2N. Sims-Williams, ‘Sogdian Ancient Letter II’, in A. Juliano and J. Lerner (eds), Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northern China: Gansu and Ningxia 4th–7th Century (New York, 2001), pp. 47–9. Also see F. Grenet and N. Sims-Williams, ‘The Historical Context of the Sogdian Ancient Letters’, Transition Periods in Iranian History, Studia Iranica 5 (1987), 101–22; N. Sims-Williams, ‘Towards a New Edition of the Sogdian Letters’, in E. Trembert and E. de la Vaissière (eds), Les Sogdiens en Chine (Paris, 2005), pp. 181–93.
3E. de la Vaissière, ‘Huns et Xiongnu’, Central Asiatic Journal 49.1 (2005), 3–26.
4P. Heather, Empires and Barbarians (London, 2009), pp. 151–88; A. Poulter, ‘Cataclysm on the Lower Danube: The Destruction of a Complex Roman Landscape’, in N. Christie (ed.), Landscapes of Change: Rural Evolutions in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 223–54.
5See F. Grenet, ‘Crise et sortie de crise en Bactriane-Sogdiane aux IVe–Ve s de n.è.: de l’héritage antique à l’adoption de modèles sassanides’, in La Persia e l’Asia Centrale da Alessandro al X secolo. Atti dei Convegni Lincei 127 (Rome, 1996), pp. 367–90; de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, pp. 97–103.
6G. Greatrex and S. Lieu, The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars, Part II, AD 363–630 (London, 2002), pp. 17–19; O. Maenchen-Helfen, The World of the Huns (Los Angeles, 1973), p. 58.
7Although scholars have long debated possible dating of this construction, recent advances in radiocarbon dating and optically simulated luminescence dating now securely place the erection of this huge fortification to this period, J. Nokandeh et al., ‘Linear Barriers of Northern Iran: The Great Wall of Gorgan and the Wall of Tammishe’, Iran 44 (2006), 121–73.
8J. Howard-Johnston, ‘The Two Great Powers in Late Antiquity: A Comparison’, in A. Cameron, G. King and J. Haldon (eds), The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, 3 vols (Princeton, 1992–6), 3, pp. 190–7.
9R. Blockley, ‘Subsidies and Diplomacy: Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity’, Phoenix 39 (1985), 66–7.
10Greatrex and Lieu, Roman Eastern Frontier, pp. 32–3.
11See Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 191–250.
12St Jerome, ‘Ad Principiam’, Select Letters of St Jerome, ed. and tr. F. Wright (Cambridge, MA, 1933), 127, p. 462.
13Jordanes, Getica, 30, in Iordanis Romana et Getica, ed. T. Mommsen (Berlin, 1882), pp. 98–9.
14J. Hill, Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Routes during the Late Han Dynasty, 1st to 2nd Centuries CE: An Annotated Translation of the Chronicle of the ‘Western Regions’ from the Hou Hanshu (Charleston, NC, 2009).
15Sarris, Empires of Faith, pp. 41–3.
16A document from the early fourth century lists the tribes that had poured into the Roman Empire, A. Riese (ed.), Geographi latini minores (Hildesheim, 1964), pp. 1280–9. For another example, Sidonius Apollinaris, ‘Panegyric on Avitus’, in Sidonius Apollinaris: Poems and Letters, ed. and tr. W. Anderson, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1935–56), 1, p. 146.
17Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum Libri XXX, 31.2, 3, p. 382.
18Priscus, Testimonia, fragment 49, ed. and tr. R. Blockley, The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus, and Malchus, 2 vols (Liverpool, 1981–3), 2, p. 356.
19Ammianus Marcellinus, Rerum Gestarum Libri XXX, 31.2, 3, p. 380.
20D. Pany and K. Wiltschke-Schrotta, ‘Artificial Cranial Deformation in a Migration Period Burial of Schwarzenbach, Central Austria’, VIAVIAS 2 (2008), 18–23.
21Priscus, Testimonia, fragment 24, 2, pp. 316–17. For the Huns’ successes, Heather, Fall of the Roman Empire, pp. 300–48.
22B. Ward-Perkins, The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford, 2005), pp. 91ff.
