Christian communities. These accounts reflect the opinion and sentiments of the Persian nobility and particularly the Zoroastrian clergy, which used the Sasanian state as a means of imposing their control over the religious and cultural life of the empire.
See also: K&Q, Sasanian: Bahram V; Peroz; Yazdegerd I
Further Reading
Daryaee, Touraj. Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire. London: I. B. Tauris, 2013.
Daryaee, Touraj. “Yazdegerd II.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2012, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/yazdgerd-ii.
Dignos, Beate, and Engelbert Winter. Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity: Neighbours and Rivals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Frye, R. N. “The Political History of Iran under the Sasanians.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 3(I), edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 116–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Frye, Richard Nelson. The History of Ancient Iran. München: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1984.
Neusner, Jacob. “Jews in Iran: The Political History of Iran under the Sasanians.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 3(II), edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 909–923. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
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.
Yazdegerd III
The last monarch of the Persian Sasanian dynasty (r. 224–651 CE) who ascended the throne at the age of eight in 633 CE. After Sasanian forces were defeated by Muslim Arabs, Yazdegerd III fled east to mobilize his forces in northeastern Iran and seek assistance and support from the Tang dynasty of China. However, he was killed near Marv (Merv) in northeastern Iran (present-day southern Turkmenistan) in 651.
On the evening of February 23, 628 CE, a group of plotters staged a coup against the reigning Persian Sasanian monarch, Khosrow II Parvez. The son of Khosrow, Kavad Shiruya (Shiroy), who had played a leading role in the plot, was released from detention, and a herald proclaimed him the king of kings. The gates of the jails were also opened, and all prisoners were allowed to escape. Khosrow II fled the palace but was eventually captured. Two days lat
er, his son Shiruya ascended the throne as Kavad II. The new monarch, who had initially promised to restore peace and reverse the harsh policies of his father, initiated a bloodbath by killing all his brothers. He then ordered the execution of his father. The Sasanian Empire never recovered from this mad rampage. Shiruya himself did not last very long on the throne. A few months after coming to power he succumbed to a plague, which had already devastated the western provinces of the Sasanian Empire. Shiruya’s son and successor, Ardashir III (r. 628–630 CE), was killed by the Sasanian general Shahrbaraz, who was in turn murdered 40 days later by members of the Persian nobility, who installed Khosrow III on the throne. After the short reign of Khosrow III in 630 and in the absence of an eligible male offspring, a daughter of Khosrow II, Boran (Puran), ascended the Sasanian throne. When Boran died after a short reign, she was succeeded by her sister Azarmidokht, another daughter of Khosrow, who could only manage to rule for a few months.
Eventually after a succession of two short-lived and powerless monarchs, Hormozd V and Khosrow IV, the Persian nobility placed Yazdegerd, a prince of the Sasanian dynasty, on the throne. Yazdegerd was a son of the Sasanian prince Shahryar, who had been murdered by Shiruya in 628, and a grandson of Khosrow II. Yazdegerd was only eight years old when he ascended the throne in 633. He was crowned not in the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon but in the fire temple of Ardashir I at Istakhr in the southern Iranian province of Fars.
