The Persian Empire

by Kia, Mehrdad;

  The teachings of Mani were collected in the books he had authored. With the exception of Shapurakan, which was written in Middle Persian, all his other works were written in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic. The books written in Syriac were The Living Gospel, The Treasure of Life, Pragmateia, The Book of Mysteries, The Book of Giants, and The Letters. Another book attributed to Mani was Arzhang or Ardahang. This book consisted of paintings and drawings illustrating the various aspects and stages of the spiritual teachings of Mani. Though these artistic masterpieces have been lost, they have afforded Mani the distinguished status of a master painter and artist in Persian literature and, in particular, Persian poetry.

  During his life, Mani conducted most of his missionary activities within the provinces of the Sasanian Empire. His teachings reached Syria and Egypt, however, while he was still alive. Through Egypt, Manichaeism traveled to North Africa and eventually to Spain. From Syria, Manichaeism spread to Asia Minor and then to Greece, Italy, and the Roman province of Gaul, a region corresponding with present-day France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and parts of Switzerland and northern Italy. The religion was harshly suppressed in the Roman Empire. Roman emperors such as Diocletian denounced Manichaeism as a dangerous Iranian religious movement that could undermine the internal stability of the Roman state. After the Roman Empire imposed Christianity as its state religion, the Christian church joined the campaign to suppress Manichaeism and persecute its adherents. One of the fathers of the Latin Church, Saint Augustine, who for a time had converted to Manichaeism, condemned the Iranian religion as a dangerous heretical movement that bred confusion and doubt in the minds of Christians. Manichaeism also met the same dreadful fate under Islamic rule, which overthrew the Sasanian Empire in 651 CE. During the Abbasid rule (r. 750–1258) in particular, the followers of Mani were denounced as zindiks (heretics), and many were subjected to imprisonment, torture, and murder. The terrorized few who survived this harsh persecution either fled or went underground. Manichaeism enjoyed its greatest success in Central Asia, although it faced strong opposition from Buddhists. Through Sogdian merchants, who played a central role in organizing trade caravans along the Silk Road, Manichaeism spread to the major urban centers of the region, including Samarqand, Bokhara, and Tashkent. Sometime during the last four decades of the eighth century CE, the Turkic Uyghur kingdom adopted Manichaeism as its state religion. When Uyghur power declined in the ninth century, however, Central Asian Manichaeism lost its most steadfast and resolute supporter. In China, Manichaeism lost to Buddhism and was forced to go underground, while in the western regions of Central Asia, Islamic rule forced Manichaeism into extinction.

  MANICHAEANS ON THE SILK ROAD

  After the death of the Iranian prophet Mani in 276 CE, his followers, who were persecuted by the Zoroastrian religious establishment, spread the teachings of their leader beyond the boundaries of the Sasanian Empire. In the east, Manichaean missionaries traveled on the famed Silk Road and found converts among Sogdians, who played an important role in linking the economies of China and Central Asia with the markets of Persia, Mesopotamia, and Rome. The Sogdian merchants had a strong presence in several major urban centers of China, including the capital, Chang’an (modern-day Xian), which also served as the starting point for those traveling on the Silk Road, and Luoyang. Both of these cities were sacked during the rebellion of An Lu-Shan, which began in 752. In an attempt to recover its lost cities, the Tang dynasty of China appealed for assistance from the Turkic Uighurs, who ruled a vast empire based in Mongolia.

  In 762, after capturing Luoyang and Chang’an, the Uighur ruler known by his title of khagan became acquainted and enthralled with Manichaeism as practiced by the Sogdians. His fascination led him to request that Manichaean missionaries be sent to his court after he had returned home. Shortly after he had returned to his capital, four Manichaean missionaries arrived at the Uighur court. The Uighur khagan held a long meeting with the four Manichaean missionaries, keeping his newly arrived guests at the court overnight. The next morning at dawn, he proclaimed his intention to convert to Manichaeism. In a ceremony imbued with Iranian cultural influence and dominated by Persian symbols of authority and kingship, the Uighur khagan following the example of Sasanian monarchs, dressed himself in a purple cloak, sat on a golden throne, and placed a golden diadem on his head. Thus, Buddhism was replaced by Manichaeism as the state religion of the Uighur Empire. After the Uighurs were defeated and overthrown by the Kyrgyz in 840, Manichaeism continued to thrive in the small Uighur states of Gansu and Turfan. Manichaeism survived in Central Asia until the Mongol invasion of the 13th century.

