Product Code Database
Khosrow I (also spelled Khosrau, Khusro or Chosroes; ), traditionally known by his epithet of Anushirvan ("the Immortal Soul"), was the Sasanian Empire King of Kings of Iran from 531 to 579. He was the son and successor of Kavad I ().
Inheriting a reinvigorated empire at Iberian War, Khosrow I signed a peace treaty with them in 532, known as the Perpetual Peace, in which the Byzantine emperor Justinian I paid 11,000 pounds of gold to the Sasanians. Khosrow then focused on consolidating his power, executing conspirators, including his uncle Bawi. Dissatisfied with the actions of the Byzantine clients and vassals, the Ghassanids, and encouraged by Ostrogoth envoys from Italy, Khosrow violated the peace treaty and declared war against the Byzantines in 540. He sacked the major city of Antioch and deported its population to Persia. In 541, he invaded Lazica and made it an Iranian protectorate, thus initiating the Lazic War. In 545, the two empires agreed to halt the wars in Mesopotamia and Syria while continuing to fight in Lazica. A truce was made in 557, and by 562 a fifty-year peace treaty was made.
In 572, Justin II, the successor of Justinian, broke the peace treaty and sent a Byzantine force into the Sasanian region of Arzanene. The following year, Khosrow besieged and captured the important Byzantine fortress-city of Dara, which led Justin II to insanity. The war lasted until 591, outliving Khosrow. Khosrow's wars were not only based in the west. To the east, in an alliance with the Göktürks, he finally put an end to the Hephthalite Empire, which had inflicted a handful of defeats on the Sasanians in the 5th century, killing Khosrow's grandfather Peroz I. To the south, Iranian forces led by Wahrez defeated the Aksumites and conquered Yemen.
Khosrow I was known for his character, virtues and knowledge. During his ambitious reign, he continued his father's project of making major social, military, and economic reforms, promoting the welfare of the people, increasing state revenues, establishing a professional army, and founding or rebuilding many cities, palaces, and much infrastructure. He was interested in literature and philosophy, and under his reign, art and science flourished in Iran. He was the most distinguished of the Sasanian kings, and his name became a royal title, like that of Caesar in the history of Roman Empire.
At the time of his death, the Sasanian Empire had reached its greatest extent since Shapur II, stretching from Yemen in the west to Gandhara in the east. He was succeeded by his son Hormizd IV.
Following the tradition of the aristocratic or upper-class families, Khosrow would have started at school ( frahangestān) between the ages of five and seven. There he would learn to write and would learn the , Hadokht, Bayān Yasn and Vendidad, following the same pattern of schooling made for a future priest ( herbad). Furthermore, he would listen to the Middle Persian translation of the Avesta, the Zend. Afterwards, he would be schooled in riding, archery, polo ( chovgan) and military creativity.
Mahbod, who had along with Siyawush acted as the diplomats of the negotiations, accused the latter of purposely sabotaging the negotiations. Further accusations were made towards Siyawush, which included the reverence of new deities and having his dead wife buried, which was a violation of Iranian laws. Siyawush was thus most likely a Mazdakite, the religious sect that Kavad originally supported but now had withdrawn his support from. Although Siyawush was a close friend of Kavad and had helped him escape from imprisonment, the latter did not try to prevent his execution, seemingly with the purpose of restricting Siyawush's immense authority as the head of the Sasanian army, a post which was disliked by the other nobles. Siyawush was executed, and his office was abolished. Despite the breakdown of the negotiations, it was not until 530 that full-scale warfare on the main eastern frontier broke out. In the intervening years, the two sides preferred to wage war by proxy, through Arabs allies in the south and Huns in the north.
According to the Shahnameh, Kavad had Mazdak and his supporters sent to Khosrow, who had his supporters killed by burying their heads in a walled orchard, with only their feet being visible. Khosrow then summoned Mazdak to look at his garden, saying the following: "You will find trees there that no-one has ever seen and no-one ever heard of even from the mouth of the ancient sages." Mazdak, seeing his followers corpses, screamed and passed out. He was afterwards executed by Khosrow, who had his feet fastened on a gallows, and had his men shoot arrows at him. The validity of the story is uncertain; Ferdowsi used much earlier reports of events to write the Shahnameh, and thus the story may report some form of contemporary memory.