The young monarch lacked any power to restore calm and order to his vast empire. He was merely a powerless spectator who could only watch the incessant infighting between army commanders, courtiers, and powerful members of the nobility as they battled among themselves and eliminated one another. Throughout the empire, the powerful provincial magnates were raising the flag of rebellion and governing as independent rulers. The Sasanian Empire was disintegrating rapidly. As chaos and decline accelerated, Sasanian territory was invaded on all sides by powerful neighbors. The eastern borders of the empire were breached by the Turks, while the Khazars invaded its northern provinces by using the Caucasus region to raid Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Asia Minor. In the end, however, it was a powerful force bursting out of the Arabian Peninsula that brought about the collapse of the Sasanian state. After the death of Abu Bakr, the first caliph and successor to Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, the reins of power were passed to Umar (r. 634–644 CE), who organized military campaigns against the Byzantine and Sasanian Empires. In 635/636, an Arab army commanded by the Arab general Sa’d ibn Waqqas defeated a Sasanian army at Qadisiyyah, southwest of Hira near present-day Kufa in southern Iraq. The Persian commander Rostam Farrokhzad fell on the battlefield. This victory paved the way for the capture of Ctesiphon, the Sasanian capital, which was sacked and looted by the invading Muslim Arabs. The shocking defeat forced Yazdegerd III to flee to Media in western Iran, taking with him the royal treasury and a group of bodyguards and servants. The desperate Persian monarch appealed to his generals and the powerful landowning families, who constituted the military backbone of the Persian Empire, for support. A large army was raised, but once again it failed to slow down the Arab armies, which had seized the offensive.
In 642, Arab Muslim armies defeated the Persian Sasanian forces for a second time at Nahavand in present-day western Iran. The ill-fated Persian monarch had no other alternative but to flee once again. Yazdegerd first traveled from Media to Ray, south of present-day Tehran, and then to Isfahan. From Isfahan he set out for Istakhr in southern Iran, but when Fars was invaded by an Arab army, he fled to Kerman in southeastern Iran. From Kerman he went to Sistan in eastern Iran, but he could not stay there either. In a last desperate attempt to save his life and rescue the Sasanian state, Yazdegerd III fled to northeastern Iran. He was most probably trying to reach China through Central Asia and seek support from the Chinese emperor. Yazdegerd had already sent an embassy led by his son, Peroz, to China to plead for assistance from the Tang dynasty. In 651 CE 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 collapse of the Persian state allowed the Arab armies to complete their conquest of Iran with relative ease. Soon the Arab armies would seize Khorasan in northeastern Iran and use it as a territorial base to invade Central Asia.
See also: K&Q, Sasanian: Azarmidokht; Boran (Puran); Kavad II Shiruya; Khosrow II Parvez
Further Reading
Daryaee, Touraj. Sasanian Iran (224–651 BCE): Portrait of a Late Antique Empire. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 2008.
Frye, R. N. “The Political History of Iran under the Sasanians.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 3, edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 116–180. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Frye, Richard Nelson. The Heritage of Persia. Cleveland: World Publishing, 1963.
Frye, Richard Nelson. The History of Ancient Iran. München: C. H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1984.
Shahbazi, A. Shapur. “Sasanian Dynasty.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2005, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/sasanian-dynasty.
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.
KINGS AND QUEENS OF THE SELEUCID DYNASTY
OVERVIEW ESSAY
This chapter is devoted to entries that focus exclusively on the lives and careers of the rulers of the Seleucid dynasty. The Seleucid state was founded by Seleucus I Nicator (r. 305–281 BCE), a former commander in the army of Alexander the Macedon (Alexander the Great). At the zenith of its power, the Seleucid state ruled a vast empire extending from present-day Afghanistan in the east to Syria, Palestine, and present-day Lebanon in the west.
In 324 BCE, a year before his death, Alexander had organized a mass wedding ceremony at Susa in present-day southwestern Iran, where he ordered his generals to marry Iranian wives. He hoped that these marriages would create unity between the Macedonians and Iranians. Seleucus was ordered to marry Apame (Apama), a daughter of the Iranian Sogdian dignitary, Spitaman. The Seleucid dynasty was born from this Macedonian–Iranian union. After the death of Alexander in 323 BCE in Babylon, his army commanders turned against one another as each tried to carve out a kingdom of his own. After many years of fighting for his own kingdom, Seleucus seized Babylon in 312 BCE. His conquest marked the beginning of the Seleucid era. In 303 BCE, Seleucus assumed the title of king and established his capital at Seleucia-on-Tigris in present-day southern Iraq. He also used his newly acquired kingdom as a territorial base to extend his rule over the territory of much of present-day Iran and Afghanistan.