23Salvian, Œuvres, ed. and tr. C. Lagarrigue, 2 vols (Paris, 1971–5), 2, 4.12. Translation from E. Sanford (tr.), The Government of God (New York, 1930), p. 118.
24Zosimus, Historias Neas, ed. and tr. F. Paschoud, Zosime, Histoire nouvelle, 3 vols (Paris, 2000) 2.7, 1, pp. 77–9.
25Asmussen, ‘Christians in Iran’, pp. 929–30.
26S. Brock, ‘The Church of the East in the Sasanian Empire up to the Sixth Century and its Absence from the Councils in the Roman Empire’, Syriac Dialogue: First Non-Official Consultation on Dialogue within the Syriac Tradition (Vienna, 1994), 71.
27A. Cameron and R. Hoyland (eds), Doctrine and Debate in the East Christian World 300–1500 (Farnham, 2011), p. xi.
28W. Barnstone, The Restored New Testament: A New Translation with Commentary, Including the Gnostic Gospels of Thomas, Mary and Judas (New York, 2009).
29N. Tanner, The Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols (Washington, DC, 1990), 1; A. Cameron, The Later Roman Empire, AD 284–430 (London, 1993), pp. 59–70.
30See P. Wood, The Chronicle of Seert. Christian Historical Imagination in Late Antique Iraq (Oxford, 2013), pp. 23–4
31S. Brock, ‘The Christology of the Church of the East in the Synods of the Fifth to Early Seventh Centuries: Preliminary Considerations and Materials’, in G. Dagras (ed.), A Festschrift for Archbishop Methodios of Thyateira and Great Britain (Athens, 1985), pp. 125–42.
32Baum and Winkler, Apostolische Kirche, pp. 19–25.
33Synod of Dadjesus, Synodicon orientale, ou Recueil de synods nestoriens, ed. J. Chabot (Paris, 1902), pp. 285–98; Brock, ‘Christology of the Church of the East’, pp. 125–42; Brock, ‘Church of the East’, 73–4.
34Wood, Chronicle of Seert, pp. 32–7.
35Gregory of Nazianzus, De Vita Sua, in D. Meehan (tr.), Saint Gregory of Nazianzus: Three Poems (Washington, DC, 1987), pp. 133–5.
36St Cyril of Alexandria, Letter to Paul the Prefect, in J. McEnerney (tr.), Letters of St Cyril of Alexandria, 2 vols (Washington, DC, 1985–7), 2, 96, pp. 151–3.
37S. Brock, ‘From Antagonism to Assimilation: Syriac Attitudes to Greek Learning’, in N. Garsoian, T. Mathews and T. Thomson (eds), East of Byzantium: Syria and Armenia in the Formative Period (Washington, DC, 1982), pp. 17–34; also idem, ‘Christology of the Church of the East’, pp. 165–73.
38R. Norris, The Christological Controversy (Philadelphia, 1980), pp. 156–7.
39Brock, ‘Christology of the Church of the East’, pp. 125–42; also see Baum and Winkler, Apostolische Kirche, pp. 31–4.
40F.-C. Andreas, ‘Bruchstücke einer Pehlevi-Übersetzung der Psalmen aus der Sassanidenzeit’, Sitzungsberichte der Berliner Akademie der Wissenschaften (1910), 869–72; J. Asmussen, ‘The Sogdian and Uighur-Turkish Christian Literature in Central Asia before the Real Rise of Islam: A Survey’, in L. Hercus, F. Kuiper, T. Rajapatirana and E. Skrzypczak (eds), Indological and Buddhist Studies: Volume in Honour of Professor J. W. de Jong on his Sixtieth Birthday (Canberra, 1982), pp. 11–29.
41Sarris, Empires of Faith, p. 153.
42For the Council of 553, R. Price, The Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 553: Edited with an introduction and notes, 2 vols (Liverpool, 2009). For the Syriac text, with translation, S. Brock, ‘The Conversations with the Syrian Orthodox under Justinian (532)’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 47 (1981), 87–121, and idem, ‘Some New Letters of the Patriarch Severus’, Studia Patristica 12 (1975), 17–24.
43Evagrius Scholasticus, Ekklesiastike historia, 5.1, Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus, tr. M. Whitby (Liverpool, 2005), p. 254.
44For the compilation of the text and its date, see R. Lim, Public Disputation: Power and Social Order in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, 1991), p. 227.
45Sterk, ‘Mission from Below’, 10–12.
46For the 300 martyrs of Najran, I. Shahid, ‘The Martyrdom of Early Arab Christians: Sixth Century Najran’, in G. Corey, P. Gillquist, M. Mackoul et al. (eds), The First One Hundred Years: A Centennial Anthology Celebrating Antiochian Orthodoxy in North America (Englewood, NJ, 1996), pp. 177–80. For the journey of Cosmas Indicopleustes, see S. Faller, Taprobane im Wandel der Zeit (Stuttgart, 2000); H. Schneider, ‘Kosmas Indi
kopleustes, Christliche Topographie: Probleme der Überlieferung und Editionsgeschichte’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift 99.2 (2006), 605–14.
47The History of Theophylact Simocatta: An English Translation with Introduction and Notes, ed. and tr. M. Whitby and M. Whitby (Oxford, 1986), 5.10, p. 147.
48See Wood, Chronicle of Seert, p.23.
49B. Spuler, Iran in früh-Islamischer Zeit (Wiesbaden, 1952), pp. 210–13; P. Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity (Oxford, 2008), pp. 14, 53; Also see S. Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, 2 vols (San Francisco, 1998); J. Asmussen, ‘Christians in Iran’, pp. 924–48.
50A. Atiya, A History of Eastern Christianity (London, 1968), pp. 239ff.
51Agathias, Historion, 2.28, Agathias: Histories, tr. J. Frendo (Berlin, 1975), p. 77.
52For the prayers, Brock, ‘Church of the East’, 76; for the election, Synod of Mar Gregory I, Synodicon orientale, p. 471.
53T. Daryaee (ed. and tr.), Šahrestānīhā-ī Ērānšahr: A Middle Persian Text on Late Antique Geography, Epic and History (Costa Mesa, CA, 2002).
54M. Morony, ‘Land Use and Settlement Patterns in Late Sasanian and Early Islamic Iraq’, in Cameron, King and Haldon, The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, 2, pp. 221–9; F. Rahimi-Laridjani, Die Entwicklung der Bewässerungslandwirtschaft im Iran bis Sasanidisch-frühislamische zeit (Weisbaden, 1988); R. Gyselen, La géographie administrative de l’empire sasanide: les témoignages sigilographiques (Paris, 1989).
55P. Pourshariati, Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire: The Sasanian–Parthian Confederacy and the Arab Conquest of Iran (London, 2009), pp. 33–60. Also see Z. Rubin, ‘The Reforms of Khusro Anushirwān’, in Cameron, Islamic Near East, 3, pp. 225–97.
56A. Taffazoli, ‘List of Trades and Crafts in the Sassanian Period’, Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 7 (1974), 192–6.
57R. Frye, ‘Sasanian Seal Inscriptions’, in R. Stiehl and H. Stier, Beiträge zur alten Gesichte und deren Nachleben, 2 vols (Berlin, 1969–70), 1, pp. 79–84; J. Choksy, ‘Loan and Sales Contracts in Ancient and Early Medieval Iran’, Indo-Iranian Journal 31 (1988), 120.
58Daryaee, ‘Persian Gulf Trade’, 1–16.
59E. de la Vaissière, Histoire des marchands sogdiens (Paris, 2002), pp. 155–61, 179–231. N. Sims-Williams, ‘The Sogdian Merchants in China and India’, in A. Cadonna and L. Lanciotti (eds), Cina e Iran: da Alessandro Magno alla dinastia Tang (Florence, 1996), pp. 45–67; J. Rose, ‘The Sogdians: Prime Movers between Boundaries’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 30.3 (2010), 410–19.
60F. Thierry and C. Morrisson, ‘Sur les monnaies Byzantines trouvés en Chine’, Revue numismatique 36 (1994), 109–45; L. Yin, ‘Western Turks and Byzantine Gold Coins Found in China’, Transoxiana 6 (2003); B. Marshak and W. Anazawa, ‘Some Notes on the Tomb of Li Xian and his Wife under the Northern Zhou Dynasty at Guyuan, Ningxia and its Gold-Gilt Silver Ewer with Greek Mythological Scenes Unearthed There’, Cultura Antiqua 41.4 (1989), 54–7.
