Ērān against Tūrān

[Semper Victor]

Interesting how easy it's to see who's sources you are most familar with; Bactria and Sogdiana use unadorned Latin script, as we know of the names from Greek/Latin authors. Kusan or Amu Darya is consistently Iranic. And of course Yuezhi is distinctly Chinese.

Only distinction I can't spot straight away is Indian-to-Iranian, but then that is linguistically the smallest jump (is Gandhara Indian or Iranian? I don't know).

But thanks a lot as always

I try to stick with a writing once I've made the initial choice, but it's difficult. In the case of Iranian names I try to use usual English transcriptions for well-known locations, although in some cases I deviate from this criterium if I think I'm falling into too much of an anachronism. For example, that's the case for Bactria, the Latinised form of the Greek Βακτριανή (Baktriané), which is in turn the Hellenized form of the Old Persian Bāxtriš , while the Bactrian endonym was βαχλο (Bakhlo). But from the III c. CE under Sasanian rule it's consistently called Tokharistan/Tukharistan both in Middle Persian, Bactrian, Sogdian, Arabic and other language sources, as the old toponym fell out of use. Thus I've preferred to use the newest form, but with its New Persian/Farsi romanization according to the Encyclopaedia Iranica: Ṭoḵārestān. That said, I also can change opinions, and for example I've decided to change to the New Persian/Farsi romanization for Bukhara (Boḵārā) instead of the traditional English one, because I think the English one is a bit anachronistic; the second one reflects better the New Persian pronunciation of the name, while the English name is influenced by the modern Uzbek pronunciation (Buxoro). In think that the New Persian one gives a more "Persianate" taste for a city that used to be Iranian-speaking once.

It can be confusing sometimes, as with Sogdiana, a name that (unlike Bactria/Bactriana) did not change much along time; it was still called so in the time of the Arab conquest. So, in this case I've stuck to Sogdiana instead of Middle/New Persian Soğd or Arabic Suğd.

Things get even more complicated because there's no universal standard system of romanization for New Persian, and even less for Middle Persian (hence Khosrow, Khusrau, Khusro, Chosroes, Husraw, Xusrō ...) and because in many western texts Arabic and New Persian romanizations of Iranian names are used indiscriminately (i.e. Firdawsī instead of Ferdowsī). And the same stands for Bactrian, Sogdian, Armenian, Arabic ...

The only languages for which a universal standard system for romanization exists are Chinese and Sanskrit, but even in these cases, if you consult old secondary sources you can find romanizations (i.e. Wade-Giles') that have fallen out of use (i.e. Fa-Hsiën instead of Faxian).

 

[Semper Victor]

4.5 POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF THE CENTRAL ASIAN (OR “WHITE”) HUNS.


Little is known about the political organization of the Central Asian (or “White”) Huns. However, from the scarce information we have we can note the fact that the political practices of these Huns were remarkably similar to those of the European Huns. The White Hun state possessed an administrative apparatus at both central and local levels. It was in essence a typical Inner Asian tributary empire ruling over many local dependent states and fiefs. The Sogdian city-states kept their autonomy, and Ṭoḵārestān seems to have been divided into a myriad of principalities and petty kingdoms (a situation that continued later under Hephthalite and Türk rule; in the VII c. CE the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang counted twenty-seven principalities in the area). As among the European Huns and the Xiongnu, the succession to the White Hunnic throne could pass from uncle to nephew, rather than from father to son (at least among the Alkhons and Hephthalites). The Alkhon Huns also practiced artificial cranial deformation which was like among the elite of the European Huns and the Alans. The language used in their coins and seals is mostly Bactrian, with some appearances of Sanskrit and Brāhmī script south of the Hindu Kush (later the Alkhons would drop Bactrian completely and use only Sanskrit or Prakrit dialects, in Brāhmī or Gupta script).

They also followed the familiar Xiongnu/Hun system of appointing vassal kings (a practice also found among the European Huns), like in the case of the Hephthalite-appointed kings of Zābolestān who ruled an almost autonomous fief within the empire and were instrumental in spearheading the extension of Hephthalite rule over northwestern India. As in the old Xiongnu Empire collective governance of the state was practiced by several high ranking aristocrats (with new titles such as Yabghu (borrowed probably from either the Kangju or Kušāns, and displayed for sure by Hephthalite and Türk rulers) and Tegin (although it’s unclear if this title is of Hephthalite or Türk origin). In India, the Kidarites and later the Hephthalites also introduced the rule of multiple rajas and rajputs who held territories in “fief” to their common overlord the Hunnic supreme king or emperor. Thus, a form of quasi-feudalism was introduced to India and a transformation in the administration of revenues took place.

