NINE EMPIRE REVIVED: THE SASANIDS

At its maximum extent the territory controlled by the Parthians included most of modern Iran, Mesopotamia, Eastern Anatolia and Afghanistan. They endeavoured to prove their right to rule by claiming to have links with the Achaemenid dynasty but, given their relatively recent Central Asian origins, none of these claims were at all convincing. As with earlier empires, Mesopotamia became the main centre of their power and their capital was Ctesiphon, a city they built on the Tigris adjacent to Seleucia, the Seleucid capital. The Parthian Empire lasted until the middle of the third century AD, but their grip on power was already weakening by the second century and by the third, much of their empire was in turmoil.

In AD 114, Mesopotamia was occupied by a Roman army under the command of the emperor Trajan. The Parthian capital was now in Roman hands and the Parthians were forced to retreat eastwards. However, Mesopotamia did not remain in the Roman Empire for very long and the Romans soon moved back west to a more defensible frontier in Syria. From then on Parthian rule became ever more tenuous.

At this time invaders from Eastern Europe and Central Asia had been the rulers of Persia since the fall of the Achaemenid Empire over 500 years earlier. In the early part of the third century, during the period of conflict between Rome and the Parthians, the Middle East was rapidly descending into chaos. It was at that time of troubles that an attempt was made to resurrect the Achaemenid Empire. The main insurrection against the Parthians was led by Ardashir, a native of the province of Pars, the old Achaemenid heartland and the centre of their rule. Ardashir (Artaxerxes) gained control of Pars as early as 208 and, using Pars as his base, he conquered the territories adjacent to it. He finally defeated the Parthians in 224 in the battle of Hormozdgan, in which the last Parthian king was killed.

Naqsh-i Rustam, showing the tombs of Darius alongside those of his predecessors.

Two years later, in 226, Ardashir, who claimed to be able to trace his ancestry back to the Achaemenids, proclaimed himself Shah. In so doing he inaugurated the Sasanian dynasty, which ruled over what was in effect the second Persian Empire for the next four centuries. Ardashir moved his capital from Pars to the Parthian city of Ctesiphon, and in so doing gave his new empire a decidedly western orientation from the outset.

Having dealt successfully with a number of opponents, including the Kushans in the east and the Armenians in the west, the Sasanids soon found themselves in conflict with Rome, which was still the dominant imperial power in the west. The conflict of these two powers for dominance over the Middle East was to last for many centuries. For both, this conflict was central to their foreign policies and the geopolitical structures of both states were soon organized with victory over the other as their principal objective.

Ardashir chose to leave his home province of Pars and to move his capital to Ctesiphon, well to the west of his Persian homeland. At the same time the Roman Empire had been engaged in a similar process in reverse, by relocating its centre of power in the east. The emperor Constantine, who ascended the imperial throne in 306, made the decision to relocate his capital from Rome and finally chose the site of the old Greek city of Byzantium on the Bosphorus, renaming it Constantinople. This city was at the meeting point of the Aegean and the Black Sea and consequently was strategically located as the headquarters from which campaigns in the east could be most effectively conducted. In later centuries it was to become the centre of Orthodox Christianity and the greatest city in Europe.1 The move to the east was a recognition both that this was in most ways the richest and most important part of the empire and also that the greatest danger to the empire came from this direction. Both the Persian and the Roman capitals were therefore ‘forward’ capitals in the sense used by Vaughan Cornish.² This means that the two capitals were not only the centres of imperial power but bases for defence and, if successful, for further territorial expansion.

Early on in the period of Sasanid rule, the new dynasty organized their empire internally in much the same way as the Achaemenids had done. The satrapies (provinces) were brought back, each of them ruled by a satrap (governor) who was responsible to the Shahanshah himself. Most importantly, the old legal system, the ‘laws of the Medes and the Persians’, which had been such an important unifying feature of the Achaemenid Empire, was re-established.3 The Zoroastrianism of the Achaemenids was revived and proclaimed the official state religion. As had been the case with the earlier dynasty, religion provided yet another convenient justification for the Sasanid rulers.

Shapur I and the Unknown Enemy, rock carving at Naqsh-i Rustam.

The Sasanid dynasty’s most important reigns.

Ardashir’s successor, his son Shapur I, like his father took the title ‘Shahanshah’, but also added ‘of Iran and non-Iran’, thus clearly demonstrating his imperial ambitions. During his thirty-year reign he was involved more than anything else in wars on the frontiers. He faced a continuing threat from the Kushans in the east and, of course, from Rome in the west, and in dealing with these powers he adopted a kind of ‘Schlieffen Plan’ strategy.4

He first attacked the Kushans and, marching his army into their heartland in northern India, finally defeated them. As a result of this victory he secured an extended eastern frontier that stretched from the Oxus eastwards to the Indus, and incorporated the territories of modern Afghanistan and much of Uzbekistan into his realm.

