The Persian Empire

by Kia, Mehrdad;

  In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, from the King Kisrā, son of Qubādh, to Wārī, son of the Nakhīrjān, Fādhūsbān of Azerbaijan and Armenia and their territories, and Dunbāwand and Tabaristān and their adjacent territories, and his subordinate officials, greetings! The thing that most strikes fear into the hearts of people is the feeling of deprivation felt by those who fear the ending of their state of comfortable living, the eruption of civil disorders, and the advent of unpleasant things to the best of individuals, one after the other of such individuals, in regard to their own persons, their retainers, their personal wealth, or what is dearest to them. We know of no cause for fear or absence of a thing that brings more crushing ill-fortune for the generality of people, nor one likely to bring about universal disaster, than the absence of a righteous king.

  When Kisrā had gained firm control of power, he took measures to extirpate the religious beliefs of a hypocritical person from the people of Fasā, called Zarādhusht, son of Khurrakān, a new faith which he had brought into existence within the Mazdaean religion. A considerable number of people followed him in that heretical innovation, and his movement became prominent on account of this. Among those who carried out missionary work for him among the masses was a certain man … called Mazdaq, son of Bamdādh. Among the things he ordained for people, made attractive to them, and urged them to adopt, was holding their possessions and their families in common. He proclaimed that all this was part of the piety that is pleasing to God, and that he will reward with the most handsome of recompenses, and that, if that religious faith he commanded them to observe and urged them to adopt were not to exist, the truly good way of behavior, the one which is pleasing to God, would lie in the common sharing of property. With those doctrines, he incited the lower classes against the upper classes. Through him, all sorts of vile persons became mixed up with the best elements of society, criminals seeking to despoil them of their possessions found easy ways to do this, tyrannical persons had their paths to tyranny facilitated, and fornicators were able to indulge their lusts and get their hands on high-born women to whom they would never have been able to aspire. Universal calamity overwhelmed the people to an extent they had never before experienced.

  Hence Kisrā forbade the people to act in accordance with any of the heretical innovations of Zarādusht, son of Kharrakān, and Mazdaq, son of Bamdādh. He extirpated all their heresy, and he killed a great number of their … adherents and did not allow himself to be deflected from any of what he had forbidden the people. [He further killed] a group of the Manichaeans, and made firm for the Magians the religion they had always held.

  Before Kisrā became king, the office of Isbahbadh—that is, the supreme commander of the armed forces—was held by one man, who was responsible for this supreme command over all the land. Kisrā now divided this office and rank between four Isbahbadhs, namely, the Isbahbadh of the East, comprising Khurāsān and its adjoining regions; the Isbahbadh of the West; the Isbahbadh of Nīmrūz, that is, the land of Yemen; and the Isbahbadh of Azerbaijan and its adjoining regions, that is, the Khazar lands. He saw in this new arrangement a way of improving the good ordering of his kingdom. He strengthened the fighting quality of the soldiers with weapons and mounts. He recovered lands belonging to the kingdom of Persia, some of which had slipped out of the hand of King Qubādh and into the control of other monarchs of the nations, through various causes and reasons, including Sind, Bust, al-Rukhkhaj, Zabulistān, Tukhāristān, Daridstān, and Kābulistan. He inflicted extensive slaughter among a people called the Bāriz, transported the remaining ones of them from their land, and resettled them in various places of his kingdom. They submitted to him as his servants, and he utilized them in his military campaigns. He gave orders for another people, called the Sūl, to be made captives, and they were brought before him. He commanded that they should be killed, except for eighty of their boldest warriors, whom he spared and had settled at Shahrām Fayrūz, where he could call upon them for his military campaigns. There was also a people called the Abkhaz, and other ones of the Balanjar, and al-Lān, who came together in a coalition to raid his lands. They made an incursion into Armenia in order to raid and despoil its people. Their route thither was at that moment easy and unimpeded, and Kisrā closed his eyes to their activities until, when they had firmly established themselves in his territories, he dispatched against them contingents of troops, who fought with them, and exterminated them apart for ten thousand of them, whom they took prisoner and then settled in Azerbaijan and the neighboring regions.