Another danger to Khosrow's rule was that of his uncle Bawi, who, along with other members of the Iranian aristocracy, became involved in a conspiracy to overthrow Khosrow and make Kavad, the son of Khosrow's brother Jamasp, the shah of Iran. Upon learning of the plot, Khosrow executed all his brothers and their offspring, along with Bawi and the other aristocrats who were involved. Khosrow also ordered the execution of Kavad, who was still a child and was away from the court, being raised by Adergoudounbades. Adergoudounbades disobeyed Khosrow's orders to kill Kavad and brought him up in secret, until he was betrayed to the shah in 541 by his own son, Bahram. Khosrow had him executed, but Kavad, or someone claiming to be him, managed to flee to the Byzantine Empire.; ; .
The internal reforms under Khosrow were much more important than those on the exterior frontier. The subsequent reforms resulted in the rise of a bureaucratic state at the expense of the great noble families, strengthening the central government and the power of the Shahanshah. The army too was reorganized and tied to the central government rather than local nobility allowing greater organization, faster mobilization and a far greater cavalry corps. Reforms in taxation provided the empire with stability and a much stronger economy, allowing prolonged military campaigns as well as greater revenues for the bureaucracy.
With the outbreak of the Mazdakite revolution, there was a great uprising of peasants and lower-class citizens who grabbed large portions of land under egalitarian values. As a result of this there was great confusion on land possession and ownership. Khosrow surveyed all the land within the empire indiscriminately and began to tax all land under a single program. Tax revenues that previously went to the local noble family now went to the central government treasury. The fixed tax that Khosrow implemented created a more stable form of income for the treasury.
Because the tax did not vary, the treasury could easily estimate the year's revenue. Prior to Khosrow's tax reforms, taxes were collected based on the yield that the land had produced. The new system calculated and averaged taxation based on the water rights for each piece of property. Lands which grew date palms and olive used a slightly different method of taxation based on the amount of producing trees that the land contained. These tax reforms of Khosrow were the steppingstone which enabled subsequent reforms in the bureaucracy and the military to take place.
Khosrow promoted honest government officials based on trust and honesty, rather than corrupt nobles and magi. The small landowning dehqans were favored over the high-ranking nobles because they tended to be more trustworthy and owed their loyalty to the Shah for their position in the bureaucracy. The rise of the dehqans became the backbone of the empire because they now held the majority of land and positions in local and provincial administration.
The reduction of power of the great families improved the empire. This was because previously, each great family ruled a large chunk of land and had their own king. The name Shahanshah, meaning King of Kings, derived from the fact that there were many feudalism kings in Sasanian Iran with the Shahanshah as the ruler of them all. Their fall meant their power was redirected to the central government and all taxes now went to the central government rather than to the local nobility.
The main force of the Sasanian army was the cavalry, or Aswaran. Previously only nobles could enlist in the aswaran, which created shortages in well-trained soldiers. Now that the dehqan class was considered nobility, they were able to join the cavalry force and boosted its number significantly.
The military reform focused more on organization and training of troops. The cavalry was still the most important aspect of the Iranian military, with foot archers being less important, and mass peasant forces being at the bottom of the spectrum.
Khosrow made four military districts with a spahbed, or general, in charge of each district. Before the reforms of Khosrow, the general of the Iranians ( Eran-spahbed) controlled the military of the entire empire. The four zones consisted of Mesopotamia in the west, the Caucasus region in the north, the Persian Gulf in the central and southwest region, and Central Asia in the east. This new quadripartition of the Empire not only created a more efficient military system but also "administration of a vast, multiregional, multicultural, and multiracial empire".
Sasanian bullae showing the four spahbeds show that horses were still fully armoured during this period and heavy cavalry tactics were still used by the Sasanian cavalry. It is highly likely that the stirrup had been introduced to the Sasanian cavalry two centuries before Khosrow's reforms (and are mentioned in Bivar (1972)), and a "stirruped" foot position can be seen on the Sasanian bullae and at Taq-e-Bostan.