61D. Shepherd, ‘Sasanian Art’, in Cambridge History of Iran, 3.2, pp. 1085–6.
62For Easter, Eusebius, Vita Constantini, 3.18, p. 90. For examples of legislation against intermarriage, Codex Theodosianus, 16.7, p. 466; 16.8, pp. 467–8.
63L. Feldman, ‘Proselytism by Jews in the Third, Fourth and Fifth Centuries’, Journal for the Study of Judaism 24.1 (1993), 9–10.
64Ibid., 46.
65P. Schäfer, Jesus in the Talmud (Princeton, 2007); P. Schäfer, M. Meerson and Y. Deutsch (eds), Toledot Yeshu (‘The Life Story of Jesus’) Revisited (Tübingen, 2011).
66G. Bowersock, ‘The New Greek Inscription from South Yemen’, in A. Sedov and J.-F. Salles (eds), Qāni’: le port antique du aramawt entre la Méditerranée, l’Afrique et l’Inde: fouilles russes 1972, 1985–89, 1991, 1993–94 (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 393–6.
67J. Beaucamp, F. Briquel-Chatonnet and C. Robin (eds), Juifs et chrétiens en Arabie aux Ve et VIe siècles: regards croisés sur les sources (Paris, 2010); C. Robin, ‘Joseph, dernier roi de Himyar (de 522 à 525, ou une des années suivantes)’, Jerusalem Studies in Arabic and Islam 34 (2008), 1–124.
68G. Bowersock, The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam (Oxford, 2013), pp. 78–91.
69Brock, ‘Church of the East’, 73.
70Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh; text, pp. 19–69.
71Y. Saeki, The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China (2nd edn, Tokyo, 1951), pp. 126–7; D. Scott, ‘Christian Responses to Buddhism in Pre-Medieval Times’, Numen 32.1 (1985), 91–2.
72See E. Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels (New York, 1979); H.-J. Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road: Gnostic Texts from Central Asia (San Francisco, 1993); K. King, What is Gnosticism? (Cambridge, MA, 2003).
73P. Crone, ‘Zoroastrian Communism’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 36.4 (1994), 447–62; G. Gnoli, ‘Nuovi studi sul Mazdakismo’, in Convegno internazionale: la Persia e Bisanzio (Rome, 2004), pp. 439–56.
74Hui Li, Life of Hiuen-tsang, tr. Samuel Beal (Westport, CT, 1973), p. 45.
75Ibid., p. 46; R. Foltz, ‘When was Central Asia Zoroastrian?’, Mankind Quarterly (1988), 189–200.
76S. Beal, Buddhist Records of the Western World (New Delhi, 1969), pp. 44–6.
77G. Mitchell and S. Johar, ‘The Maratha Complex at Ellora’, Modern Asian Studies 28.1 (2012), 69–88.
78Excavations and surveys were conducted in the 1970s by joint teams from Japan and Afghanistan. See T. Higuchi, Japan–Afghanistan Joint Archaeological Survey 1974, 1976, 1978 (Kyoto, 1976–80).
79For the dating of the Bamiyan complex to c. 600, see D. Klimburg-Salter, ‘Buddhist Painting in the Hindu Kush c. VIIth to Xth Centuries: Reflections of the Co-existence of Pre-Islamic and Islamic Artistic Cultures during the Early Centuries of the Islamic Era’, in E. de la Vaissière, Islamisation de l’Asie Centrale: processus locaux d’acculturation du VIIe au XIe siècle (Paris, 2008), pp. 140–2; also see F. Flood, ‘Between Cult and Culture: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum’, Art Bulletin 84.4 (2002), 641ff. Also see here L. Morgan, The Buddhas of Bamiyan (London, 2012).
80Cited by Power, Red Sea, p. 58.
81I. Gillman and H.-J. Klimkeit, Christians in Asia before 1500 (Ann Arbor, 1999), pp. 265–305.
82G. Stroumsa, Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity (Tübingen, 1999), pp. 80, 274–81.
