The Persian Empire

by Kia, Mehrdad;

  In sharp contrast to the Parthian Empire, which was highly decentralized, the founder of the Persian Sasanian dynasty, Ardashir I, and his successors imposed a highly centralized political system under the supreme leadership of the Sasanian king of kings (shahanshah), an absolute monarch who claimed divine lineage. Unlike the Arsacids who tolerated religious diversity, the Sasanians promoted Zoroastrianism as the state religion of their empire. Sasanian society was based on a rigid hierarchical social order. At the top of the power pyramid stood the shah, an absolute divine-right monarch. Because in theory the shah enjoyed ultimate God-given authority to rule, his subjects considered him the sole source of legitimate power; he could therefore demand absolute obedience from them. The supreme god, Ahura Mazda, had entrusted his people to him, and the king was responsible for their safety and protection. Next in the hierarchy immediately below the king stood the members of the Sasanian royal family. Below them were the members of the large landowning feudal families (vispuran), including the Karen, Suren, etc. These families had already played an important role in the political, military, and economic life of the empire during the Arsacid (Parthian) period. The members of the lesser nobility (azātān) and the provincial landed magnates (dihgans (dihqans)) also constituted important segments of the Sasanian ruling class.

  The late Sasanian state recognized four social classes, or estates. Each of these four estates were divided into several strata. The creation of these four estates was attributed to Jamshid, the legendary king of the Pishdadian dynasty of Greater Iran. The first was the priestly estate, or the men of religion (asravan), that consisted of priests, judges, jurists, and teachers. The second was the estate of warriors (arteshtārān), which included the members of the army. The third estate comprised scribes and secretaries (debherān/dabirān). This estate included scribes who wrote official letters and communications, accountants, authors of chronicles, those who recorded legal judgments and verdicts, and physicians, poets, and astrologers. The fourth estate consisted of peasant cultivators and artisans. Each social estate was under the authority of its own chief and spokesman. Thus, the head of the religious hierarchy was the chief Zoroastrian priest, or mobadān mobad; the commander of the army carried the title of military commander of Iran, or Ērān spahbad; the head of the civil administration was called Ērān dibirbad; and the leader of the fourth estate carried the title wastrioshān-sālār, wastriosh-bad, or hotakhshbadh.

  See also: K&Q, Sasanian: Ardashir I; Khosrow I Anushiravan; Primary Documents: Document 29; Document 30; Document 33; Document 35

  Further Reading

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

  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.

  Nameh-ye Tansar. Edited by Mojtaba Minovi. Tehran: Tehran University Press, 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.

  Rawlinson, George. The Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy. Tehran: Imperial Organization for Social Services, 1976.

  Shahbazi, A. Sh. “Sasanian Dynasty.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2005, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/sasanian-dynasty.

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

  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. 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.

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

  Scythians

  The Scythians were a branch of Iranian people who inhabited vast territories in Central Asia, present-day southern Russia, and the Ukraine from the eighth to the third centuries BCE. Both the nomadic and sedentary populations of Central Asia in ancient times belonged to the same ethnic and linguistic Iranian stock as the Persians who created the first major world empire under the leadership of Cyrus II the Great (r. 558–530 BCE) (Barthold: 1). These Iranian groups are generally referred to as Scythians, Scyths, or Sakas (Melyukova: 97). More recent scholarship has broken down the population of Central Asia, southern Russia, and the Ukraine in antiquity into Cimerians, who preceded the Scythians, and Sarmatians, who followed them (Onyshkevych: 23). Unfortunately, our sources on the Scythians are scant. The nonarchaeological sources and particularly the writings of Greek historians such as Herodotus provide valuable information, but they are tainted with legendary accounts, fantastic stories, and fairy tales. Our knowledge of the internal structure of Scythian society therefore remains fragmentary, and many important questions remain unanswered.