Plan of the Buddhist monastic complex of Butkara I at Uḍḍiyāna with the Great Stupa and smaller cultic buildings. The Italian excavations have revealed five principal construction phases spanning from the III c. BCE into the X-XI c. CE. Phase 4 (marked on the plan in red) lasted from the IV to VII c. CE and was the artistically richest and most active period in the history of the building complex. Excavations have uncovered six Kidarite silver drachms, which according to their style and manufacture all come from one mint, probably located in Uḍḍiyāna

As we have seen above, the Kidarites created conditions favorable to international trade and they kept the monetary and economic system of the regions they conquered without disturbing them. In fact, Hunnic rule of Central Asia signaled the beginning of the golden age of Sogdian cities such as Samarkand, Boḵārā, Paykand or Panjikant, which in many ways exposes the hollowness of the myth of Hunnic “destructiveness”. In Khwārazm at sites such as Barak-tam Hunnic rulers erected two-story castles with ceremonial halls and carpets in a style that is, according to the great Soviet archaeologist Sergey P. Tolstov who excavated the site, distinct and different from previous local structures. The symbiosis and also dichotomy between the dominant ruling steppe pastoralists (the Huns who constituted much of the imperial army and high-ranking nobility) and the conquered sedentary local population seems to have persisted throughout the Hunnic period (both Kidarite and Hephthalite). However, the upper elite of the White Huns seems to have adapted to local conditions and traditions fairly quickly, readily absorbing elements of Kušān-Indian, Sasanian and Sogdian cultures, especially in their art and architecture. This also applies to the religious realm, where the White Huns did not disturb at all the practice of the local religions (with the probable exception of the Alkhon king Mihirakula during the VI c. CE). And as we have seen, the White Huns also displayed their “cosmopolitanism” (for lack of a better word) in their coinage, in which as we have stated, they displayed a profusion of different languages and scripts.

Early Alkhon coin imitating the drahms of Šābuhr III, bearing only the inscription “alxonno” (αλχοννο) on the obverse, in Bactrian language and script.

Like the Hunnic-Germanic kings of Europe that we saw in the previous thread, the Central Asian Huns were keen to present themselves as legitimate heirs to the preceding rulers of the regions they conquered. In the case of the Kidarites in particular, the legacy of the Kušāns seems to have been treated with particular care and attention, so much so that these Hunnic kings claimed to be the heirs to the Kušān kings. The rhetoric of the restoration of the Kušān state may have been a useful propaganda tool wielded by the Kidarite Huns to gain the loyalty of their new subjects. The propaganda suited the new Hunnic conquerors well and could have given them a certain legitimacy in the eyes of the local population and in the eyes of foreign powers like the Chinese (as we’ve seen, the dynastic Chinese chronicles systematically call them Yuezhi, a term used in the Hanshu and the Hou Hanshu to refer to the Kušāns).

The American historian Richard E. Payne pointed that as the elites of the post-Roman West combined Roman and Germanic institutions to produce the new socio-political orders characteristic of the V and VI c. CE, the conquerors of East Iran combined the traditions of nomadic and Iranian imperialism to create a hybrid political culture that would survive in its constituent territories throughout the following centuries. As we have already seen, the term Turān became current in Late Antiquity to designate the societies across the northeastern borders of Ērānšahr. From its origin in the mythical/historical accounts of the Sasanian court, the cultural/geographical concept differentiated the societies of Central Asia, whose political elites were of nomadic origin, from the traditionally sedentary societies of Iran. It is in the Šāh-nāma that Turān appears most clearly and consistently as the geographical antithesis of Iran. It was the abode of the nomadic enemies of Ērānšahr, from the mythical king Afrāsīāb to the historical Huns and Türks. Its environment comprised harsh steppe and desert. Its inhabitants practiced varieties of demon worship and idolatry (garbled characterizations of Indo-Iranian and Buddhist religious traditions) that distinguished them from the Zoroastrian, and later Muslim, population of Iran. And yet Iran and Turān were inextricable. The absence of obvious geographical, as opposed to cultural, boundaries made the frontiers between the two ambiguous and porous, both in Ferdowsī’s epic and in the late Sasanian official histories that were its ultimate source.

A key point made by Payne concerns the very nature of the empires created by the Huns and later by the Türks. However distinct the political orders they established were, all these groups shared an imperialist tradition that derived from the Xiongnu. Unlike the Germanic groups that conquered the Roman West, the conquerors of East Iran arrived with their own imperial institutions and templates of state formation. And as we have seen in the previous thread, what characterized the Xiongnu tradition was the seamless integration of nomadic and sedentary societies, political structures, and economies. Nomadic elites combined their pastoralist sources of military and economic power with agrarian sources of ideological and economic power, forming ruling aristocracies of considerable martial might that employed literate administrative professionals based in urban or semi-urban centers to exact larger, more reliable surpluses from agrarian communities than their purely pastoralist counterparts could have obtained. The emergence of nomadic empires depended on the existence of sedentary political systems producing a surplus that could be expropriated and distributed among imperial elites. It was the exaction of tribute from China that consolidated the Xiongnu elite as a reproducible ruling class. In the absence of a surplus to redistribute, nomadic states rapidly disintegrated, as their elites (who were always in possession of their own portable sources of social and economic power, horses, genealogical networks, and movable wealth) abandoned the service of their rulers. But, if a regular influx of resources from sedentary societies was a prerequisite for nomadic imperialism, this should not exclude internal social and political dynamics of these nomadic societies. In this respect, the rise of the Xiongnu depended at least as much on the ideological innovation of the divinely sanctioned office of the Chanyu and the military reorganization of the aristocracy into governable hierarchies. At the same time, the Xiongnu set up institutions of agricultural production and bureaucratic administration within the territories of their empire. Far from conducting predatory relations with sedentary societies, the nomadic elites from the Xiongnu onward frequently developed the institutions of urbanism, agriculture, and literate administration. The challenge of nomadic imperialists was to incorporate sedentary societies and structures into their political order without undermining the “pastoralist power” of the ruling class.

Silver drahm of the (hitherto unattested) Kidarite king Buddhamitra (or Buddhatala).

It is precisely on account of the “prodigious minting” (to use Payne’s words) of Hunnic and Türk rulers that a history of Central Asia in Late Antiquity can be written. As we have seen, over the past several decades numismatists have laid the foundations for historical research, identifying dynasties, determining their chronologies, and even mapping the territorial extent of their rule. Such work has been possible because the conquerors systematically continued to operate the mints previously established by the Sasanians, as well as those of the Sogdian city-states. The very moment of transition is evident from a series of Sasanian silver drahms minted in the region of Kabul during the reign of Šābuhr III (r. 383–388 CE): the Alkhon Huns reused the original dies of the imperial mint, adding only the inscription αλχοννο (alxonno) in Bactrian to indicate their usurpation of Sasanian political authority. As Šābuhr II had moved the center of coin production to Kabul in the 360s in order to fund the military campaigns against the Huns, the loss of minting staff, equipment, and bullion in the region came as a major blow to the court of Šābuhr III, as it was compelled to use new dies and minters in its future production. For the conquerors, however, the appropriation of the imperial mints gave them control of a technology that the early Sasanians had also used to consolidate their rule. The consistent minting of silver coinage of nearly uniform design with a remarkably high degree of purity across the territories of Ērānšahr had eased the cohesion of the disparate aristocracies that characterized the late Arsacid period. As the thinnest, purest, most artful silver coin hitherto produced in the Near East, the Sasanian drahm rapidly displaced other currencies, with the exception of the gold coinage of Kušān Bactria which the Sasanians maintained in the form of the Kushano-Sasanian scyphate dinar. Recipients of salaries and gifts from the court therefore enjoyed a clear advantage over their peers who did not enter into the service of the Šahān Šāh. And in taking possession of drahms, elites entered into the ideological framework of a court that articulated its ideology of Ērānšahr across the empire through its coinage. The drahm functioned like the Roman solidus as both a symbol of empire and an incentive to participate in its networks.

The Huns readily adapted this economic and propagandistic technology to their own imperial projects. Under their rule, Sasanian-style silver coins became the preferred currency in Central Asia from the Tarim Basin to Northern India. To the south of the Hindu Kush, Kidarite rulers minted drahms according to Sasanian models at various sites in the regions of Kabul and Gandhāra, from the 380s until the middle of the V c. CE, while the Alkhon and Nēzak dynasties continued to do so well into the VI c. CE. The appropriation of existing Iranian (Sasanian, Sogdian or otherwise) mints enabled the Huns to consolidate the two main pillars of their rule simultaneously. Silver was used to compensate and to co-opt the nomadic warriors in their service. The emission of a familiar coinage, moreover, reassured indigenous elites of the stability of the economic order to which they were used to. Subordinated Iranian aristocrats would continue to receive salaries and gifts even if they redirected their loyalties to a Hun. And the inscriptions and symbols they placed on their coins were recognizable to each of these distinct elite groups.

Indeed, the Huns succeeded in integrating the conquered aristocracy into their networks and the Iranian administrative apparatus into their infrastructure. The Iranian elite (the aristocrats of Ṭoḵārestān, Kabul, and neighboring regions that had entered Sasanian service in the III c. CE) came to exercise its authority on behalf of Hun and later Türk rulers. Thanks to the publication of the Bactrian Documents during the 2000s, a continuous history of the landed and office-holding elite of the irrigated districts between Balḵ and the Hindu Kush from the III to the early VIII c. CE can be reconstructed. This archive of more than 150 letters, contracts, receipts, and Buddhist religious texts recorded on parchment derived from a community in the vicinity of the “city” (šar) of Rōb, approximately 200 km south of Balḵ along the route over the Hindu Kush to Bāmīān, although they provide more data for the Hephthalite and Türk periods than about Kidarite rule, we can assume that the situation described in them was put in place already by the Kidarite Huns.

Drawing of a coin of Mawāk, ruler of Boḵārā, dated to the early V c. CE. Probably a local Iranian aristocrat who ruled as a vassal of the Kidarites (drawing by Aleksandr Naymark).

Known as azadag (“free men”) in Bactrian, like their counterparts in the Sasanian Empire described as āzād in Middle Persian, they were organized in patrilineal houses that possessed ancestral territories engaged in the production of wine and livestock to supply the urban centers of Ṭoḵārestān. They also held offices on behalf of the Iranian court, as kadagbid, the Bactrian version of the Middle Persian kadag-xwadāy, a high-ranking intermediary between the aristocracy of the region and the Sasanian court, and as šarab, corresponding to the Middle Persian šahrab (provincial governors). These aristocratic houses survived the conquest with their estates intact and even continued to exercise their official functions in the service of the Hunnic rulers in Balḵ. The kadagbid of a subregion of Ṭoḵārestān known as Kadagān appears in one document as the “kadagbid of the famous (and) prosperous yab[ghu] of Hephthal”, indicating that the aristocratic Iranian governor had acknowledged his allegiance to the Hephthalite ruler. Šarabs, too, are documented exercising their authority within Hephthalite territory in the V c. CE and in Türk territory in the VIII c. CE.

The continued existence and operation of kadagbids and šarabs in Ṭoḵārestān after the conquests suggests that the administrative institutions they ruled over kept functioning. In the Sasanian Empire, the primary tasks of provincial governors were the levying of the land tax and the marshaling of aristocratic cavalrymen (the Middle Persian aswār, Bactrian asbar) on behalf of the Šahān Šāh. If the enlistment of Bactrian azadag in Hunnic or Türk armies remains unattested (but very probable, as we have seen), the conquerors unambiguously appropriated the existing Iranian fiscal system. The Hephthalites collected a tax known in the documents as the “Hephthalite poll tax” (ēbodal tōg), and the efficiency of their representatives placed unprecedented pressure on the local Bactrian elite. Thus, during visits to Rōb, the Hephthalites collected fees in silver drahms and gold dinars in place of the provisions the inhabitants were expected to supply and fined them for various eventualities, such as the death of a Hephthalite horse.

To control the processes of minting and taxation and to manage provincial aristocrats, the Huns and Türks ruled from the cities (Bactrian šar, Middle Persian šahrestān) that had served as Iranian administrative centers. The claim of the Roman historian Procopius of Caesarea that the Hephthalite Huns distinguished themselves from other “barbarians” through their occupation of cities has been now verified with documentary, sigillography, and archaeological evidence. As seen in the Bactrian Documents, Balḵ remained a focal point of regional economic and political transactions, suggesting that the šar continued to function as the main place of political authority after the conquests. The Kidarite Huns organized their campaigns against the Sasanians from Balḵ before the Hephthalites occupied the city in the middle of the V c. CE, after a brief Sasanian reconquest. But if the regional capital continued to function, the urban centers of northern Ṭoḵārestān seem to have experienced an overall contraction from the late IV through the VII c. CE. The major Kušān and Kushano-Sasanian sites of Delbarjīn Tepe and Emshi Tepe were abandoned in the course of the V c. CE. Numerous agricultural settlements disappeared from the hinterlands of Balḵ, and the ancient capital itself appeared “thinly populated” to the Buddhist monk Xuanzang in the VII c. CE. The contraction of urban and rural settlement in northern Ṭoḵārestān, however, could perhaps have resulted in a shift toward the regions of the mountainous southeast, which remain unsurveyed to this day. These areas were more defensible in the face of Sasanian invasions and nearer to both the routes across the Hindu Kush and to highland pastures. The šar of Rōb was one such center in an upland valley. The capital of the Hephthalites has tentatively been identified in the southeast of Ṭoḵārestān, near the Kušān site of Surḵ Kotal, while the Kidarite capital was probably located further north, at Samarkand in Sogdiana.

The wall built around the Boḵārā oasis was truly a monumental affair.

As we have already seen, the cities of Sogdiana grew dramatically both in spatial and infrastructural terms during the V-VI c. CE. Hunnic and Türk rulers presided over the expansion of existing cities, the establishment of new settlements, and the fortification of inner precincts and outer oases. And the revamped cities like Samarkand, Panjikant, Boḵārā, and Paykand now acquired the rectangular, Hippodamian plans characteristic of a Sasanian šahrestān, hitherto unknown in Sogdiana. The conquerors not only integrated cities and their associated infrastructures into their polities, but also adapted the Iranian urban form in regions that the Sasanian Empire had probably never annexed, by carrying out infrastructural projects as massive as those undertaken by their Sasanian contemporaries.

When they rebuilt existing cities as šahrestāns, the Huns and Türks represented themselves in an Iranian way at the same time as they repurposed existing urban centers. The early Sasanians had reintroduced the “imperial residence” of the ancient Mesopotamian empires to the Near East: the city as the place and emblem of the ruler and imperial authority. Their successors in East Iran similarly defined their rule in urban terms: the Kidarite king Ularg presented himself in official seals as “the Afšīn of Samarkand” (Afšīn was a title that would enjoy a long career in Sogdiana, and would survive in Osrušana until Abbasid times). The šahrestān was one among multiple modes of Iranian political representation that the conquerors adopted. The mints gave them access to another part the symbolic repertoire of the Sasanian court, as well as a way of communicating in its terms. While introducing marks of distinction, the various Hunnic dynasties kept the familiar Iranian image of a bejeweled and (usually) crowned ruler on the obverse with a fire altar on the reverse. The replacement of the Sasanians with busts of Kidarites, Alkhons, or Hephthalites indicated the claim of the latter to have legitimately succeeded the former, without disrupting the overall framework of imperial organization. The Kidarite king in Samarkand made the supersession of Sasanian rule explicit in the Bactrian version of his official title: “Lord Ularg, the king of the Huns, the great king of the Kušān, the Afšiyan of Samarkand”. As the king of the Kušāns, Kušān Šāh, he had succeeded to the Kushano-Sasanian dynasty that had ruled East Iran on behalf of the “imperial” Sasanians. The Armenian historian P’avstos Buzand recognized the legitimacy of the claim, referring to a late IV c. CE Kidarite ruler as the “king of the Kušāns” and even ascribed him an Arsacid lineage.

The Hephthalites went a step further and supplanted not merely the Kushano–Sasanian vassal kings, but the Sasanian Šahān Šāh himself. On the funerary couch of a Sogdian merchant in China dated to 579 CE, the Hephthalite king appears wearing a crown with a pair of wings, remarkably similar to the third crown that the Sasanian king Pērōz used after 474 CE. The ubiquity of the crown in regions the Hephthalites controlled suggests its use as the standard regalia of their rulers, at least after their definitive triumph over the Sasanians, in contrast with their Alkhon contemporaries who displayed artificially elongated skulls that distinguished them as Huns. In the absence of inscriptions, the precise language through which the Hephthalites represented themselves remains elusive. But the numismatic and artistic evidence suggests that they presented themselves as the legitimate successors to Sasanian rule, foreshadowing the titles the Türks would adopt after their conquest of the Hephthalite kingdom.

One of the early paintings at Panjikant, in a style reminiscent of the last murals of Dal’verzin in Ṭoḵārestān.

The appropriation of the titles and functions of the Sasanian Šahān Šāhs did not lack symbolic foundations. The Kidarites and Hephthalites succeeded not only in conquering Iranian territory but also in subordinating the Sasanians as their tributaries. From the reign of Ardaxšir I onward, the Sasanian court demonstrated its establishment and maintenance of Ērānšahr, the territorial rule (šahr) of the universally sovereign “Iranians” (ērān), through the collection of tribute, especially from the Romans. The Huns, however, upended the cosmic order by exacting tribute from Iran, causing the Sasanian court to develop new ways of underpinning its ideological framework (as discussed in previous posts). In the early V c. CE, under circumstances that the Iranian historiographical tradition has obscured, Yazdegerd I, Warahrān V, and/or Yazdegerd II were compelled to conduct tributary payments to the Kidarite Huns. The Hephthalites continued to exact tribute, famously forcing Pērōz to deliver 30 mule loads of silver as the price of peace in 474 CE.

In Payne’s view, such demands for tribute have often been interpreted as examples of predation, displaying the dependency of nomadic elites on the surplus of their sedentary counterparts. But, as we have seen, both the Huns and Türks generated their own surpluses and their own coinages on scales that rivaled what the Sasanians had achieved in the same territories. The numismatist Nikolaus Schindel even calculated that the sums involved in the most famous payments of 474 CE were actually modest ones. The value of the silver coins the Iranian court dispatched to the Hephthalites (and other nomadic rulers) resided in their symbolism as tokens of submission in a symbolic system of interstate relations whose language was recognizable to rulers and elites across Eurasia in Late Antiquity. Unlike the Xiongnu under Modu or the European Huns under Attila, the Kidarites, Hephthalites, and Türks had already integrated urban and agricultural economies into their polities. They continued to exact tribute from sedentary empires as a means of constructing legitimacy among their aristocracies, nomadic and landed. In the eyes of Huns and Türks and of indigenous Iranian landowners alike, receiving tribute was a mark of sovereignty and divine favor.

Another of the early paintings at Panjikant depicts a Buddha, which is extremely rare in Sogdian art, but quite common in Ṭoḵārestān.

The Huns (and later the Türks) were not monolithic entities themselves. It was not only as “Huns”, but also as Kidarite, Alkhon, and Hephthalite Huns that the IV-V c. CE conquerors governed their kingdoms. And the Türk qaghans and their elite consistently stressed their distinction as “Türks” from Huns, Sogdians, and the landed aristocrats of East Iran. The problem of how the new ruling groups distinguished themselves from other elites is a question long familiar to historians of the post-Roman West but still unexplored in the geographical frame of the post-Sasanian East: what role did ethnicity play in the construction of the successor states? From recent scholarship on ethnicity in the West in the first millennium CE, three key insights that have found general acceptance there could be applied to the case of Central Asia in Late Antiquity:

• Firstly, the various Germanic groups that occupied the Roman West gained their ethnic coherence in the course of the consolidation of their regimes and their reconstitution as ruling classes. These were not already groups that conquered the Roman provinces as “peoples”, but rather constructed their “sense of ethnicity” in a relational way to distinguish themselves as an elite from the conquered Romans.
• Secondly, they resorted to their own cultural resources to define themselves as an ethnically distinct group. The leading elites defined their communities with myths of origin, labels of identification, and objects, all of which could be invested with ethnic significance, even if initially they were irrelevant to the political consciousness of those who came to consider themselves members of the group.
• Thirdly, ethnicity was (and is) a practice, not an essence. The validity and permanence of ethnic concepts fluctuated with political circumstances, and even specific contexts in time and space. Outsiders could often adopt the practices that defined ethnic belonging, and the boundaries of groups were accordingly porous. The intermixing of Roman and “barbarian” communities was particularly characteristic in the West, as new elites adopted Roman practices while asserting their difference at the same time. Rather than being seen as the cause of the formation of barbarian kingdoms, ethnicity has come to be understood in modern historical scholarship as a strategy of distinction crucial for the consolidation of the power of Goths, Vandals, Avars, and others as ruling elites in post-Roman political culture.

If the initial migration of some nomadic groups unified under the banner of the Xiongnu/Huns seems clear, they were likely to have included other nomadic warriors in their ranks in the course of their conquests. After occupying the cities of Sogdiana and the rest of East Iran, they faced the same situation of the Goths in Roman Italy: how to define themselves in relation to the two elite groups on whose support their rule depended, namely the indigenous aristocracy and the nomadic aristocracy. As we have seen, they publicized their legitimacy to Iranians through traditional media. They also patronized Buddhist monastic institutions that Kušān and Kushano-Sasanian elites had traditionally favored, especially to the south of the Hindu Kush. But they also introduced new symbols into the political culture helped to define and give coherence to the conquerors as a class vis-à-vis the landed aristocrats that had now become a secondary elite. Labels of identification appear on Hunnic coinage as early as the late IV c. CE. as we have seen, in the case of the Sasanian mint appropriated in the 380s, the Huns immediately added a Bactrian inscription to the busts of either Šābuhr II or Šābuhr III: alxonno, “Alkhon”. In addition, they placed a tamgha, a form of symbol used among nomads of the steppe from the early Iron Age to designate genealogical communities. The combination of a label identifying either a dynasty or an ethnicity and a tamgha was repeated in the coinage of the leading Hunnic groups ruling in formerly Iranian territories and beyond. The term Kidāra appeared on Kushano-Sasanian dinars minted at Balḵ and Kabul contemporaneously with the earliest Alkhon issues and on silver coins minted in Sogdiana and Gandhāra in the first half of the V c. CE. Silver drachms minted at Balḵ in the last quarter of the V c. CE similarly bore the term ēb or ēbo, an abbreviation of ēbodal, Bactrian for “Hephthalite,” marking the beginning of a distinctive coinage that continued to evolve into the middle of the VI c. CE.

One of the Bactrian Documents. Dated to 732 CE, it is a dispute settlement for an amount of 500 Sasanian silver drahms. These documents show also the very elaborate juridical culture in East Iran; for this dispute, between “Khay and Khatul the sons of Pābag and their children and descendants as one party, and Meyam and Zhulad the sons of Piy and their children and descendants as the other party” in a village called Lizag, this document was written down with ink on parchment (an expensive and very durable support) and is signed with six signatures on reverse, while still preserving four of the originally six clay seals. This particular document is part today of the Schøyen Collection at Oslo.

At the same time that the Huns appropriated Iranian institutions, they also sought to differentiate themselves genealogically from the rulers they had supplanted. As minting processes evolved, the representations of the Huns began to differ from inherited Iranian repertoires. The Alkhon rulers in Gandhāra in the middle of the V c. CE abandoned Sasanian busts on the obverse of their coins in favor of their own images: their artificially elongated skulls, beardless chins, and headgear privileged the traditions of nomadic elites over their sedentary counterparts. The coins, moreover, seem to suggest that the Huns practiced cranial deformation to set themselves apart from the conquered, a practice found among some nomadic elites of the steppe from the middle of the first millennium BCE onward. The Hephthalites introduced the portrait of a ruler wearing a caftan and holding a goblet on the reverse of their imitations of the coinage of Pērōz (abandoning the fire altar of Sasanian coinage), whose bust remained on the obverse. With respect to both means of identification and symbols of representation, the Alkhons, Kidarites, and Hephthalites distinguished themselves not only from their subjects but also from one another. Although the Kidarite ruler of Samarkand called himself the “king of the Huns,” this traditional ethnonym was apparently inadequate as a symbolic focus for the loyalties of the nomadic elites that the various Hunnic rulers sought to keep in their service. While collectively assuming the mantle of the Xiongnu as Huns, they formed distinct groupings of nomadic elites around their respective rulers after the conquests. They neither desired nor attempted a revival of the Xiongnu Empire of old.

The terms Alkhon, Kidarite, and Hephthalite designated sub-groups of Huns that could alternatively cooperate with or contest one another. The nature of their identity, however, remains unclear. The prevailing view regards them as “tribal groupings” that participated in the initial migration under the Hunnic banner only to reemerge as competing entities in subsequent decades. And I agree with Payne that, although probably accurate in implying the reemergence of distinct ruling groups from among the Huns, the term “tribe” connotes a lack of political complexity that can be misleading in this case. In their formation of ruling groups based on shared descent, the conquerors resembled their sedentary aristocratic counterparts (such as the Iranians who imagined themselves the successors of the mythical/historical ēr) at least as closely as they did the nomadic elites of the steppe. Rather than preexistent tribes, the identities the Huns publicized on their coins and seals probably emerged in the context of a nomadic elite trying to establish its integrity and a stable identity as an aristocracy vis-à-vis the sedentary conquered aristocracy. The redefinition of the aristocratic community in ethnic terms that differentiated its members from subordinate groups, whether sub-elite or commoners, was a way of achieving some degree of enduring coherence. The formation of warrior elites able to pursue their own goals around a ruling dynasty was crucial to the process of nomadic state formation. From the Xiongnu to the Mongols, this consolidation of a “state aristocracy” took place through the formation of interdependent patrilineal descent groups that monopolized the highest imperial offices. Thus, the parallel establishment of genealogically intertwined elite houses could be represented ethnically, through the use of terms such as Xiongnu, Türk, or Mongol that referred to the aristocratic communities that their empires produced rather than pre-existing peoples or tribes. The formation of several distinct ethno-aristocratic groups in East Iran reflects the absence of a single Chanyu or Qaghan to unite the Huns as well as the efforts of their rulers to craft new terms and symbols through which certain subgroups, if not the Huns as a whole, could acquire some degree of cohesion within their respective territorial domains. The success of the ethnonyms they introduced is apparent in the representations by outsiders: though they originally lumped the conquerors together as Huns, writers in Greek, Syriac, and Armenian came to name at least the Kidarites and Hephthalites accurately, using the terms appearing on their coins and seals.

The appearance of terms like Kidarite, Hephthalite, or Türk on coins or documents implied the evocation of genealogical communities rooted in a distant, mythologized past. What defined Hunnic and Türk elites as ruling groups was their descent from common ancestors. The accounts through which the Kidarites, Hephthalites, and other Hunnic groups recalled their origins have not survived, but Chinese historiographers have preserved a variety of myths about Türk origins, most of which describe their descent from a she-wolf (incidentally, it also displays surprising parallelisms with the foundational myth of Rome), a sort of account characteristic of the ethnic mythmaking of the first millennium CE. One aspect of the Türk myths though deserves attention in the context of the post-Iranian East: the mythical/geographical cave of the ancestors located in a mountainous grassland, to which the Qaghans returned annually (according to these Chinese sources) with their fellow Türks to commemorate their predecessors. Among the nomadic political cultures of the Iron Age steppe, sites of burial served as sites of commemoration of, and communion with, the ancestors. Journeys to the kurgans or other monumentalized funerary complexes (whether annual or less frequent) tied elites to genealogical communities that were necessarily distinct from the sedentary populations among whom they resided and over whom they ruled. Both Huns and Türks constructed mythical geographies through funerary monuments in the territories they conquered, although in strikingly different ways. Their practices of cremation and tomb construction garnered the attention of Roman and Chinese observers alike. Burial mounds containing (sometimes cremated) bodies have been documented archaeologically in the kurgans of northern Ṭoḵārestān, datable to the V-VI c. CE and identifiable with an elite that sought to purposefully distinguish itself through its burial rites from the conquered population. In locating their kurgans near their urban settlements in Ṭoḵārestān, the Huns rooted their ancestral traditions in the region, while the Türks, commemorated their ancestors in the distant highlands of the Tian Shan, Altai, and Mongolia. As the American scholar Sören Stark noted, the absence of Türk burial sites in Ṭoḵārestān and Sogdiana seems to confirm the veracity of Chinese accounts of ancestral funerary complexes in the mountains to which the Türks made frequent pilgrimages that established them as a distinct group, separate from the cultures and environments in which they normally resided.

Maintaining the integrity of the Huns and Türks as an elite was central to the successful functioning of polities that depended on nomadic warriors for their military power. But the establishment of ethnically conscious aristocracies of Kidarites, Hephthalites, and Türks did not prevent their acculturation or their mixing into the elite networks of the conquered. There’s documentary proof for the interaction of Iranian landowners and nomadic warriors as two clearly differentiated classes, which does not seem to have endangered their respective identities. Indeed, the evidence for nomadic onomastics suggests that the two groups were imitating one another and intermarrying even as they deployed their respective symbols of ethnic distinction. One aristocrat named in the Bactrian Documents in the first half of the V c. CE bore the revealing name Gurambād Kērawān (or Khwadēwān): the personal name is characteristically Hun (the Grumbates of Ammianus), while the patronymic suggests he was descended from the house of a kadagbid Kēraw documented in the late IV c. CE, or of another house of Iranian “rulers” (Bactrian khwadēw, Middle Persian xwadāy). The Hephthalite Yabghu himself displayed the Iranian patronymic Khwadēwbandān. Türk elites in the Bactrian documents of the VII c. CE had names that recalled the Sasanian Šahān Šāh: the iltäbir Zun-lad Šaburān and the tarkhan Khusaru. It is difficult to establish if these onomastic convergences emerged through marriage or imitation. The Sogdian Mount Muğ Documents from the VII-VIII c. CE suggest that intermarriage between indigenous landowners and nomadic aristocrats was routine. In a marriage contract dated to the first decade of the VIII c. CE, a Türk married the daughter of a Sogdian aristocrat at Samarkand.

As we saw in the past thread, the official narrative/ideology elaborated by the Sasanian court in response to their defeats in the East drew upon Avestan mythology and led to the characterization of their eastern enemies as an undifferentiated mass of “Turanians”, and these “Turanians” soon adopted Avestan mythology for their own goals. Stories of the exploits of the ancestors of the ruling elite in East Iran deriving from Avestan, Eastern Iranian, and Arsacid traditions circulated widely, while the versions reflected in the Xwadāy-Nāmag preserved only the court’s reworking of mythical/historical tales that were continually retold and tailored to the circumstances of local elites. As the VII c. CE murals of an elite residence in the Sogdian city of Panjikant reveal, the institution of mythical/historical storytelling flourished on both sides of the border. The Soviet/Russian scholar Boris Ilych Marshak descried to what an extent the Sogdian mythmakers mixed legends of Iranian and Indian origin, including at least one figure (the heroic warrior Rostām) to whom the historiographers of the Sasanian court gave a prominent place in the Xwadāy-Nāmag. A fragmentary Sogdian text recounts the exploits of the mythical Iranian aristocrat Rostām against demonic enemies that closely resembled the Xyōn of Middle Persian accounts. Sogdian authors are unlikely to have made direct use of the historiographical accounts that the late Sasanians produced. Rather, Iranian, and Sogdian authors of mythical histories must have tapped into a common legacy of legends that circulated textually and orally across all Iranian-speaking lands. They shared a common set of figures and literary formulae through which it was possible to represent the circumstances of the present in terms of a mythical past that could confer legitimacy on contemporary political actors and their actions. If the Xwadāy-Nāmag has preserved the Sasanians’ accounts of their own history within this mythical/historical framework, traces of the Hunnic and Türk adaptation of this framework to their political circumstances appear only fragmentarily in inscriptions, paintings, and medieval compilations of their myths.

Location of Rōb in Ṭoḵārestān.