Shapur then turned against Rome, which he saw rightly as being the greatest danger to his empire. Advancing westwards, he reached the Mediterranean and secured Antioch. In 259, in an impressive victory over the Romans at Edessa, the emperor Valerian was captured and brought back as a prisoner. The Roman prisoners were set to work to build bridges and roads, which further secured the western marches of the empire. This victory is commemorated in a rock relief at Naqsh-i Rustam in which the Roman emperor is on his knees and seen surrendering to the victorious Shapur.

The fact that the rocks in this area were used for such carvings was another link with the Achaemenids, who had used this workable stone for a variety of bas-reliefs and cuneiform inscriptions. The tombs of both Cyrus and Darius are, of course, located in this region, as are the sites of Pasargadae and Persepolis. The first of the Sasanid rock carvings depicts the investiture of Ardashir himself, and there is another of the king confronting a hostile Parthian nobleman. In this way Pars was confirmed as being the ‘sacred space’ of the Persians, in which their history was depicted in stone.5

While Shapur continued the internal organization programme of his predecessor, during his reign the position of the Zoroastrian religion was by no means secure. It was officially the state religion, but since the time of the Achaemenids considerable changes had been taking place within it. These produced a variant of Zoroastrianism known as Zurvanism, which flourished during the Sasanid period. Zurvanism aims to address the problem of how Ahuramazda could produce evil. This problem was dealt with by introducing Zurvan, ‘Time’, which is the origin of all things and is morally neutral. The religion then is based on the struggle of the twin offspring of Zurvan, Ohrmazd (Good) and Ahriman (Evil). Unlike Ahuramazda, Ohrmazd is not a creator god but embodies and represents good in the world. While Zurvanism thus introduced a new metaphysical interpretation of the world, it did not alter the idea of the dynasty having its own special relationship with Ohrmazd, as it had done with Ahuramazda. As with the Zoroastrianism of the Achaemenids, the priests of the religion were the Magi and its places of worship were the fire temples. The Magi had a quasi-official status and their activities were closely bound up with those of the dynasty itself. It was through them that the actions of the dynasty were approved by the god. Some complex dogmas were introduced into Zurvanism, linking history and myth in supplying explanations of the cosmos. These included the existence of a number of different ages, each with their own particular characteristics. In the final age a saviour appears who ushers in a kind of golden era for mankind. An element of polytheism also crept into the religion and both the sun god Mithra and the star god Sirius were celebrated in festivals and were themselves objects of worship.⁶

Shapur I is victorius over the Roman emperor Valerian, rock carving near the tomb of Darius I at Naqsh-i Rustam.

Despite Zurvanism having been proclaimed as the state religion by his predecessor, Shapur himself looked elsewhere. He took a considerable interest in the teachings of the prophet Mani and during his reign the religion of Manichaenism made a considerable impact in the Sasanid Empire.7 While this new ‘universal’ religion owed much to Zoroastrianism, it also drew on Christianity and Buddhism. It has been speculated that Shapur’s promotion of the new religion was in part a reaction against the growing power of the Magi, the Zoroastrian priestly class, and his fear that their power could challenge his own. However, Shapur’s enthusiasm for the new religion was not shared by his successors, and under the next king, Bahram I, its followers were persecuted and the prophet Mani was himself arrested, tortured and put to death.

Shapur’s victory over Valerian, while seen by the Persians as evidence of their superiority over Rome, did not really produce anything conclusive in relations with Rome, and the eastern frontier also soon became unsettled once more. However, under Shapur II, whose seventy-year reign stretched throughout the greater part of the fourth century, the Persians were again successful both in the east and the west. Following the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine to Christianity, the religious question came to loom large in relations between the two empires. Successive Sasanid sovereigns pursued very different policies towards the Christians living in their territories and this often depended on the state of relations with Rome at that particular time. Another religious problem for Persia was that of the Mazdakites, an egalitarian religious sect deriving from Manicheanism. This, together with numerous other factors, internal and external, contributed to a gradual weakening of the hold of the Sasanids.

The Sasanids had one last period of success during the reign of Khusrau I, in the sixth century. Khusrau’s reign proved to be a period in which the relations of the various factions in the country were fairly stable. There were reforms of the taxation system and the organization of the army, and the fortifications along the frontiers were strengthened. The Nestorians, the Christian community in Persia, were granted freedom of worship and a ‘perpetual peace’ was signed with the Byzantines (though, as with previous such treaties, this did not in fact last very long).