  The few portraits of Scythians known to us have been left on vases discovered in excavation sites such as Kul Oba, near Kerch in eastern Crimea in present-day Ukraine, and at Voronezh in southwestern Russia, not far from Russia’s border with Ukraine. Full figures of the Scythians can also be seen on the wall carvings of Persepolis, the ancient palace complex of the Persian Achaemenid monarchs in southern Iran. Here, the Scythians are portrayed as a people with unique national attire and physical appearance. They grew their beards and wore “the pointed cap that protected the ears against the bitter winds of the plains, and the roomy garments—tunic and wide trousers—common to the Sakā and to their Median and Persian cousins” (Grousset: 7).

  By all accounts, the Scythians were brilliant archers who relied on their horses, bows, and arrows to attack and defeat their enemies. No consensus exists among historians regarding the original homeland of these ancient people and the date and routes of their migration. The Scythians buried their kings and tribal chiefs in funeral barrows, or burial mounds, called kurgans. The kurgans were large hills rising from the flat surface of the Eurasian steppes. Some of the kurgans could be as wide as 100 yards and 60 feet high. The kurgans generally contained the personal belongings of the deceased, his horses, and at times the bodies of wives and servants. Many of them also contained heaps of treasure. The numerous kurgans excavated on the Eurasian steppes testify to the power and dynamism of this ancient society. The kurgans of the Scythian tribal chiefs—such as the one found in Pazyryk in the Altai Mountains in Siberian Russia south of the present-day town of Novosibirsk near the borders of Russia with China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan—belong to the Bronze Age and contain bodies tattooed with images of animals, fish, and monsters. Such animal-style tattooing was a common characteristic of Scythian culture. Within the burial mound Soviet archaeologists also uncovered horses, cloth saddles, rugs, carpets, and even a four-wheel funeral chariot. Many kurgans dating from the fourth century and the beginning of the third century BCE are filled with impressive gold and silver artifacts as well as items of daily use, including combs, rings, shields, armors, breastplates, vessels, goblets, sheaths, and helmets, many of them produced by Scythian craftsmen and some tailor-made by Greek artists and jewelers to Scythian orders.

  Gold vase depicts a Scythian man dressed in his unique national attire and bearing a characteristic physical appearance. The nomadic population of Central Asia in antiquity belonged to the same ethnic Iranian stock as the Persians who created a vast and powerful empire under the leadership of Cyrus II the Great. These Iranian groups, who were generally referred to as Scythians or Sakas, inhabited the vast steppes of Central Eurasia extending from the borders of China in the east to the fertile lands of Crimea and southeastern Europe in the west. (Charles O’Rear/Corbis)
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  The Scythians enjoyed close economic and commercial ties with Greek communities that had settled north of the Black Sea but also traded with China, India, and Greater Iran. The Scythians were not merely the consumers of high-quality finished goods produced by the Greek, Persian, Chinese, and Indian artists and craftsmen. These ancient nomads had also developed their own advanced and sophisticated artistic tradition. Treasures unearthed in Tuva, located 50 miles northwest of the city of Kyzyl near the Russian border with Mongolia, reflect the Scythian fascination for and love of gold and golden artifacts. In 1969, Professor Kamal Akishev of the Kazakh Institute of History, Ethnography, and Archaeology uncovered the “Gold Man” in excavations at the Issyk burial mound, 31 miles east of Almaty, Kazakhstan. Professor Akishev dated the skeleton of the Gold Man, who was probably a Scythian prince or a warrior priestess, to the fifth century BCE, while others have suggested the fourth to third century BCE as a more accurate date. The Gold Man was dressed in boots, trousers, and a leather tunic (caftan) decorated with 2,400 arrow-shaped gold plaques. He/she was buried with ceramic, silver, and bronze vessels; a bronze mirror; and flat wooden dishes. In sharp contrast to the kurgans of the nobility and aristocracy, who had amassed great wealth through trading, those of ordinary Scythians are characterized by the absence of luxury goods, which indicates significant class stratification and property differentiations among these ancient nomadic groups.