Justinian sued for peace, and made a treaty with Khosrow that the Iranians would withdraw back to their domains in return for a payment of 50 centenaria plus 5 centenaria extra each year. Part of treaty also included that the Byzantine envoys were to be hostages of Khosrow as an assurance that the Byzantines would honor the agreement. However, before departing, Khosrow went to the port of Antioch, Seleucia Pieria, where he bathed in the Mediterranean Sea. He then told the envoys that he wished to visit the city of Apamea out of interest, which they reluctantly allowed him, with the condition that he would leave for his domains afterwards.Procopius, XI. There he held chariot races, where he made the Blue Faction—which was supported by Justinian—lose against the rival Greens. Khosrow extracted tribute from Apamea and other Byzantine towns, at which point Justinian called off his truce and prepared to send his commander Belisarius to move against the Sasanians.
Sometime later, Khosrow, who was keen to wrest Dara from Byzantine control, and would do so even if he risked to break the truce they had made regarding Mesopotamia, tried to capture it by tricking them; he sent one of highest officials, Izadgushasp, as a diplomat to Constantinople, but in reality the latter would stop by Dara, and with the aid of his large crew, he would seize the city. However, this plan was prevented by a former adviser of Belisarius named George, who demanded that if Izadgushasp should enter the city he should have only twenty members of his crew with him. Izadgushasp then left the city and continued his journey to Constantinople, where he was amicably welcomed by Justinian, who gave him some gifts.
In 549 the previous truce between Justinian and Khosrow was disregarded and full war broke out once again between Iranians and Romans. The last major decisive battle of the Lazic wars came in 556 when Byzantine general Martin defeated a massive Sasanian force led by an Iranian nakhvaegan (field marshal). Negotiations between Khosrow and Justinian opened in 556, leading to the Fifty-Year Peace Treaty in 562 in which Iranians would leave Lazica in return for an annual payment of gold.
According to ancient historian Menander Protector, a minor official in Justinian's court, there were 12 points to the treaty, stated in the following passage:
The Hephthalites were a strong military power but they lacked the organization to fight on multiple fronts. The Sasanians and the First Turkic Khaganate made an alliance and in 557 launched a two pronged attack on the Hephthalites, taking advantage of their disorganization and disunity. The Hephthalite Empire was destroyed after the battle of Gol-Zarriun, and broke into several minor kingdoms around the Oxus. The Hephthalite king Ghadfar and what was left of his men fled southward to Sasanian territory, where they took refuge. Meanwhile, the Turkic Khagan Sinjibu reached an agreement with the Hephthalite nobility, and appointed Faghanish, the ruler of Chaghaniyan, as the new Hephthalite king.
This was much to the dislike of Khosrow, who considered the Turkic collaboration with the Hephthalites to pose a danger for his rule in the east, and thus marched towards the Sasanian-Turkic border in Hyrcania. When he reached the place, he was met by a Turkic delegate of Sinjibu that presented him gifts. There Khosrow asserted his authority and military potency, and persuaded the Turks to make an alliance with him. The alliance contained a treaty that made it obligatory for Faghanish to be sent to the Sasanian court in Ctesiphon and gain the approval of Khosrow for his status as Hephthalite king. Faghanish and his kingdom of Chaghaniyan thus became a vassal of the Sasanian Empire, which set the Amu Darya as the eastern frontier the Sasanians and Turks. However, friendly relations between Turks and Sasanians quickly deteriorated after that. Both Turks and Iranians wanted to dominate the Silk Road and the trade industry between the west and the far east. In 562 Khosrow II defeated the Hephthalites once again, and then stopped the threat of the Turks.
In 568 a Turkic embassy was sent to Byzantine to propose an alliance and two pronged attack on the Sasanian Empire. Fortunately for the Sasanians, nothing ever came from this proposal. Later in 569/570, Sinjibu attacked and pillaged Sasanian border lands, but a treaty was soon signed. Khosrow then sent a Mihranid named Mihransitad, to estimate the quality of the daughter of the Turkic Khagan. According to Armenian sources her name was Kayen,Ter-Mkrticnyan L.H. Armyanskiye istochniki - Sredney Azii V - VII vv., p. 57. while Persian sources states that her name was Qaqim-khaqan.The Farsnama of Ibnu'l-Balkhi, pp. 24, 94. After Mihransitad's visit in Central Asia, Khosrow married Qaqim-khaqan. According to some sources, Hormizd IV, the successor of Khosrow, was the son of the Turkic princess. However, Encyclopædia Iranica states that the "marriage with the daughter of the Turkic khaqan is chronologically impossible", and says that Hormizd was born in 540, thirty years before Khosrow's marriage.