It was during this period that Rome and Persia were brought together by external threats, notably the Huns, who invaded both empires in the fifth century. The Romans and the Persians joined forces to oppose these barbarians from Central Asia. In addition to this, during the reign of Khusrau II, the Sasanid king was forced to seek aid from the Byzantines when faced with an attempted coup d’état by the army. The aid was given and the coup failed, but the Byzantines extracted a heavy price for their help and extended their frontiers well to the east. However, this situation proved to be unstable and did not last long. Unwilling to accept the humiliation, a few years later Khusrau attacked the Byzantine Empire and succeeded in making spectacular territorial gains. Syria, Armenia, Palestine and Eastern Anatolia were all occupied. The Persians made further inroads to the west into the heart of the Byzantine Empire, even at one time besieging Constantinople itself. The Persians then moved southwest into Egypt, bringing that country back under their rule after many centuries. As a result of this massive reversal of fortunes, by the end of the reign of Khusrau the empire was larger than it had been at any time since the Achaemenids.

However, this triumph was of fairly brief duration. In 610 a new Byzantine emperor, Heraclius, ascended the throne. He was young, vigorous and a gifted strategist. He immediately ordered more offensive tactics against the Persians and was soon able to turn the tables on them. By this time the Persians had been greatly weakened by the earlier efforts they had been forced to make, and Shah Khusrau II had become deeply unpopular as conditions in his kingdom deteriorated. As their armies were pushed back by the forces of Heraclius, in 628 a coup took place in which the unpopular shah was murdered. The result of this was not an improvement but the beginning of a descent into chaos in the empire. Over the next ten years, while Byzantium strengthened its frontiers and consolidated its gains, Persia gradually disintegrated into a land of battling warlords. It was during this time that a massive change took place in the Middle East that was to have profound implications for the whole region and indeed for the world.

In Arabia to the south in 622, the year in which the forces of Heraclius defeated the Persians at Issus, other, equally momentous events were taking place. As a result of these the centuries-old Roman–Persian conflict would soon be relegated to history. In that year a former Arab merchant named Muhammad, who had for some time been preaching a form of monotheism which was gradually evolving into a new religion, fled Mecca and established himself in Medina. This flight is known as the Hegira, a seminal event in the establishment of what was to become the new religion of Islam. Six years later, while the Persian king Khusrau was assassinated and the country descended into chaos, Muhammad, by then widely recognized in Arabia as a prophet, was able to return to Mecca and embark on the writing of the Koran, the holy book of the new religion. The Prophet Muhammad died in 632 and his followers were left with the problem of what exactly they were to do to disseminate his message. The decision was taken to establish what was in effect to become a theocratic empire, the head of which was to be known as the caliph, the successor to the Prophet. The first of these caliphs was Abu Bakr, the father-in-law of Muhammad, who embarked on a policy of ‘holy war’ in order to bring the lands adjacent to Arabia into the Islamic fold. For this purpose he began the creation of a powerful and highly motivated army that was soon to change the whole face of the Middle East and the lands around the Mediterranean.

The investiture of Ardashir, rock carving at Naqsh-i Rustam.

The first attack by the caliphate was against the two ancient empires of Persia and Byzantium, which had together dominated the Middle East for centuries. They sustained the full force of the initial Arab invasion, the aim of which was to bring them both into the fold of the new religion. As a result of their recent defeat by the Byzantines, the Persians were the weaker of the two and the less able to put up any real resistance. In 637 Ctesiphon, the Sasanid capital, was captured and from there the Arabs moved steadily northwards into the Persian heartland. In 642, at Nihawand, the Persian army was finally defeated and the last Shahanshah, Yazdegerd, the grandson of Khusrau II, fled northwards into Central Asia. His assassination at Merv in 651 brought an end to the dynasty and also to that ancient Persian Empire which had been revived by the Sasanids. The Persian Empire was now incorporated into the caliphate and came under the direct rule of the Arabs from their far-off capital at Medina. In contrast to this, and despite repeated attacks, the Byzantines were strong enough to hold back the Arab armies and this, for a time, prevented any further Islamic movement directly westwards into Europe.

This failure contrasted with the rapid success achieved by the Arabs against the Persians, and contributed to the Arab decision to make their next thrust eastwards into Asia rather than westwards into Europe. Considerable military resources were put into the eastward move into Central Asia, a move that was eventually to bring Islam to the Indian subcontinent. The subjection of the Persians to the Arabs was in many ways comparable to the arrival of yet another new dynasty in former times. However, while these earlier dynasties had attempted to link themselves to the Achaemenids, the arrival of the Arabs was different and produced a massive cultural transformation in the country. This was the result of the religion the Arabs brought with them, which was the principal justification for their conquests. The coming of Islam entailed the erection of entirely new religious buildings – mosques – which now replaced the fire temples. These, together with the Arab secular buildings, eventually produced a completely new man-made landscape in the country. Islamic sharia law was introduced and Arabic became both the language of religion and the official language of government. However, despite this massive transformation, much of what had been most characteristically Persian did in fact survive, and this became the basis of that legacy which Persia was to pass on to the Asiatic and subsequently the European world.