After the end of his campaign in the east, Seleucus returned west and joined a coalition of several kings, namely Ptolemy of Egypt, Lysimachus of Thrace, and Casandra of Macedonia, that had been formed to contain and defeat the powerful and ambitious Antigonus, the ruler of Asia Minor. In 301 BCE, Seleucus and Lysimachus marched against Antigonus and defeated him at Ipsus in Phrygia in west-central Asia Minor in the Battle of the Kings. Antigonus was killed, and his son Demetrius fled. The victors then divided Antigonus’s kingdom between them. Seleucus received Syria, although Ptolemy of Egypt had already occupied the southern part of the country, known as Coele Syria. This move caused a conflict between the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt and the Seleucids of Syria that continued for over a century. In 300 BCE, Seleucus transferred the Seleucid capital from Seleucia-on-Tigris to a new capital, Antioch, in northern Syria (present-day southern Turkey), which he built on the shores of the Orontes River. This proved to be a fatal decision. The long distance between the new capital and the faraway eastern provinces of the empire in Iran and Central Asia allowed the governors of these regions to revolt and establish the
ir own independent kingdoms. It also provided an opportunity for various nomadic groups in Central Asia to invade the eastern provinces of the Seleucid Empire and establish their own dynasties. Arsaces (Arshak), founder of the Arsacid or Parthian dynasty, was one of the nomadic chiefs who created his own kingdom after invading northeastern Iran from Central Asia.
To maintain tighter Seleucid control over these regions, Seleucus appointed his son, Antiochus, as the ruler of the empire’s eastern provinces and bestowed upon him the title of co-regent. Meanwhile in the west, Seleucus became increasingly entangled in the internal conflicts that were tearing asunder the ruling house of Lysimachus, the ruler of Thrace and Seleucus’s former ally. In the winter of 281 BCE, Seleucus defeated and killed Lysimachus at Corupedium in western Asia Minor. As he crossed into Europe to consolidate his rule over Macedonia, Seleucus was murdered by the son of Ptolemy of Egypt, Ptolemy Ceraunus, who had been passed over by his father as successor to the Egyptian throne. Seleucus I was succeeded by his son and co-regent Antiochus I Soter.
The incessant conflict with the Ptolemaic kingdom based in Egypt diverted the attention of the Seleucid kings from their eastern provinces and forced them to concentrate their military power and financial resources in the west. The interdynastic rivalries among various Seleucid contenders to the throne further undermined the credibility and legitimacy of the Seleucid monarchy. Successors to Seleucus I tried several times to reassert their authority in the east. The most serious effort took place during the reign of Antiochus III (r. 223–187 BCE), who in 209 BCE embarked on an ambitious campaign to reestablish Seleucid rule over present-day Iran and northern Afghanistan. This campaign was intended to neutralize the threat posed by the newly emerging Arsacid state, which had established itself in Parthia. Antiochus managed to force the Arsacids to make a tactical retreat and acknowledge Seleucid suzerainty, but he failed to destroy them. Antiochus also tried to neutralize the threat posed by Euthydemus, ruler of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom based in present-day northern Afghanistan. As with the Arsacids, Antiochus was unable to dislodge Euthydemus and impose his own direct rule. From Bactria, Antiochus crossed the Hindu Kush mountain range and entered the Kabul Valley. After marching through present-day southern Afghanistan and reaching the modern-day southeastern Iranian provinces of Sistan-Baluchistan and Kerman, Antiochus reached Parsa (Persis), the birthplace of the Achaemenid dynasty in southern Iran. Having reestablished a network of vassal kingdoms in Iran, Antiochus assumed the Persian Achaemenid title “Great King.” The Greeks also honored him with the title “the Great.” After returning to Syria, Antiochus embarked on a series of military campaigns that would test his capabilities in the west, particularly against Egypt. As a result, he would emerge as the master of southern Syria and Palestine.
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