  The followers of Mani were organized into two distinct and separate classes. The first were the Elect, who constituted the religion’s priestly caste. They were prohibited from eating meat, drinking wine, and engaging in sexual intercourse. The second comprised the Listeners, or the ordinary followers of the religion, who were obligated to observe certain rules; they could own property, engage in sexual intercourse, and marry but were not allowed to have children.

  See also: Ancient Cities: Naqsh-e Rajab; K&Q, Sasanian: Bahram I, Bahram II, Bahram III; Hormozd I; Shapur I; Peoples: Sasanian Empire; Prophets: Kartir

  Further Reading

  Asmussen, J. P. “Aržang.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 1987, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/arzang-mid.

  Baker-Brian, Nicholas J. Manichaeism: An Ancient Faith Rediscovered. London: T&T Clark, 2011.

  Henning, W. B. “A Sogdian Fragment of the Manichaean Cosmogony.” BSOAS 12 (1948): 306–318.

  Klimkelt, Hans-Joachim. Gnosis on the Silk Road: Gnosis Parables, Hymns & Prayers from Central Asia. New York: HarperCollins, 1993.

  Lieu, S. N. C. L. Manichaeism in Central Asia and China. Leiden: Brill Academic, 1998.

  al-Nadim, Muhammad ibn Ishaq [Ibn Nadim]. Kitab al-Fihrist. Translated by Mohammad Reza Tajadod. Tehran: Amir Kabir Publications, 1988.

  Sundermann, Werner. “Mani.” Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2009, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/mani-founder-manicheism.

  Widengren, G. “Manichaeism and Its Iranian Background.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 3(II), edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 965–990. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

  Mazdak

  Mazdak was an Iranian religious leader and thinker who advocated the creation of a just society based on equality and peace. The dates for his birth and death are unknown. Some scholars have maintained that he was killed sometime between 524 and 528 CE. Mazdak lived during the tumultuous reigns of the Sasanian monarchs Peroz (r. 459–484 CE) and Kavad I (r. 488–496 and 499–531 CE). In the fifth century CE, the eastern borders of the Sasanian Empire were breached by the Hephthalites, a nomadic confederation from Central Asia. The Sasanian monarch Bahram V (r. 421–439 CE) tried to slow down the Hephthalite invaders by building towers to protect the northeastern provinces of his empire. His successor, Yazdegerd II (r. 439–457 CE), spent much of his reign preventing the Hephthalites from entering the northeastern provinces of his empire. Despite their best efforts, the threat from these nomadic invasions carried on into the reign of Peroz, who fought the Hephthalites three times. In the first campaign, he was captured by the Hephthalites and forced to pay a substantial ransom for his release. In the second encounter, the Sasanian monarch was forced to leave his son, Kavad, as a hostage with the Hephthalites. In 484 CE, to avenge the humiliation he had suffered and against the best advice of his courtiers, Peroz attacked the Hephthalites. This time, the Sasanian monarch was defeated and killed on the battlefield in present-day northern Afghanistan. Their victory over the Sasanian army and the death of the Persian king forced the Sasanian dynasty to sue for peace and pay an annual tribute. The reign of Peroz also corresponded with a long period of drought and famine. As rivers and water wells dried up, the peasant masses suffered. The humiliating defeats at the hands of the Hephthalites undermined the power and legitimacy of the Sasanian state. After the death of Peroz, his brother Balash (Valakhsh) succeeded on
the throne, but he was deposed after a short reign of four years in 488. The next Sasanian monarch, Kavad I, who was the son of Peroz, believed in the necessity of social and economic reforms. Kavad was also convinced that the enormous power of the empire’s ruling classes, namely the landed nobility and the Zoroastrian priesthood, had to be curtailed. It is not surprising therefore that Kavad was attracted to the teachings of Mazdak, a member of the Zoroastrian religious hierarchy who preached against greed, arrogance, and unfettered power.

  Mazdak followed a reform movement within Zoroastrianism that preached peace and justice and opposed violence and bloodshed. According to his interpretation of Zoroastrianism, the triumph of good over evil required human beings to strive for compassion, brotherhood, and equality and abandon wickedness, malice, competition, and conflict, as manifested by greed and the drive to accumulate property and women. According to Mazdak, evil and suffering in the world originated from the human fixation on satisfying self-centered desires without any regard for the hardships and needs that might be faced by other human beings. Liberating the human soul from evil and creating a just and peaceful society free of competition and violence required human beings to abandon this greed and selfishness and instead share with one another the existing resources of their society.

  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. Their opposition was powerful enough to depose Kavad I in 496 and force him to seek refuge with the Hephthalites, among whom he once had lived as a hostage. In 499, Kavad managed to convince the Hephthalites to help him raise an army and regain his throne. Although Kavad returned to power, he realized that his authority would not be fully secure until he appeased the nobles and priests who opposed Mazdak. The ruling dynasty was itself divided from within between pro-Mazdak and anti-Mazdak factions. Among potential heirs to the throne, Mazdak and his followers favored Kavus, the older son of Kavad I, who sympathized with the ideas and objectives of their movement. Kavad’s younger son, Khosrow, who strongly opposed Mazdak, was the preferred candidate of the anti-Mazdak nobility and the Zoroastrian priesthood. After the death of Kavad I, his son Khosrow seized the Sasanian throne. Khosrow suppressed Mazdak and his supporters, known as the Mazdakites. The religious leader was denounced, detained, and executed. According to one source, Khosrow I summoned a group of high Zoroastrian priests to his court. He then sent a message to Mazdak, “requiring him to reply to the questions” posed by “this priestly assembly on pain of death,” to which Mazdak “assented” (Pahlavi Texts, Part I: Bahman Yasht, 194n2). Mazdak was “asked ten religious questions, but was unable to answer one,” so Khosrow “put him to death immediately” (Pahlavi Texts, Part I: Bahman Yasht, 194n2). In his book Siyar al-Muluk, also known as Siyasat Nameh, the Persian vizier and author of the Saljuq era Nizam al-Mulk wrote that before seizing the throne, Khosrow invited his father, Kavad I, and Mazdak as well as many followers of the religious reformer to a lavish banquet, feigning that he would declare his conversion to their beliefs. As the Mazdakites arrived at the reception, however, they were seized and executed by palace guards, who buried them in a polo field, with their heads downward in the earth and their feet protruding out of the dirt (Nizam al-Mulk: 257–258). After all the invited Mazdakites had been eliminated, Khosrow then invited his father and Mazdak for a walk. Upon entering the field and seeing the buried bodies of Mazdakites with their planted feet erect in the air, Khosrow turned to Mazdak and said, “the army which you command cannot deserve a better reward than this. You thought that you could steal peoples’ property and women and carry off kingship from our dynasty” (Nizam al-Mulk: 258). Mazdak was then detained and subsequently buried to his chest in a pit with only his head and neck above the ground. He remained in the same position until he died (Nizam al-Mulk: 258). In defending the actions of Khosrow, Pahlavi texts denounced the reform-minded religious leader as “the accursed Mazdak son of Bamdad” who was opposed to Zoroastrianism and had caused disturbance “among those in the religion of God” (Pahlavi Texts, Part I: Bahman Yasht, I.6). The murder of Mazdak, who had gained popularity among the masses, was followed by a campaign of terror and repression. Throughout the empire Mazdakites were imprisoned, and many were executed. The movement was forced underground, but it did not die. Despite the harsh repression it suffered at the hands of the Sasanian state, the Mazdakite movement survived and enjoyed a revival after the fall of the Sasanian dynasty and the introduction of Islam in 651. The Mazdakites played an important role in the rebellion of Abu Muslim, the charismatic general and commander who overthrew the Umayyad dynasty in 750 and installed the Abbasids on the throne. Several popular movements that erupted in Iran and Central Asia after the murder of Abu Muslim by the Abbasid caliph al-Mansur were organized by the Mazdakites. Among the most popular of these was the rebellion of Sanbad (Sinbad), a commander in Abu Muslim’s army who revolted against the authority of the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad in 755 (Nizam al-Mulk: 260). Another was the rebellion of “the Veiled Prophet,” al-Muqanna’, in the northeastern Iranian province of Khorasan. The Iranian legendary hero Babak Khoramdin, who led a popular movement against the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad between 817 and 837 from his stronghold in the northwestern province of Azerbaijan, was also inspired by the revolutionary ideas of Mazdak.

  See also: K&Q, Sasanian: Kavad I; Khosrow I Anushiravan; Peroz

  Further Reading

  Browne, E. G. A Literary History of Persia, Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1928.

  Gardizi, Abu Said Abdol-Hay ibn Zahhak ibn Mahmud. Tarikh-e Gardizi. Edited by Abdol-Hay Habibi. Tehran: Donya-ye Ketab, 1985.

  Nizam al-Mulk. Siyar al-Muluk also known as Siyasat-nama. Edited by Hubert Drake. Tehran: Bank-e Melli Printing House, 1962.

  Pahlavi Texts, Part I: The Bundahishn-Bahman Yasht. Translated by E. W. West. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965.

  Pahlavi Texts, Part I: The Bundahishn, Bahman Yasht, and Shayast La Shayast. Translated by E. W. West. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1965.

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

  Yarshater, Ehsan. “Mazdakism.” In The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 3(II), edited by Ehsan Yarshater, 991–1026. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

  Xenophon

  Greek officer, author, and historian who made numerous references to the Persian Achaemenid Empire in his writings. Xenophon (431/430–356/354 BCE) was born in Athens into an aristocratic family. A student of the Greek philosopher Socrates, Xenophon trained as a cavalry officer. He joined a Greek mercenary army, which then attached itself to an expedition led by the Persian prince Cyrus the Younger to seize the throne of the Achaemenid Empire from Cyrus’s older brother, the ruling Persian monarch Artaxerxes II (r. 404–359 BCE). In 401 BCE, Cyrus was defeated and killed on the battlefield of Cunaxa in present-day southern Iraq. After the death of Cyrus and the execution of his commanders, Xenophon emerged as one of the leaders of the Greek contingent. Under his leadership, the Greeks who had fought with Cyrus returned to Greece in a long march through the territory of the Persian Empire. Traveling through Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, the mercenaries reached Byzantium. Back in Athens, Xenophon became involved in a conflict with the ruling oligarchs of the city, who forced him into exile. He lived for a time in Sparta and later on an estate near Olympia before moving to western Peloponnese. Xenophon eventually returned to Athens and lived there until his death in 354 BCE.

  In his Anabasis [Upcountry March], or Persian Expedition, Xenophon wrote about the revolt of Cyrus the Younger against his brother, Artaxerxes II, and the long march of 10,000 Greek mercenaries to the interior of the Persian state. Xenophon also described the retreat of the Greek mercenaries after the defeat and death of Cyrus the Younger. Though intriguing in some of its facts and details, Xenophon’s account of the march does not provide the reader wi
th any insight into the political and cultural life of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Xenophon also authored Cyropaedia, or Education of Cyrus, which provides a highly romanticized description of Cyrus II the Great, founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Cyropaedia is not a historical work. It does not provide the reader with any facts regarding the life and achievements of Cyrus, nor does it offer any insight into the political organization of the Persian Empire during the reign of its founder. It is therefore not surprising that many scholars have viewed the book as a work of pure fiction. Interestingly enough, however, much of Xenophon’s description of the Persian court seems to have been based in historical reality. This has led some to conclude that the Greek author was projecting his knowledge and observations of Cyrus the Younger to the life of Cyrus the Elder. In the last section of Cyropaedia, Xenophon waged a harsh attack against the successors of Cyrus, holding them responsible for the weakness and decline of the Persian Empire. Some have suggested that this diatribe was not written by Xenophon and was added to the original text sometime later.

  See also: K&Q, Achaemenid: Cyrus II the Great; Cyrus the Younger; Prophets: Cyropaedia; Primary Documents: Document 11; Document 19

  Further Reading

  Brosius, M. “Greek Sources on Achaemenid Iran.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran, edited by D. T. Potts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

  Xenophon. The Education of Cyrus. Translated by Wayne Ambler. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.

  Xenophon. Persian Expedition. Translated by Rex Warner. London: Penguin, 1972.

  Zarathustra (Zoroaster)

  Zarathustra (Old Iranian: Zarathushtra; Greek: Zoroaster; New Persian: Zardosht) was an Iranian religious leader, teacher, and reformer. He is one of the most influential figures in the history of religious thought in the world. The concepts of good and evil, life after death, heaven and hell, and the last judgment as well as the doctrine of the millennia and the idea of a savior who will appear to rescue his people from ignorance, oppression, and suffering were introduced to the world for the first time through Zarathustra’s teachings. These ideas left a profound impact on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as well as on Greek and Roman religious practices and thought. Zoroastrianism, the religion that was founded based on his teachings, “may well have been the fundamental set of ideas that helped shape the world’s major faiths as we know them today” (Watson: 113).