  As for their religion, the Scythians had multiple gods and goddesses whom they venerated. In his Histories, Herodotus wrote that “the only gods the Scythians” worshipped were “Hestia (their chief deity), Zeus, and Earth (whom they believe to be the wife of Zeus), and, as deities of secondary importance, Apollo, Celestial Aphrodite, Heracles, and Ares” (Herodotus: 4.59). He also wrote that the Scythian god Ares, to whom the Scythians sacrificed prisoners of war, had his own temple and that ceremonies in honor of Ares were conducted differently (Herodotus: 4.62). The Hellenic Ares displays striking parallels with Verethragna, an ancient Iranian warrior god and the god of victory who fights and defeats his opponents, including the evil spirit and its allies. While his name appears as Verethragna (Victory) in the Avesta, the Zoroastrian holy scripture, in Middle Persian his name became Wahram, Wahran, or Warahran (New Persian: Bahram). The Scythians relied on their shamans to communicate with natural and supernatural forces. The shaman was an amalgam of a medicine man, a healer, a witch doctor, a mystic, a soothsayer, and a sage who utilized self-induced seizures and trances to establish contact with the world of spirits.

  The Scythians did not constitute a homogenous group. The inscriptions of the Persian Achaemenid kings refer to “Amyrgian Scythians,” “Scythians with pointed caps,” and Scythians “who are across the sea” (Kent: 138, 151, 156). Herodotus also distinguished between Scythians and royal Scythians (Herodotus: 4.59). The Scythians were divided into numerous tribal groups, with each led by its own king or chief. These hereditary rulers relied on the taxes they collected from the members of the tribe to maintain their political and military power. Trade and warfare also played an important role in the political and economic life of these ancient communities. For example, Scythians who had settled on the northern shores of the Black Sea exported corn to the Greek city-states and imported high-quality finished products in silver and gold from their southern neighbors. All was not, however, peaceful between the Scythians and their neighbors to the south. The Scythians waged numerous attacks on Asia Minor and as far south as Mesopotamia, using the Caucasus region as a corridor to penetrate the warmer regions where urban civilizations had flourished and prospered. Herodotus reported that the Scythians overran Media and ruled that country for nearly three decades before the Median king Cyaxares defeated them. Remnants of Scythian arms and tools of warfare, such as bronze arrowheads, have been discovered in regions as far south as Armenia and Syria. Raiding campaigns such as these required the ability to travel long distances, a high level of discipline and strategic planning, and leadership capable of mobilizing an army and conceiving and executing an action plan. The raids on the urban and agricultural communities of Central and West Asia provided the Scythian nobility and their nomadic warriors with booty. Scythian raids were prompted by the harsh conditions of the Eurasian steppes, including famine and starvation. In light of this, herds of sheep, goats, and horses constituted one of the most important parts of the booty that Scythians seized.

  Despite repeated efforts, the Persian Achaemenid dynasty failed to subdue the highly mobile and fiercely independent Scythians. According to Herodotus, Cyrus II the Great (r. 559/558–530 BCE) was killed in Central Asia in a battle against a Scythian tribe known as the Massagetae, who were ruled by their queen Tomyris (Herodotus: 1.214). In his inscription at Bisotun in western Iran, the Persian king Darius I (r. 522–486 BCE) stated that he organized a campaign against the Scythians (Sakas), who wore pointed caps. To reach the land of these Scythians, a Persian army used rafts to cross a body of water, described by Darius in the inscription as a sea. The Persian forces crossed the sea by rafts and defeated the Scythians. The Scythian leader Skunkha was captured and brought to Darius, who ordered his execution (Kent: 133–134).

  After defeating the last Achaemenid monarch, Darius III, in 331 BCE, Alexander the Great invaded Iran and Central Asia. In response, Bessus, the governor of Bactria, who had proclaimed himself king of Asia and assumed the royal title “Artaxerxes,” organized his Bactrian, Sogdian, and Scythian units into a formidable force and adopted a scorched-earth policy, denying the Macedonian armies access to food and water. Soon, however, he was betrayed by his generals and handed over to Alexander, who humiliated him by cutting off his nose and the tips of his ears in public before sending him to his death (Arrian: 4.7–8). After the execution of Bessus, some Scythians joined the Sogdian commander Spitaman (Spitamanes) as he fought the Macedonian invaders. After scoring several victories against the Macedonians, Spitaman was eventually betrayed by his Scythian allies, who murdered him.