In 531, Justinian suggested that the Ethiopians of Yemen end the Sasanians maritime trade with the Indians. The Ethiopians never met this request because an Ethiopian general named Abraha took control of the Yemenite throne and created an independent nation. After Abraha's death one of his sons, Ma'd-Karib, went into exile while his half-brother took the throne. After being denied by Justinian, Ma'd-Karib sought help from Khosrow, who sent a small fleet and army under commander Vahrez to depose the current king of Yemen. After capturing the capital city San'a'l, Ma'd-Karib's son, Saif enthroned.
Justinian was ultimately responsible for Sasanian maritime presence in Yemen. By not providing the Yemenite Arabs support, Khosrow was able to help Ma'd-Karib and subsequently established Yemen as a principality of the Sasanian Empire.
Meanwhile, Khosrow sent an army under Golon Mihran to Armenia, but the latter was defeated in Taron by the Armenian rebel leader Vardan III Mamikonian, who captured his war elephants as war booty. Sometime later, however, Golon Mihran managed to seize Angl. During the same time, the Siunia dynasty prince Vahan asked for Khosrow's permission that he could move his court from Dvin to the capital of Paytakaran, a region in eastern Armenia. Furthermore, Vahan also requested that Paytakaran should be merged with the Adurbadagan province. Khosrow accepted, and did what he asked.
In 573, Khosrow sent an army under Adarmahan to invade Syria, while he himself along with the three Mihranid military officers Izadgushasp, Fariburz and Bahram Chobin led an army towards Dara, where they captured the city after four months, while Adarmahan sacked several cities in Syria, which included Apamea. Justin reportedly lost his mind after these Byzantine disasters, and abdicated.
He was succeeded by Tiberius, a high-ranking military officer in 578. Khosrow invaded Armenia once again feeling that he had the upper hand, and was initially successful. Soon after, the tables turned and the Byzantines gained a lot of local support. This made the Sasanians attempt another truce. However, sometime later, Khosrow, with an army consisting of 12,000 Iranian soldiers including a combined of Sabir people-Arabs soldiers numbering 8,000 sent by his allies, ravaged the places around Resaina and Constantia in Syria, thus turning the tables once more. During the same time, one of Khosrow's chief generals, Tamkhosrau, managed to trick Maurice by faking an invasion of Theodosiopolis, and then plundered the countryside of Martyropolis and Amida.
However, the tables of the war quickly turned again when the newly appointed Byzantine supreme-commander Maurice entered the field and captured many Sasanian settlements. The revolt came to an end when Khosrow gave amnesty to Armenia and brought them back into the Sasanian empire. Peace negotiations were once again brought back up, but abruptly ended with the death of Khosrow in 579, who was succeeded by his son Hormizd IV.
Sasanian monarchs only persecuted other religions when it was in their urgent political interests to do. This also applied to Khosrow, who, in the words of Eberhard Sauer, had to "walk a fine line". Khosrow himself used the church considerably, and was fond of its Patriarch, Aba I, whom he wanted to defend against the Zoroastrian priests. Nevertheless, Aba was accused of working with the Byzantines, which was a serious allegation due to the war that had begun in 540. Consequently, in 542, Aba was dismissed from his post, but was only exiled instead of being executed.
Khosrow even enjoyed good relations with Gregory, the Mihranid commander of the Iranian troops in the Caucasus, who had showily disowned Zoroastrianism in front of other troops massed at a feast in 518. This resulted in discontent amongst members of the court, who pressured Khosrow to deal with an apostate from such a powerful and influential family, stating that "It is a great dishonor for the religion of the that such a great man from the lineage of the house of Mihran, who have always been servants of Ahura Mazda, now becomes a servant of Christ." Khosrow was thus forced to have Gregory relieved and incarcerated, yet the Mihranids deemed Khosrow's choice insufficient. A son of Gregory's paternal uncle, Mihran, asked Khosrow to execute Gregory for "bringing dishonor to our lineage". The latter was in a good position to make such request, due to recently having defeated the Hephthalites in the east; Gregory was eventually executed.