83J. Choksy, ‘Hagiography and Monotheism in History: Doctrinal Encounters between Zoroastrianism, Judaism and Christianity’, Islam and Christian–Muslim Relations 14.4 (2010), 407–21.
Chapter 4 – The Road to Revolution
1Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel Mahre, Chronicle (Known Also as the Chronicle of Zuqnin), Part III, tr. W. Witaksowski (Liverpool, 1996), p. 77.
2Procopius, Hyper ton polemon, 2.22–3, in History of the Wars, Secret History, Buildings, ed. and tr. H. Dewing, 7 vols (Cambridge, MA), 1, pp. 450–72.
3M. Morony, ‘“For Whom Does the Writer Write?”: The First Bubonic Plague Pandemic According to Syriac Sources’, in K. Lester (ed.), Plague and the End of Antiquity: The Pandemic of 541–750 (Cambridge, 2007), p. 64; D. Twitchett, ‘Population and Pestilence in T’ang China’, in W. Bauer (ed.), Studia Sino-Mongolica (Wiesbaden, 1979), 42, 62.
4P. Sarris, Economy and Society in the Age of Justinian (Cambridge, 2006); idem, ‘Plague in Byzantium: The Evidence of Non-Literary Sources’, in Lester, Plague and the End of Antiquity, pp. 119–34; A. Cameron, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity: AD 395–700 (London, 1993), pp. 113ff.; D. Stathakopoulos, Famine and Pestilence in the Late Roman and Early Byzantine Empire: A Systematic Survey of Subsistence Crises and Epidemics (Birmingham, 2004), pp. 110–65.
5Sarris, Empires of Faith, pp. 145ff.
6Procopius, The Secret History, tr. P. Sarris (London, 2007), p. 80.
7John of Ephesus, Ecclesiastical History, 6.24, tr. R. P. Smith (1860), p. 429.
8M.-T. Liu, Die chinesischen Nachrichten zur Geschichte der Ost-Türken (T’u-küe), 2 vols
(Wiesbaden, 2009), 1, p. 87. Also J. Banaji, ‘Precious-Metal Coinages and Monetary Expansion in Late Antiquity’, in F. De Romanis and S. Sorda (eds), Dal denarius al dinar: l’oriente e la monetà romana (Rome, 2006), pp. 265–303.
9The History of Menander the Guardsman, tr. R. Blockley (Liverpool, 1985), pp. 121–3.
10Ibid., pp. 110–7.
11Sarris, Empires of Faith, pp. 230–1.
12Menander the Guardsman, pp. 173–5.
13For the sources here, Greatrex and Lieu, Roman Eastern Frontier, Part II, pp. 153–8.
14R. Thomson, The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos. Part I: Translation and Notes (Liverpool, 1999), 8, p. 9.
15Agathias, Historion, 2.24, p. 72.
16G. Fisher, ‘From Mavia to al-Mundhir: Arab Christians and Arab Tribes in the Late Antique Roman East’, in I. Toral-Niehoff and K. Dimitriev (eds), Religious Culture in Late Antique Arabia (Leiden, 2012), p. x; M. Maas, ‘“Delivered from their Ancient Customs”: Christianity and the Question of Cultural Change in Early Byzantine Ethnography’, in K. Mills and A. Grafton (eds), Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Rochester, NY, 2003), pp. 152–88.
17R. Hoyland, ‘Arab Kings, Arab Tribes and the Beginnings of Arab Historical Memory in Late Roman Epigraphy’, in H. Cotton, R. Hoyland, J. Price and D. Wasserstein (eds), From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 374–400.
18M. Whittow, ‘Rome and the Jafnids: Writing the History of a Sixth-Century Tribal Dynasty’, in J. Humphrey (ed.), The Roman and Byzantine Near East: Some Recent Archaeological Research (Ann Arbor, 1999), pp. 215–33.
19K. Atahmina, ‘The Tribal Kings in Pre-Islamic Arabia: A Study of the Epithet malik or dhū al-tāj in Early Arabic Traditions’, al-Qanara 19 (1998), 35; M. Morony, ‘The Late Sasanian Economic Impact on the Arabian Peninsula’, Nāme-ye Irān-e Bāstān 1.2 (201/2), 35–6; I. Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, 2 vols (Washington, DC, 1995–2009), 2.2, pp. 53–4.
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