Bold, and perhaps foolish, to abandon the one sure ally in a sea of enemies.
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A crucial early test passed.
It must be done, but will no doubt be costly.
Perhaps this was the only practical route in the short term, but it seems both a bit underhanded of Vushmgir and possibly counter-productive strategically: discarding and attacking a hitherto firm ally against the Muslims instead of trying to carve a slice off one of their old enemies. It will be interesting to see if this bold but nefarious move pays off in the long run.
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Ah, Zoroastrianism. One of my favourite religions to play and not just because of the meme potential of divine marriages.
A couple of very good chapters. I like the more historical side of things and I have a very big bias to reviving dead/fading religions per my own work
I will be sure to keep up with this one!
A couple of very good chapters. I like the more historical side of things and I have a very big bias to reviving dead/fading religions per my own work
I will be sure to keep up with this one!- 1
In #9, I saw an independent Albania. To the Adriatic, they will march! Thank you for this work.
Hey Tommy! Dropping in to say hello and joining along with whatever sparse time I still have and give to these forums!
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The Traitor’s Due 980-1017
The Traitor’s Due 980-1017
Vushmgir II’s bold gambit of turning against Persia’s erstwhile Armenian allies in 980 ran into difficulty from the first. The outnumbered Armenian forces in the Tabriz region were able to engage the invaders in a fighting retreat that cost the Persians heavy losses even before they reached the city itself. Tabriz proved to be far more heavily fortified that the Ziyarid’s had expected, forcing the Persians to settle into a long siege.
Difficulty would turn to disaster in 982 as the Saminids invaded from the east. The Persians were forced to break off from the siege of Tabriz to confront this new threat, but outnumbered, nonetheless suffered a string of losses as the Saminids captured Rayy, Qom and Alamut in their advance towards the Iranian heartland. At the same time, the Armenians struck back, despoiling the north western provinces of the Shahdom and capturing key territories including Daylam and Azerbaijan.
Vushmgir II was able to turn the fight around in the east by forging an alliance with the Jandarids, an Oghuz Turk tribe native to the western shores of the Aral Sea. With a long history of raiding Transoxiania and Khorosan, the Turks swept southwards into Saminids lands, ravaging as they travelled towards the battlefield. Joining with Ziyarid forces, they attacked the Saminids from both sides and crushed their invasion force in 985.
As they then swung westward, the Persians and Turks found the Armenians a tougher proposition – failing to dislodge them from the territory they occupied. Struggling to maintain his army in the field, exhausted from warfare and facing disquiet at court, the Shah agreed to a truce with the Armenians in 986 that saw Isfahan pay a heavy tribute in exchange for peace.
Vushmgir’s decision had great consequences. The Jandarid Turks had been promised a substantial payment for their services in the war, yet now the Shah turned his back on them, unable to provide. Enraged, the Jandarids turned on Vushmgir, aligning themselves with his sister Roxana who had promised to provide them with their due reward. The Turks were joined in this revolt by a substantial faction of the Persian nobility, who in Roxana saw an opportunity to establish a weak monarchy they could more easily control. The Roxanite alliance proved far stronger militarily than the Shah’s loyalists – capturing Isfahan and sending Vushmgir into a retreat into the southern province of Fars.
During this moment of weakness, Persia’s enemies took their chance to strike. The Abbasids launched a quick expedition across the frontier to secure the strategic frontier province of Luristan. Meanwhile, in the north Azerbaijan, already having suffered from an Armenian invasion, was sacked once more by Alan and Khazar raids.
Fortunately for Vushmgir, the alliance between the Jandarids and rebel nobility proved short lived. From the first the pact between them was uneasy, but it grew ever more strained as the Turks cut a line of devastation through the country. As Roxana appeared to manoeuvre away from the Turks and towards her noble allies, the Jandarids attacked her palace and killed the princess in 988 – turning their ambitions from regime change in Persia to outright conquest. Appalled, the Persian rebels quickly shifted allegiances once more – making common cause with the Shah to fight against the Turks, successfully exepelling them from Persia before the end of the decade.
As Persia recovered from its near collapse in the 980s, one of its key rivals fell into even greater hardship. Its its Mesopotamian heartland, the Abbasid Caliphate was ejected by the Muzaffrid Sultanate, with the Caliphs before forced into exile on the Persian Gulf. During this chaotic transition of power, Khozistan established itself an an independent Emirate with few outside allies. Sensing an opportunity to restore confidence in his rule, Vushmgir II launched a successful expedition to conquer the Emirate in 995. The territory, inhabited mostly by Kurds and Arabs and lacking even a minority population of Zoroastrians, was resistant to Persian rule from the first. This hostility culminated in a great religious revolt in 1003. After quickly establishing control over the territory, the rebels won a key battlefield victory at Qalat Sjergat that forced the Persians to withdraw from Khozistan less than a decade after their first arrival. The affair had been another grave humiliation to the combated Shah.
Despite the instability of the times, the late tenth and early eleventh centuries were a moment of incredible blossoming for Persian culture. Having been somewhat suppressed during the Muslim period, interest in Persian history and culture exploded following the Ziyarid conquest – with art, poetry and scholarship with an Iranian nationalist tint sweeping over the land. By far the greatest artifact produced during this period was the Shahnameh, or Book of Kings, an epic poem of incredible scope, beauty and sophistry. It told the story of Iranian civilisation from its mythic origins, through the great empires Persian empires to the fall of the Sassasids, the Muslim era and the rebirth of Iran with the Ziyarid conquest. A cultural touchstone for centuries hereafter, known to all learned Persian speakers across the wider Persianate world regardless of religion, the Shahnameh had a key ideological message that put Zoroastrianism at the centre of Iranian history and culture and emphasised the richness, glory and superiority of that civilisation.
Having struggled for authority throughout his reign, Vushmgir was a deeply unpopular ruler, maintaining his grip on power by ceding authority from the crown to the nobility. Few mourned his passing in 1014 when he died after being crushed by a pillar when expecting construction work around his palaces in Isfahan. He was succeeded by a web of intrigue and rivalry between his two sons – Ebrahim, who ascended as Shah, and Kamran, who coveted the throne for himself. For the next three years court in Isfahan was dominated by factionalism and bickering between Ebrahimites and Kamranites, as the latter undermined the Shah had every turn while the former sought to counter them. Events would come to a head on 1017. Having finally won the allegiance of the palace guard, Kamran launched a coup in Isfahan. With forces loyal to him seizing control over the city, the palace guard quietly smothered his brother in the dead of night – paving the way for him to assume power in the morning as Shah Kamran I. After an era of Ziyarid history in which the realm had been ruled over by a Shah remembered for his treachery, another with a known fratricidal kinslayer was about to begin.
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This one made me laugh!
I might have used the exact same web search to find the pic as well .It turned out the Armenians were more than capable of taking care of themselves!
Very prescient indeed. In game I certainly underestimated Armenia and paid the price after the Saminids invaded - forcing me to abandon the Tabriz front and grind my army down so far I had to surrender. And then there was civil war and the debacle in Khozistan ... we're perhaps lucky Luristan was the only province we lost out on in those years. It could have been worse.
Well ... that particular adventure didn't quite go to plan
.It certainly was, and then turning to Turkic mercenaries to try to bail Persia out proved to be an even graver decision. Let us hope this new kinslaying Shah has better fortune and judgement than his father.
You were very much right in seeing the attack on Armenia as a foolish one. It proved a major disaster, set off a bout of internal instability and has left Persia without allies in a dangerous neighbourhood. The only positive of this period, aside from the flourishing of Persian culture, has perhaps been the collapse of the Abbasids - which has left a somewhat weaker rival on the western frontier.
Ah, Zoroastrianism. One of my favourite religions to play and not just because of the meme potential of divine marriages.
A couple of very good chapters. I like the more historical side of things and I have a very big bias to reviving dead/fading religions per my own work
I also find the alt history aspect of going in a different religious direction, bonus points if it is something unique (Jewish Poland was of course my predecessor to Zoroastrian Persia), as it feeds into so many different aspects. I have never got round to having a go at a good pagan playthrough where the old faith is never abandoned yet, even after all these years - never mind a full reformation of the faith
. Haha, I hadn't spotted that one myself. Let no one place a limit on Albanian potential
. Hey Tommy! Dropping in to say hello and joining along with whatever sparse time I still have and give to these forums!
Glad to have you aboard VM - and hopefully this one can give you as good a read as your are hoping
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Persia - where backstabbing is elevated to a national pastime. Thank you for the update.
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Well, from the burning ashes to the raging fire, the next reign will surely be another hard test.
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A somewhat ill-starred reign the Ziyarid state was lucky to survive. That Armenian ploy certainly backfired badly.
Ooh, a post-succession fratricidal conflict: juicy!
At least it was a coup and murder rather than another messy and drawn out civil war. We shall see if Kamran can achieve stability from the chaos. Though fear, murder and treachery are not necessarily ideal things to base a revival on.
Interested to see whether his methods will veer towards conciliation or the iron fist. Or perhaps even a bit of both.- 1
Ah Armenia, where Persian kings and their dynasties go to die. Vushmgir might have gotten out of there with his life, but it seems he still fell under the curse nonetheless. If Zoroastrianism has an equivalent concept for the Greeks' hubris, then it certainly appears that he has fallen afoul of it.
And I can't be the only one who finds the "crushed by a pillar" story to be just a little too convenient...
And I can't be the only one who finds the "crushed by a pillar" story to be just a little too convenient...
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Damn that Vushmgir backstabbing his biggest ally. That Persian-Armenian bromance was one for the ages, but cut short by a monarch's poor decisions. I wonder if any supporters of Ebrahim remain loyal to him even after his death? Did he leave any children behind? If he did, I doubt they'll be long for this world with their murderous uncle so close by.
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King Kinslayer – 1017-1047
King Kinslayer – 1017-1047
As Kamran assumed bloodily assumed power in 1017, his court was bitterly divided and filled with enemies. His brother Ebrahim’s old allies remained numerous while many had been horrified at the murder and deposition of the previous Shah. Kamran’s first moves were aimed at stabilising this situation and calming the anger of the old Ebrahimite faction. In order to achieve this he turned to an old custom that had fallen away since the Muslim conquest – Xwedodah, or divine marriage. In an act of peace, he would take the hand of his teenage niece, his brother’s only child, in marriage and thereby unite the Ziyarid royal house once more.
In another step aimed at securing his position, the Shah looked to redirect the restless energies of the nobility into external wars of conquest. Proving himself an able frontier commander in his own right, Kamran led the Persians in a series of successful expeditions on his eastern frontier through the first half of his reign. In 1019 he captured the key fortress of Gurgan on the eastern edge of the Alborz mountains, close to the shores of the Caspian. Then, following a long campaign in the early 1020s, the province of Kerman was conquered from the Saffarids – giving Isfahan control over the vital trade routes flowing through the Strait of Hormuz. Finally, Yazd and the deserts surrounding of it were taken from the Saminids at the close of the 1020s to force them back into Khorosan. These wars, although long and gruelling, were fought on the front foot, never truly threatening to impact the Persian core lands or exhaust the state and society in the manner of the expeditions waged by Kamran’s father a generation before.
This period of territorial growth was brought to an end in the 1030s by a major rebellion in Tabaristan and Gilan. These northern territories, the historic heartland of both the Ziyarids and Persia’s new Zoroastrian establishment, had grown used to a level of favour and privilege in the years after the initial Ziyarid conquest. Overtime, with the royal court distant in Isfahan, the focal point of the state had shifted southward towards the great cities of central Persia. As northern domination slipped away, the Caspian provinces grew restless and rose in a vicious tribal revolt in 1034 that would not be fully quelled until 1038.
Having found military success, Shah Kamran also proved an adept administrator of the realm. His greatest work of stewardship was a great survey of the realm. This tome, The Register of Land, sought to record in precise detail the ownership of land, property and wealth across the Ziyarid state. In its scope it surpassed anything else seen throughout the region in the High Middle Ages and would be used as late as the thirteenth – informing all manner of taxation and feudal exactions required by the Persian state.
In the century from the Ziyarid conquest of Persia, the progress of Persia’s reconversion had been relatively slow. The steady decline of Zoroastrianism in the Iranian world had been definitely reversed, yet there had been no sudden re-embrace of the old religion. Indeed, by the mid-eleventh century, Persia was still a majority Muslim realm – if only just. Zoroastrianism had solidified its existing core in the northern provinces, but experienced its greatest growth in Fars in the south and in the heartland of royal power around the capital Isfahan and Qom to the north.
The solidification of Persia as one of the Middle East’s strongest players in the first half of the eleventh century – as it grew in wealth, territory and self-confidence – was increasingly alarming to the Muslim world. It was a concern that managed to secure a remarkable alliance between the Sunni and Shia worlds, as the Shia Fatimid Caliph in Cairo and the Sunni Abbasid Caliph in Bahrain came together to jointly proclaim a united Islamic Jihad to destroy Zoroastrian Persia. The combined coalition was formidable. The Fatimids, rulers of Egypt, the Levant and Cyprus, lined up alongside Sunni rulers from Arabia, Iraq and Central Asia.
In opposition to this great holy war, Shah Kamran, by now approaching his sixties, secured his position in the annals of history. In the east, the Saminids were already a diminished power by the outbreak of the Jihad and the Persians ensured that they presented little threat by enticing the Ghaznavids – a powerful Turkic state that had conquered much of northwestern India and Afghanistan in the preceding decades – to strike against the rich cities of Transoxania and Khorosan. With their ability to join the Muslim invasion of Persia drastically curtailed, they were relegated to a bit-part player in the conflict.
In the west, the Persians based their strategy on holding a string of mighty fortresses along the Zagros mountains and using the elevated terrain to ambush approaching Muslim forces. This met with incredible success. At the battle of Khorramabad in 1042, the Persians completely destroyed a Fatimid army – a force twice its size – before it could even enter the Iranian heartland. A second Shia army was savagely beaten at Dorood the following year to effectively end the efforts of the Fatimids, Islam’s greatest power at the time, from involving themselves in the war.
The Sunni armies were not pinned down to such spectacular single engagements, but suffered from greater divisions and less cohesion than the Shia – with individual rulers each sending their own detachments which were picked off with relative ease by the mobile and highly motivated Persians.
When considering the scale of the resources at their disposal, the Muslims’ failure in the united Jihad of the 1040s was genuinely remarkable. Persia had defeated a far stronger foe without ever seeing its core territories coming under any serious threat. Following years of battlefield success, a truce was finally agreed in 1046 that saw both Shia and Sunni Caliph agree to a humiliating recognition of Ziyarid sovereignty over Persia and agreeing to pay a tribute to the Shahdom. Iran was triumphant. Kamran himself had little time to bask in the glory of victory, exhausted from the exertions of the war he passed away less than a year after the truce was agreed.
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Glad to have you aboard! And I can assure you that there will be plenty more knifes dropping in backs in the updates to come! (In fact the next one might have a character I've been calling 'Spider'
)And, in truth, it was a test that Kamran surely passed with flying colours. He might have come to power by foul means, but he averted catastrophic internal fighting (even if there was one large rebellion), improved the governance of the realm, won sizeable new lands in the east and fended off the Shia-Sunni Jihad. There was no real exaggeration there - in game both the Shias and Sunnis declared separate Jihads within the space of a single year and both invaded at once. It was quite a big in game challenge to fight them off - I was lucky that their armies didn't all come at once and they charged into attacking me while I sat in mountain provinces.
A somewhat ill-starred reign the Ziyarid state was lucky to survive. That Armenian ploy certainly backfired badly.
Ooh, a post-succession fratricidal conflict: juicy!
At least it was a coup and murder rather than another messy and drawn out civil war. We shall see if Kamran can achieve stability from the chaos. Though fear, murder and treachery are not necessarily ideal things to base a revival on.
We will have to wait and see who will end up with the last laugh between Persia and Armenia - but for two nations with thousands of years of history, we can rest assured that this is an interchange that will not be ending any time soon.
Kamran did surprisingly well in stabilising the situation after seizing power - sometimes marrying your close relatives helps
. That and redirecting angry nobles towards external enemies and the chance for plunder abroad always helps sooth things over. Yes, the crushed by the pillar was meant to have the ever so slight air of suspicion about it - especially considering how much of a conspirer Kamran turned out to be
. The story of Persia and Armenia still has a lot of road left to run as it is - but it is quite striking just how much of a bloody nose they ended up giving us after that invasion. In game I was expecting a bit of a cake walk myself, so for it to end up with me defeated and driven into a cycle of civil war was knockback.
Some answers to these questions in this chapter. The old Zoroastrian custom of marrying ones close relatives proves its worth in resolving internal family feuds!
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Surviving simultaneous Jihads is a great feat. Marrying your young niece is smooth diplomacy. The Crusades for the next century and a half will be an ally as the Islamists are a bigger immediate threat than the Catholics. After unifying Persia, expansion can go in any direction. Thank you for the update.
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Kamran has managed to leave Persia in a much better state than he found it. With the Islamic powers licking their wounds, perhaps now would be a good time to start reasserting the empire's traditional borders.
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It's a bit upsetting that his kinslaying tarnished what would otherwise have been a spotless and lustrous reign. He could have earned the epithet of "the Great" even, as his leadership of Persia truly merited it, but alas, he could not have become king in the first place had Ebrahim not fallen.
With the Sunni and Shia coalitions defeated, and both branches of the family (hopefully) fully united after the marriage of the King and his niece, it seems Persia might be in for a period of conquest it seems. Few will be able to oppose the next king, at least from the outset.
With the Sunni and Shia coalitions defeated, and both branches of the family (hopefully) fully united after the marriage of the King and his niece, it seems Persia might be in for a period of conquest it seems. Few will be able to oppose the next king, at least from the outset.
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Along Came a Spider – 1047-1089
Along Came a Spider – 1047-1089
Just as the previous transition of power three decades previously had been defined by a Shakespearean fraternal drama of intrigue, murder and betrayal, Kamran I’s death in 1047 would be followed by another tale of two brothers. As before, the departing ruler’s elder son, in this case Shah Gholam, ascended to the Persian throne while his sibling, Ghobad, visibly coveted the crown for himself. In contrast to the previous situation however, Gholam’s court was not riven by factionalism, with the talented and diligent administrator Ghobad assuming a key role within his brother’s government and assuming significant influence.
Even as Zoroastrian gradually spread through the realm, Persia remained home to large and diverse populations of Muslims in the eleventh century. One of the most intriguing of these were the Nizari Shia Muslims of Tabaristan. They had been a small but well organised group for many years before they established themselves at the imposing fortress of Alamut during the 1040s. Despite this apparent challenge from the Zoroastrian state and their obvious vulnerability, the Nizaris cowed local elites in accepting their presence at the castle by forging a terrifying reputation for outfitting assassination missions against those who opposed them. As such, no Satrap in northern Persia dared question Nizari power at Alamut. There, they practised their idiosyncratic sect, smoking hashish and casting a veil of anxiety over the region.
The Hashashin of Alamut rose to greater prominence in 1050 after they carried out a daring hit against the Shah himself. While the Shah engaged in a celebratory feast at court, an assassin infiltrated the royal palace and pierced Gholam with a poisoned dart. After three agonising days he passed away. The assassin was capturing during his attempted escape and claimed to have carried out a contract on behalf of the Fatimid Caliph in vengeance for the Shah’s predecessor’s humiliation of the Caliph during the Persian Jihad.
Gholam was succeeded by his eleven year old son, Kamran II. Gholam’s brother, Ghobad, would assumed governing power as regent for the boy. This would begin a long period sometimes referred to as ‘the age of Ghobad’. It was noteworthy that some were not wholly convinced by the claims that foreign agents had instigated the murder of Gholam. Indeed, aside from some sabre rattling against he Fatimids, Ghobal neglected to pursue those who had killed his brother – tolerating the Nizari presence at Alamut for decades to come.
After assuming power as regent, Ghobad quickly moved to entrench his position and enrich himself. Firstly Prince, previously a modest landowner, granted himself a large personal demesne in the Satrapy of Gilan – the ancestral homeland of the Ziyarids. In part to calm the anger of the elements at court and in the nobility scandalised by this move of blatant self-interest, Ghobad dispersed power away from the crown – increasing the power of the royal council and reducing taxation. Secured, he quickly set to work building an intricate web of allies held together by clientelistic lines of patronage with himself at the centre. Notably, the Hashashin of Alamut continued to operate largely unmolested throughout Persia - often striking against Ghobad's political enemies.
Nowhere did Ghobad enjoy deeper roots and greater support than among the lords of the northwest. Here, border skirmishes between Persians and the Christian powers of Georgia and Armenia had been common for decades. Ghobad sought to put himself forward as the leader of these lords by banding together with them and attacking the city of Tabriz in 1052. Ghobad lacked the authority to rally the entire realm in support of the conflict, but was nonetheless able to siphon away substantial sums from the treasury to help to keep his armies in the field. The conflict ebbed back and forth for almost a decade. The Gilanites twice captured Tabriz itself – in 1054 and again in 1057 – but each time the Armenians were able to counter attack and reclaim the city. Only after the Armenians crossed into Persia to ransack Gilan itself in 1059, threatening the outbreak of a wider war, did the fighting cease.
As Shah Kamran II reached into his teenage years, his uncle assiduously tried to shield him from involvement in the business of governing. This was something the sovereign was happy to oblige. Largely disinterested in the affairs of state, he instead pursued a decadent lifestyle of feasting, drinking, carousing and carnal pleasure at his palace in Isfahan, with his health steadily worsening under the weight of this lifestyle as the decades passed. Ghobad was certainly more constrained than he had been while regent. Indeed, Kamran had been involved in brokering peace with the Armenians in 1059, and with it cutting short Ghobad’s personal ambitions to take Tabriz for himself, while there would be no more opportunities for such brazen plundering of the crown’s resources as he had accomplished when taking Gilan for himself. Nonetheless, Ghobad remained the central figure in the governing of Persia throughout his nephew’s reign.
This was a notably peaceful time in Persian history, with few foreign wars and internal conflicts. The exception to this rule was came in the 1060s as border skirmishes between Persian and Saminids forces escalated into a major conflict between 1061 and 1065 as Ziyarid forces poured over the border into Khorosan. There, the Persians were greeted as liberators in the majority Zoroastrian province, supported by a popular uprising that allowed them to capture a number of cities without a fight. The Saminid Shah fought fiercely but ultimately fruitlessly to try to restore control over the restive region before finally surrendering it to the Zoroastrians.
Ghobad’s power in Isfahan would steadily rise again from the late 1070s as his corpulent nephew’s health began to wane. When Kamran II died in 1082, aged just forty two, there was no one who could possible resist the old man’s resumption of absolute authority over the regency council of the new ten year old Shah Gholam II. The 1080s were a fortuitous time to resume untrammelled control over the Persian throne. In the late 1070s the Byzantines had largely destroyed the once powerful Armenian Kingdom, and in 1084 the regent took the opportunity to strike against the Armenian rump state to finally conquer Tabriz and avenge his failure in the 1050s. Just as he had when Kamran had grown older, Ghobal resisted surrendering any administrative power over to the new Shah Gholam II as he matured – seeking to prolong his dominance in the capital.
However, Gholam II was a very different man to his father. Born with the unshakeable ambition to write his name in history, he was unwilling to sit by while his ageing relative excluded him from what was rightfully his. In 1089, still just seventeen, he staged a bloodless coup in the capital. Ghobal was arrested by the palace guard, stripped of his positions and expelled from the capital. Mercifully, he lost neither his lands in Gilan and Tabriz nor his life – being allowed to live out his dotage in his vast estates in the north west while the new Shah set out to achieve his self-appointed destiny.
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This was quite a fun one in game - playing a scheming regent who enriches himself, benefits from a lazy liege to stick around in power only to get a second crack at being regent before being finally kicked out of power. Let us see how Gholam II takes Persia forward as we rapidly approach a new century!
The Catholics are so distant that we won't have to worry too much about Crusades for a long time to come. Indeed, after the Muslims the Orthodox Christians of eastern Anatolia and the Caucuses are a bigger threat for now than the West.
Kamran I truly was a very successful ruler, it is a shame that his grandson of the same name was more concerned with the feast table than the sword or we might have been on our path to the restoration of the old empire. A more active ruler has come around now to take on the mantle though.
He was indeed possibly our finest monarch since Vushmgir I. The second half of the 11th century hasn't ended up being the greatest era of expansionism - let us see if the Gholam II has it in him to change that!
Despite everything during the age of Ghobal, Persia did enjoy a long period of internal peace and gained some important new territory in Khorosan and Tabriz. Let us see what this ambitious young Shah has in mind for the future!
The Catholics are so distant that we won't have to worry too much about Crusades for a long time to come. Indeed, after the Muslims the Orthodox Christians of eastern Anatolia and the Caucuses are a bigger threat for now than the West.
Kamran I truly was a very successful ruler, it is a shame that his grandson of the same name was more concerned with the feast table than the sword or we might have been on our path to the restoration of the old empire. A more active ruler has come around now to take on the mantle though.
He was indeed possibly our finest monarch since Vushmgir I. The second half of the 11th century hasn't ended up being the greatest era of expansionism - let us see if the Gholam II has it in him to change that!
Despite everything during the age of Ghobal, Persia did enjoy a long period of internal peace and gained some important new territory in Khorosan and Tabriz. Let us see what this ambitious young Shah has in mind for the future!
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