Khosrow did however deal harshly and swiftly with people with of any belief or practice that ran contrary to Sasanian-mediated Zoroastrian orthodoxy. Aberrance in ceremony and principle exceeded apostasy as "a social and political evil in undermining the foundations of the imperial religion (Payne)." According to Khosrow's supposed autobiographical work of Sirat Anushirwan, he had a party of nobles practicing unorthodoxy executed instantly when he found out about them. According to the book, Khosrow also had another group−supposedly Manichaeans−banished from Iran. This was due to the royal anxieties regarding the chance of religious rogues to upset the political structure, which had recently occurred during Kavad and Khosrow's reigns by the Mazdakites.
Another wall was constructed in the southwest, called the war-i tāzigān ("wall of the Arabs"). He may have also built another wall in the northeast−the Wall of Tammisha. Besides defense structures, Khosrow also had a large-scale canal system created in Asoristan, known in Islamic sources as the Nahrawan Canal. Out of all his constructions, his most memorable and noteworthy achievement was the palace he had made at Ctesiphon, known as the Taq-e Kasra. The palace, still standing to this day, albeit heavily ruined, portrays one of the empire's most remarkable architectural accomplishments.
After the sack of Antioch in 540, Khosrow built a new city one parasang () south of Ctesiphon for the inhabitants he had captured.; It was located on the eastern bank of the Tigris, and was officially named Weh-andīōg-husraw ("City Better than Antioch has Khosrow built" or "Khosrow's Better Antioch").; ; The city reportedly had and a hippodrome, and a street program modelled on Antioch. The Christian population was granted freedom of religion and burial. The city was known informally as Rumagan ("Town of the Greeks"), which later became ar-Rumiyya under the Caliphate. The remains of the city are most likely situated at the unexcavated place that is still known as Bustan Kisra ("Gardens of Khosrow").
Khosrow I was known to be a great patron of philosophy and knowledge. An entry in the Chronicle of Séert reads: Khosrow I is known for saying a philosophic quote that follows:
Khosrow I accepted refugees coming from the Eastern Roman Empire when Justinian closed the neo-Platonist schools in Athens in 529. He was greatly interested in Indian philosophy, science, mathematics, and medicine. He sent multiple embassies and gifts to the Indian court and requested them to send back philosophers to teach in his court in return. Khosrow made many translations of texts from Greek language, Sanskrit, and Syriac language into Middle Persian. He received the title of "Plato's Philosopher King" by the Greek refugees that he allowed into his empire because of his great interest in Platonism. Nöldeke states that Khosrow I was "certainly one of the most efficient and best kings that the Iranian peoples have ever had".
A synthesis of Greek, Iranian, Indian, and Armenian learning traditions took place within the Sasanian Empire. One outcome of this synthesis created what is known as bimaristan, the first hospital that introduced a concept of segregating wards according to pathology. Greek pharmacology fused with Iranian and Indian traditions resulted in significant advances in medicine. According to historian Richard Frye, this great influx of knowledge created a renaissance during and after Khosrow's reign.
Intellectual games such as chess and backgammon demonstrated and celebrated the diplomatic relationship between Khosrow and a "great king of India." The vizier of the Indian king invented chess as a cheerful, playful challenge to King Khosrow. It seems that the Indian ruler who sent the game of chess to Khosrow was the Maukhari dynasty King Śarvavarman of Kannauj, between the beginning of Śarvavarman's reign in 560/565 and the end of Khosrow's reign in 579. When the game was sent to Iran it came with a letter which read: "As your name is the King of Kings, all your emperorship over us connotes that your wise men should be wiser than ours. Either you send us an explanation of this game of chess or send revenue and tribute us." Khosrow's grand vizier successfully solved the riddle and figured out how to play chess. In response the wise vizier created the game backgammon and sent it to the Indian court with the same message. The Indian king was not able to solve the riddle and was forced to pay tribute.
There are a considerable number of Islamic works that were inspired by the reign of Khosrow I, for example the Kitab al-Taj of Al-Jahiz. The high number of Islamic texts referring to Khosrow's reign can make it hard to distinguish fact from fallacy.
During his reign the Silk Road between ancient China, India and the western world was promoted and possibly even created. Richard Frye argues that Khosrow's rationale behind his numerous wars with the Byzantine empire as well as the eastern Hephthalites was to establish the Sasanian dominance on this trade route.
|
|