  King Fayrūz had previously erected in the regions of the Sūl and al-Lān buildings of stone, with the intention of strengthening his lands against the encroachments there of those nations. Moreover, King Qubādh, son of Fayrūz, had begun the construction, after his father, of a great number of building works in those regions, until, when Kisrā achieved the royal power, he gave orders for the construction in the region of the Sūl, with stone hewn in the vicinity of Jurjān, of towns, castles, fortified mounds, and many other buildings, which would serve as a protection for the people of his lands, where they might seek refuge from the enemy in the event of a sudden attack.

  The Khāqān Sinjibū was the most implacable, the most courageous, the most powerful, and the most plentifully endowed with troops of all the Turks. It was he who attacked … the king of the Hephthalites, showing no fear of the numerousness or the fierce fighting qualities of the Hephthalites, and then killed their king and the greater part of his troops, seizing their possessions as plunder and occupying their lands, with the exception of the part of them that Kisrā had conquered. Khāqān won over the Abkhaz and the Balanjar to his side, and they vouchsafed him their obedience. They informed him that the kings of Persia had always sought to ward them off by paying tribute, thereby securing safety from their raids on their (sc., the Persians’) lands. Khāqān now advanced with 110,000 warriors until he reached the fringes of the land of the Sūl. He sent a message to Kisrā, uttering threats and using peremptory language against him, to the effect that Kisrā must send to him treasure and to the Abkhaz and the Balanjar the tribute money the Persian kings had customarily paid before Kisrā came to power. [He further threatened] that, if Kisrā did not expedite the forwarding of all that he asked, he would enter his land and attack it. Kisrā paid no heed to his menaces and did not offer Khāqān a single item of what he had demanded, since he had strongly fortified the region of the gates of the Sūl and had blocked the ways and the tracks through defiles that the Khāqān Sinjibū would have to follow in order to reach him. He also knew the strength of his defensive forces in the frontier region of Armenia: five thousand warriors, cavalrymen, and infantry. The Khāqān Sinjibū got word of Kisrā’s fortifying of the frontier regions of the Sūl, hence returned to his own land with all his troops and with his intentions frustrated. Those of the enemy who were massed against Jurjān were likewise, because of the fortifications Kisrā had built in its neighborhood, unable to mount any raids on it and to conquer it.

  The people had recognized Kisrā Anūsharwān’s excellent judgment, knowledge, intelligence, bravery, and resolution, combined with his mildness and clemency toward them. When he was crowned, the great men of state and the nobles came into his presence, and with all their might and eloquence called down blessings on his head. When they had concluded their speeches, he stood up and delivered an oration. He began by mentioning God’s favors on His people when He had created them, and his own dependency on God for regulating their affairs and the provision of foodstuffs and the means of life for them. He left nothing [which ought to have been said] out of his oration. Then he told the people what they had suffered [through the spreading of Mazdak’s teachings]; namely, the loss of their possessions, the destruction of their religion and the damage to their position regarding their children and their means of life. He further informed them that he was looking into ways and means of putting all that right and rendering affairs strong again, and urged the people to aid him
in this.

  Next, he ordered the heads of the leaders of the Mazdakites to be chopped off and their possessions to be shared out among the poor and needy. He killed a large number of those people who had confiscated other people’s possessions, and restored these possessions to their original owners. He commanded that every child concerning whom there was dispute before him about his or her origin should be attributed to that person in whose family the child was, when the real father was not known, and that the child should be given a [legal] share in the estate of the man to whom the child was now attributed, provided that the latter acknowledged the child. In regard to every woman who had been forced to give herself unwillingly to a man, that man was to be held to account and compelled to pay the bride price to her so that her family was thereby satisfied. Then the woman was to be given the choice between remaining with him or marrying someone else, except that if she had an original husband, she was to be restored to him. He further commanded that every man who had caused harm to another person in regard to his possessions, or who had committed an act of oppression against another person, should make full restitution and then be punished in a manner appropriate to the enormity of his offense. He decreed that, where those responsible for the upbringing of the children of leading families had died, he himself would be responsible for them. He married the girls among them to their social equals and provided them with their bridal outfit and necessities out of the state treasury; and he gave the youths in marriage to wives from noble families, presented them with money for dowries, awarded them sufficient riches, and ordained that they should be members of his court so that he might call upon them for filling various of his state offices. He gave the wives of his [dead] father the choice between staying with his own wives and sharing in their maintenance and provision, and enjoying the same income as these last, or alternatively, he would seek out for them husbands of the same social standing as themselves.