  Beginning in third century BCE, the Scythians of Central Asia played a central role in shaping the political future of Greater Iran. Arsaces (Arshak), the founder of the Arsacid dynasty (247/238 BCE–224 CE), was a Scythian chief who emerged as the leader of the Parni or Aparni, a nomadic group within the Dahae confederacy. The Greek author Strabo wrote that Arsaces was a Scythian chief who led the Parni, a branch of the Dahae confederacy, a nomadic group who lived along the Ochus (Strabo: 11.9.2). In his account of Alexander’s campaigns in Central Asia, the historian Arrian mentions the Dahae as a group living in close proximity to the Jaxartes River (Syr Darya) in Central Asia (Arrian: 3.28). Sometime during the last years of the fourth century or the earliest part of the third century BCE, the Parni began to move south from Central Asia. Based on recent excavations, archaeologists have concluded that the territory of southwestern Turkmenistan, particularly “the northern part of Dehistan in the area of the river Uzboj,” was “in the 4th–3rd centuries BC the cradle of the Parthian Arsacid dynasty” (Lecomte: 144).

  By 250 BCE, the Parni had established themselves on the shores of the Atrek River. In 247 BCE, Arsaces I was crowned as king in Asaac (Asaak). The exact location of Asaac is unknown, but some scholars have suggested that it was located near the present-day town of Quchan in the upper Atrek River Valley in northeastern Iran (Debevoise: 10–11). The year 247 marks the beginning of the Parthian era. The rise of Arsaces corresponded with the growing decline of the Seleucid state, which had been founded in Babylon in present-day southern Iraq in 312 BCE. The incessant military campaigns against the Ptolemaic dynasty centered in Egypt exhausted the Seleucid treasury and diverted the attention of its rulers from the eastern provinces of their empire. The city of Antioch, which served as the capital of the Seleucid kings, was situated on the western borders of the empire and a long way away from Iran and Central Asia.

  Sometime between 250 and 239 BCE, two important rebellions erupted against the authority of the Seleucid state. Diodotus, the Seleucid governor of Ba
ctria, and Andragoras, the governor of the province of Parthia, revolted and proclaimed their independence. Shortly after these revolts in 238 BCE, the Parni under the leadership of Arsaces I took advantage of the chaos in the eastern provinces of the Seleucid state and invaded and conquered Parthia. The self-proclaimed independent ruler of Parthia, Andragoras, was killed, and his small kingdom emerged as the new home and operational base for Arsaces I. With the conquest of Parthia, the Arsacids came to be known as Parthians, or as those who hail from Parthia, a name the Greek and Roman authors used when referring to them and their empire. A short time after the conquest of Parthia, Arsaces marched west and seized Hyrcania (Justin: XLI.4). The acquisition of Parthia and Hyrcania allowed Arsaces to raise a large army to defend himself against a possible attack from the Seleucids to the west and the Greco-Bactrian kingdom to the east. After the death of Theodotus I, the founder of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom, Arsaces I made peace and entered into an alliance with his son, Theodotus II (Justin: XLI.4). When Seleucus II (r. 246–225 BCE) invaded eastern Iran to punish the Parthians, Arsaces I scored a victory against the Seleucid monarch, a momentous milestone that the Parthians would observe “with great solemnity as the commencement of their liberty” (Justin: XLI.4). When Seleucus II was forced to return west to quell disturbances, Arsaces I used the respite as an opportunity to lay the foundation of the Parthian government, “levy soldiers, fortify castles, and secure the fidelity of his cities” (Justin: XLI.5.1). He built a city called “Dara,” which was designed and built in such a way that it did not need a “garrison to defend it” (Justin: XLI.5.1–2). Having “at once acquired and established a kingdom,” Arsaces I died “in a good old age” circa 217 BCE (Justin: XLI.5). He was succeeded by his son, Arsaces II. Under his successors, beginning with the capable Arsacid monarchs Phraates I and his brother Mithridates I, who was proclaimed king in 171 BCE, Arsaces’s small kingdom broke out of northeastern Iran and gradually emerged as a powerful empire, which at its zenith ruled a vast territory extending from the southern regions of Central Asia to the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia.