See also: K&Q, Sasanian: Bahram VI Chobin; Khosrow II Parvez
Further Reading
Bivar, A. D. H. “The History of Eastern Iran.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 3, edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 181–231. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Daryaee, Touraj. Sasanian Iran (224–651 BCE): Portrait of a Late Antique Empire. Costa Mesa: Mazda Publishers, 2008.
Shahbazi, A. Shapur. “Hormozd IV.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2004, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hormozd-iv.
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.
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.
Ya’qubi. Tarikh [The History]. Translated from Arabic into Persian by Mohammad Ibrahim Ayati. Tehran: Scientific and Cultural Publications, 1992.
Jamasp
Jamasp (Zamasp) was a Persian Sasanian king who ruled from 496 to 499 CE. He ascended the throne of the Sasanian Empire in 496 CE after his brother, Kavad I, was deposed and imprisoned. Jamasp ruled for only three years before he was forced to abdicate in favor of Kavad I, who fled captivity, raised an army with assistance from the Hephthalites, and marched to regain the throne. Jamasp refused to raise an army and fight his brother.
Jamasp was one of the sons of Peroz, the Sasanian monarch who ruled from 459 to 484 CE. Peroz lost his life fighting the Hephthalites who had invaded Sasanian territory from Central Asia in the fifth century CE. Peroz suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of Hephthalites in 484 at Balkh in northern Afghanistan, where he was killed on the battlefield. The victory over the Sasanian army and the death of Peroz allowed the Hephthalites to invade northeastern Iran, forcing the Sasanians to sue for peace and pay an annual tribute. After the death of Peroz, the Persian nobility installed his good-natured and mild-mannered brother, Balash, on the throne. Balash ruled from 484 to 488 CE.
When Balash was deposed by the members of the Persian nobility in 488, a son of Peroz, Kavad, succeeded him. Kavad I was a reform-minded monarch who believed in curtailing the power of the Persian nobility and the Zoroastrian priesthood. It is therefore not surprising that he was attracted to the teachings of Mazdak, a member of the Zoroastrian religious hierarchy who preached against the greed, arrogance, and unfettered power of the country’s ruling elites. 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 existing 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 ruling classes, particularly the Persian nobility and the Zoroastrian priesthood. This opposition was sufficiently powerful to depose and imprison Kavad I in 496.
At this juncture another son of Peroz, Jamasp, was crowned as the new king of kings. Jamasp inherited an empire in crisis. The popularity of Mazdak and his movement had grown among the masses and even among a segment of Iran’s ruling elite. Tribes from the Arabian Peninsula had attacked the Sasanian Empire, and Armenians were rising up and challenging the authority of the central government. The threat of another military confrontation with the Romans loomed in the west. Finally, a widespread famine was causing massive hardship and suffering among the peasant masses. We do not know how Jamasp responded to these challenges. The limited references to him, particularly in Christian sources, described the Persian king as a calm, kind, and compassionate ruler.
Before Jamasp could consolidate his power and begin to address the problems confronting the Sasanian state, however, his deposed and jailed brother, Kavad, escaped his jailers and sought refuge with the Hephthalites. Kavad managed to convince the Hephthalites to assist him with raising an army and regaining his throne. With support from the Hephthalites, Kavad organized an army and marched against his brother. For reasons unknown to us, Jamasp refused to fight his brother and instead relinquished the throne by abdicating in favor of him. Kavad returned to power and ruled until 531. Aside from one Nestorian Christian source, which claimed that Jamasp was executed by Kavad, other sources agree that he simply returned to a life of obscurity.
See also: K&Q, Sasanian: Kavad I; Peroz; Peoples: Hephthalites; Prophets: Mazdak
Further Reading
Asmussen, J. P. “Christians in Iran.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 3(2), edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 924–948. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Choksy, Jamsheed K. “Jāmāsp i. Reign.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2008, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jamasp-i-reign.
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.
Tabari. The History of al-Tabari: The Sasanids, the Byzantines, the Lakhmids. Translated by Clifford Edmund 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.
Kavad I
Kavad I was a king of the Sasanian dynasty who ruled from 488 to 496 CE and again from 499 to 531 CE. He was the son of the Sasanian monarch Peroz (r. 459–484 CE), who was killed on the battlefield as he fought the Hephthalites.