  He further ordained the digging of canals and the excavation of subterranean irrigation conduits … and provision of loans for the owners of agricultural lands and support for them. He likewise ordered the rebuilding of every wooden bridge or bridge of boats … that had been destroyed and of every masonry bridge … that had been smashed, and further ordered that every village that had fallen into ruin should be restored to a better state of prosperity than previously. He made enquiries about the cavalrymen of the army … , and those lacking in resources he brought up to standard by allocating to them horses and equipment, and earmarked for them adequate financial allowances. He assigned overseers for the fire temples and provided good roads for the people. Along the highways he built castles and towers. He selected [good] administrators, tax officials, and governors, and gave the persons appointed to these functions stringent orders. He set himself to peruse the conduct, the writings, and the legal decisions of Ardashīr, and took them as a model to imitate, urging the people to do likewise.

  Once he had a firm grip on the royal power and all the lands were under his control, and some years after he had been reigning, he marched against Antioch, where were stationed leading commanders of Qaysar’s army, and conquered it. He then gave orders that a plan should be made for him of the city of Antioch exactly to scale (literally, “according to its extent”), with the number of its houses, streets, and everything contained in it, and orders that a [new city] should be built for him exactly like Antioch but situated at the side of al-Madā’in. The city known as al-Rūmiyyah was built exactly on the plan of Antioch. He thereupon had the inhabitants of Antioch transported and settled in the new city; when they entered the city’s gate, the denizens of each house went to the new house so exactly resembling their former one in Antioch that it was as if they had never left the city. Kisrā now attacked the town of Heraclea and conquered it, followed by Alexandria and the lands extending up to it. He left behind a detachment of his troops in the land of the Romans after Qaysar had submitted to him and paid him ransom money.

  He returned home from Rūm and then took the field against the Khazars, and sought revenge on them for the damage they had wrought on him by afflicting his subjects. Next, he turned his attention to Aden. He blocked up part of the sea there which lay between two mountains and is adjacent to the land of Abyssinia (al-Habashah), with large ships, rocks, iron columns, and chains, and he killed the great men of state of that land. He then returned to al-Madā’in, having brought under his control all those regions of the land of Rūm and Armenia that are situated on this side of Heraclea plus the whole area between his capital and the sea, in the region of Aden. He appointed al-Mundhir b. al-Nu’mān as king over the Arabs and loaded him with honors. Then he took up residence in his own kingdom at al-Madā’in, and turned his attention once more to affairs needing his personal care. After this, he led an expedition against the Hephthalites, seeking revenge for his grandfather Fayrūz. Previously, Anūsharwān had married Khāqān’s daughter, so he now wrote to him before setting off on the expedition, informing him of his intentions and enjoining him to march against the Hephthalites. Anūsharwān came up against them, killed their king, and extirpated the whole of his family. He penetrated to Balkh and what lies beyond it and quartered his troops in Farghānah. He then returned home from Khurāsān. When he got back to al-Madā’in, a deputation came to him seeking help against the Abyssinians. So he sent back with them one of his commanders heading an army of the men of Daylam and adjacent regions; they killed the Abyssinian Masrūq in Yemen and remained there.

  Thus Kisrā enjoyed an unbroken run of victories and conquests; all the nations were in awe of him; and numerous delegations from the Turks, the Chinese, the Khazars, and similar [distant] nations thronged his court. He lavished generosity on scholars. He reigned for forty-eight years. The birth of the Prophet [Muhammad] fell within the latter part of Anūsharwān’s reign.

  Source: The History of Prophets and Kings [Tarikh al-rusul wa’l-muluk] by Abū Ja’far Muhammad b. Jarir al-Tabari (839–923), rendered as The History of al-Tabari, translated and annotated by C. E. Bosworth (Albany: State University of New York, 1999), 146–161. Reprinted with permission.