The Hephthalites, a nomadic group from Central Asia, breached the eastern frontiers of the Sasanian Empire in the fifth century CE. The Sasanian monarchs Bahram V (r. 421–439 CE) and Yazdegerd II (r. 439–457 CE) tried to slow down the Hephthalite invaders by building towers to protect the northeastern provinces of the empire. Peroz, in turn, fought the Hephthalites in several campaigns. In the first battle, he was captured by the Hephthalites and forced to pay a substantial ransom for his release. In the second campaign, Peroz was defeated again. The Persian monarch was forced to leave his son, Kavad, as a hostage with the Hephthalites. In 484, to avenge the humiliation he had suffered, Peroz attacked the Hephthalites, against the counsel of his advisers. In this confrontation the Persian king was defeated and killed on the battlefield. The victory over the Sasanian army and the death of the Persian king allowed the Hephthalites to invade eastern Iran and force the Sasanians to sue for peace and pay an annual tribute. After the death of Peroz, the Persian nobility installed his good-natured and mild-mannered brother, Balash, on the throne. Balash ruled from 484 to 488 CE.
The humiliating defeats at the hands of the Hephthalites undermined the power and legitimacy of the Sasanian state, which was also facing rebellions in Armenia, Iberia (Georgia), and among the tribal groups of the Zagros mountain range in western Iran. At the same time, the peasant masses were becoming increasingly restless and alienated from the ruling classes. Kavad I, who ascended the Sasanian throne in 488, was attracted to the idea of implementing social and economic reforms as a means of addressing and alleviating the suffering of the peasant masses. He also intended to use these reforms to increase the power of the central government and to curtail the power of the empire’s ruling classes, namely the landed nobility and the Zoroastrian priesthood. These facts may explain why Kavad 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 opp
osed violence and bloodshed. As a Zoroastrian leader and preacher, Mazdak believed in the relentless struggle between the forces of good, as represented by the supreme god Ohrmazd (Ahura Mazda), and the forces of evil, as represented by the evil spirit Ahriman (Angra Mainyu). 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 existing resources of their society, including private property and women.
Mazdak’s ideas and Kavad’s support for them posed a direct threat to the privileges of the Persian nobility and the Zoroastrian religious hierarchy. The antireform coalition was sufficiently powerful to depose Kavad I in 496. The disgraced monarch was imprisoned, but he managed to escape his jailers and seek refuge with the Hephthalites, among whom he had lived as a hostage after his father’s defeat (Tabari: 2.640–641). Kavad married the daughter of the king of the Hephthalites, and then in 499 he raised an army with support from the Hephthalites and marched against his brother Jamasp (Zamasp), who had succeeded him on the throne. Jamasp refused to fight Kavad, who regained his throne without a fight. Kavad spared Jamasp’s life, but according to Procopius the dethroned king was blinded (Procopius: I.vi.17). The powerful Persian noble Goshnaspdad, who had called for the murder of Kavad, was removed from his post and subsequently executed (Procopius: I.vi.18). Kavad ascended the Sasanian throne for a second time, 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, 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 priesthood.
Despite his many internal challenges, Kavad could not ignore the threat posed by external enemies. He was not sufficiently powerful to defeat the Hephthalites who had humiliated and killed his father. However, he could not ignore the threat posed to the Sasanian state by the Roman Empire. The conflict with Rome was centered on the control of Mesopotamia and Armenia, which were viewed by the two powers as major strategic prizes. The war between the Sasanian king of kings and the Byzantine emperor began after Kavad requested from the emperor Anastasius to lend him a sum of money so he could pay what he owed to the king of the Hephthalites (Procopius: I.vii.1). When the emperor turned down the king’s request, Kavad attacked Armenia in 502, moving with rapidity, surprising the enemy, and capturing several important strategic towns. He then “unexpectedly arrived at the city Amida,” present-day Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey on the banks of the Tigris (Procopius: I.vii.3–4). After a long siege of 80 days, the city fell in 503 (Procopius: I. vii.30). While the Sasanian king was leading the military operations in the Caucasus and Asia Minor, his Arab client, No’man II, the Lakhmid ruler of Hira, was devastating Mesopotamia and laying siege to Edessa. The rapid territorial gains of Kavad and his armies forced the Romans to dispatch a large army against the Persian king. After a long campaign the Byzantine forces managed to recover Amida, but only after they agreed to pay Kavad a handsome payment. A seven-year peace agreement was finally reached between the two powers in 506. Three decades after signing the truce with the Romans, the two powers became involved in another major war.
To secure the throne for his younger son, Khosrow, and in an effort to extend a hand of goodwill and friendship to the emperor Justin, Kavad requested that the Byzantine ruler adopt the Persian heir apparent, Khosrow, as his son (Procopius: I.xi.1–6). The request from the Persian king of kings was received with a great deal of misgiving and skepticism by the Roman emperor, who feared that the adoption of the Sasanian prince could conveniently entitle Khosrow to claim the lordship of the entire territory of the Byzantine Empire. After the death of Kavad, Khosrow would inherit the Sasanian Empire, and with the passing of Justin, Khosrow could also claim the right to rule the Roman domains, which belonged to his adopted father. The lukewarm Byzantine response to Kavad’s request was used by the Persian monarch as the pretext to order the mobilization of his army for a major campaign against the Byzantine state. The confrontation between the two powers began in Lazica in present-day western Georgia. Another Persian army struck in Mesopotamia. The Sasanians were initially victorious. The Byzantine army suffered a humiliating defeat in 528. Many soldiers and officers were slaughtered, and some “were made captive” (Procopius: I.xiii.7). Sasanian forces, however, suffered a major defeat at Dara in northern Mesopotamia in 530. The Byzantine victory was short-lived. Supported and reinforced by the Arab Lakhmid forces, the Sasanian army struck back and scored an impressive victory in the spring of 531. Thus, for three years beginning in 528 and ending in 531, the Persian and Byzantine armies fought repeatedly without either side scoring a decisive victory. Throughout the war between the two powers, the Byzantine and Sasanian armies were supported by their client Arab kingdoms. When Kavad died in 531 CE, he was succeeded by his younger son, Khosrow. The tradition among the Persians called for the oldest son of the deceased king to succeed his father on the throne. Kavad’s oldest son, Kavus, was, however, opposed by the powerful members of Persian nobility and the Zoroastrian religious establishment, who viewed him as a supporter of Mazdak. Khosrow used this opportunity to oust Kavus and seize the Sasanian throne. The new king, who confronted numerous internal and external challenges, ended the war with the Romans and signed a peace treaty with Emperor Justinian, according to which the Persians withdrew their forces from Lazica in the Caucasus and the Romans evacuated parts of Armenia, which had been historically ruled by the Sasanians. The Romans also agreed to pay the Persian monarch 11,000 pounds of gold in return for his commitment to defend the mountain passes in the Caucasus region.
See also: K&Q, Sasanian: Khosrow I Anushiravan; Peroz; Peoples: Sasanian Empire
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.
Procopius. History of the Wars, Books I–II. Translated by H. B. Dewing. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006.
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.
Kavad II Shiruya
Kavad II, also known as Shiruya (Shiroy), was a king of the Sasanian dynasty who ruled for several months in 628 CE. Though extremely short, Shiruya’s reign proved to be a turning point for the Sasanian state. Indeed, some have maintained that the collapse of the Sasanian Empire began as a result of the reckless decisions of Shiruya.
Shiruya was one of the sons of the Sasanian monarch Khosrow II Parvez (Parviz), who ruled from 590 to 628 CE. During the reign of Khosrow II, the Sasanian Empire reached its largest territorial extent. Persian armies occupied much of Asia Minor as well as Syria and Palestine, including the holy city of Jerusalem. From Palestine, the Sasanian forces invaded and occupied Egypt. Despite repeated pleas and requests for peace, Khosrow refused to settle his disputes with Emperor Heraclius. When the Byzantine forces struck back in Armenia, the Sasanian
army units disintegrated. Once again Heraclius proposed a peace treaty, and once again Khosrow rejected it. As the Byzantine forces pushed southward, they scored a major victory in Nineveh in present-day northern Iraq. By the winter of 628, the obstinate behavior of Khosrow had alienated army commanders and powerful members of the Persian nobility from their king.
On the evening of February 23, 628 CE, a group of plotters staged a coup against Khosrow. Shiruya, who was in contact with the opponents of his father, was released from detention, and a herald proclaimed him the new king of kings. The gates of the jails were also opened, and all prisoners, including Roman prisoners of war, were allowed to escape. Khosrow II fled the palace but was eventually captured. Two days later, 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 and half brothers. He then ordered the execution of his father. The Sasanian Empire never recovered from this mad rampage. Shiruy himself did not last very long on the throne. A few months after seizing the throne, he succumbed to a plague that had already devastated the western provinces of the Sasanian Empire.
See also: K&Q, Sasanian: Azarmidokht; Boran (Puran); Khosrow II Parvez
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