  37. SUPERPOWER DIPLOMACY ON THE SILK ROAD: SOGDIAN MERCHANTS AND THE SASANIAN, BYZANTINE, AND TURK EMPIRES IN MENANDER’S HISTORY OF MENANDER THE GUARDSMAN

  In a series of campaigns from 560 to 563 CE, the Persian Sasanian monarch Khosrow I Anushiravan (r. 531–579 CE) defeated the Hephthalites with support from the Western Turk Empire, which imposed its rule over much of Central Asia. Although the two empires had collaborated on destroying their common enemy, the Western Turks and the Sasanians were soon locked in a battle over control of the silk trade. The Sogdian merchants who controlled the lucrative silk trade and were now ruled by the Western Turks had requested from the Persian king of kings the right to sell and distribute their silk within the Sasanian domains. Khosrow I, who viewed the Sogdian merchants as spies working for the Western Turk emperor, turned down the request and insisted on retaining full control over the sale of silk within the boundaries of his empire. The conflict over the control of the silk trade convinced the Western Turks to seek an alliance with the Byzantine Empire, which was the principal nemesis of the Sasanian state to the west. The Sogdian merchant who led a delegation to Byzantium in 568/569 proposed the idea of bypassing Persian territory and exporting the silk from Central Asia to the Byzantine capital through the Caucasus. The Byzantine emperor reciprocated and sent an embassy to the ruler of the Western Turks. The Greek ambassador Zemarkhos (Zemarchus) was received by the Turk emperor with great pomp and ceremony in silk tents. The abundance of silver and gold among these “barbarians” astonished the Byzantine envoy, who agreed to a treaty of alliance. The alliance between the Byzantine Empire and the Western Turk Empire lasted for 10 years until the death of the Turk emperor, Silziboulos (Sizabul or Dizabul).

  10

  1. (Exc. de Leg. Gent. 7)

  At the beginning of the fourth year of Justin’s reign an embassy [late 568–early 569] from the
Turks came to Byzantium. As the power of the Turks increased, the Soghdians, who were earlier subjects of the Ephthalites and now of the Turks, asked their king to send an embassy to the Persians, to request that the Soghdians be allowed to travel there and sell raw silk to the Medes [Persians]. Sizabul agreed and dispatched Soghdian envoys, whose leader was Maniakh. When they reached the king of the Persians, they asked that they be given permission to sell the raw silk there without any hindrance. The Persian king, who was not at all pleased by their request, being reluctant to grant free access from there to that area of Persia, put off his reply until the next day and kept postponing it. After a series of postponements, as the Soghdians were pressing insistently for a reply, Khosro [the Sasanian king] summoned a council to discuss the matter. Katulph, the Ephthalite, … [a]dvised the Persian king not to return the silk, but to buy it, paying the fair price for it, and to burn it in the fire before the very eyes of the envoys, so that he would not be held to have committed an injustice but that it would be clear that he did not wish to use raw silk from the Turks. So the silk was burned, and the Soghdians returned to their homeland not at all pleased with what had happened.

  When the Soghdians told Sizabul what had occurred, he himself sent another embassy to the Persians, since he wished to establish friendly relations between them and his own state. When this second Turkish embassy arrived, the king, after discussion with the Persian high officials and with Katulph, decided that because of the untrustworthy nature of the Scythians it was completely against Persian interest to establish friendly relations with the Turks. At this he ordered that some of the envoys be poisoned, so that henceforth they would refuse to come there. The majority of the Turkish envoys, all but three or four, were murdered by a deadly poison mixed in with their food. A report was circulated amongst the Persians that the Turkish envoys had been killed by the stifling dryness of Persia, because their own land was often covered with snow and they could not survive away from cold weather. Although the survivors of the plot suspected a different explanation, when they returned to their own country they noised about the same version as the Persians. Sizabul [the Turk emperor], however, who was a shrewd and intelligent man, recognized what had been done and realized the truth, that the envoys had been killed by treachery. This was the cause of the hostility between the Persians and the Turks.