Rostām, in particular, occupied a position as important in the mythical histories of the post-Sasanian East as in the Xwadāy-Nāmag. The warrior appears so frequently in Hunnic contexts that the French scholar Frantz Grenet called him a “Hephthalite hero”. The personal name Rostām appears in seals and inscriptions, while his epithet “man with the panther’s skin” provided the name of the landowner Purlang-zin in one of the Bactrian documents. The hero’s son, Farāmarz, also appears as a personal name in the documents. And revealingly, the artists who painted the Panjikant murals modeled their portrayal of Rostām on contemporary images of Hunnic rulers; the hero exhibited in them the same cranial deformation and distinctive crowns encountered in Hunnic seals and coins. At the same time, however, Iranian aristocrats claimed him too as their ancestor: the house of Sūrēn identified itself with the mythical hero, and their patrimonial territories lay just across the frontier from Hephthalite-controlled Ṭoḵārestān in Sīstān. The important role of Rostām in the epic of Ferdowsī is probably due to the way in which this character provided a mythical common ground for Iranians and Turanians in the preceding centuries. As the product of the union of an Iranian hero and the daughter of an idolatrous ruler of Kabul, the figure of Rostām bridged two political cultures whose distinctive features were projected into the mythical/historical past. In the Iranian version, he epitomized the brave, strong-willed, and independent aristocrat who nevertheless remained loyal to the Kayanian (and, by extension, Sasanian) kings of kings. The accounts that the Huns and Türks gave of Rostām have not survived. But even the stories that Ferdowsī collected would have given them ample material with which to envision a hero who, in combining Iranian and Turanian traditions, became the greatest, most manful aristocrat of the Iranian world, capable of overpowering and subduing even the kings of kings. In representing Rostām in the guise of a Hun waging the cosmic struggle against Ahremanic figures, the Sogdian murals imply that nomadic rulers could claim to have usurped the Zoroastrian cosmological functions of kingship through their genealogical assimilation of the hero. The enemies of Iran could, through the hybrid figure of Rostām, be recast as the defenders of the cosmic and political order.

Depiction of the hero Rostām in one of the murals at Panjikant, dressed and armed as a Hun (even displaying the cranial deformation typical of the Huns).

But the figure of the “mythical hero” allowed not simply for the appropriation of the Iranian mythical/historical framework, but also its subversion. In an XI c. CE Arabic compendium of early Türk traditions, the Dīwān al-lughāt al-turk, the scholar Maḥmūd al-Kāšgarī recorded reworkings of the mythical accounts featuring in the Xwadāy-Nāmag that depicted the Turanians as superior to the Iranians. The Türks were identified not with a crossbred figure such as Rostām, but with the Turanian king Afrāsīāb, whom Iranian histories regarded as the archetypal enemy of Iran. In these tales, the mythical king became known as the “chief of the Türks,” with the ceremonious epithet of tonga alpär, “a man, a warrior as strong as tiger”. In this work, Kāšgarī recorded Türk laments over the death of Afrāsīāb and identified the mythical king as the founder of various ancient cities within the territories of the Western Türk Qaghanate, from Kashgar to Merv. If the Iranian Šahān Šāhs regarded themselves as the successors of Wištasp, the Türks came to view Wištasp’s Central Asian antagonist, Afrāsīāb, as their own ancestor, at some stage between their late VI c. CE conquests and the XI c. CE redaction of their oral traditions. Dating the origins of such accounts though is difficult in the absence of a continuous Türk literary tradition. The evidence of onomastics and toponyms, however, suggests that Huns and Türks began to rewrite the Iranian mythical histories in the VI and VII c. CE. A late V or early VI c. CE king of Samarkand, likely a Hephthalite, entitled himself Tūrak in a Sogdian inscription on his bronze coinage, while a sub-king of the Sogdian city of Čaḡānīān (Middle Persian Čagīnīgān) ca. 650 CE described himself as Tūrānteš, “the battle ax of the Turanians”, in a Sogdian inscription at the throne room of the Türk ruler of Samarkand. In addition to rulers and sub-rulers advertising their genealogical ties to the mythical enemies of Iran and their names, the foremost urban center of Hunnic and Türk rule, Samarkand, appears already to have been identified with the Turanian king Afrāsīāb in the pre-Islamic period, an designation that the site of the ancient city continues to bear to this day.

 

[Semper Victor]

4.6 THE REIGN OF YAZDEGERD II. THE WAR AGAINST ROME AND EVENTS BEFORE THE ARMENIAN REBELLION.

Yazdegerd II was the son and successor to his father Warahrān V. He is the only Sasanian king of the V c. CE who died of natural causes after reigning for eighteen years (r. 439-57 CE). His reign is marked by military conflicts: a short war against Rome in 440 CE, an Armenian uprising allegedly caused by his religious policies in 451 CE and a long war (or several wars) against the Kidarites, that ended inconclusively. Archaeologists also think that it is during his reign that the Great Wall of Gorgān was built, one of the great lineal barriers of Late Antiquity, and the Caspian Gates in Darband were also fortified for the first time during his rule.

Although his reign is scarcely covered in the Perso-Arabic tradition, there are two Armenian sources that gives us a great amount of information about it, because it was under Yazdegerd II that the great Armenian rebellion of 450-451 CE happened, an event that has a pivotal place in Armenian history. These sources are the History of Armenia by Łazar P’arpec’i (written during the second half of the V c. CE) and especially the History of Vardan and the Armenian War by Ełiše Vardapet, a work written in the same timeframe as the former, and which is not only a source of considerable literary quality, but contains a very detailed account of this king’s reign, always from a Christian Armenian point of view. For most of Yazdegerd II’s reign, I will make extensive use of Ełiše’s work, because he’s the main source not only for events concerning Armenia, but also for events in the rest of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Both works are staunchly nationalist and pro-Christian, especially Ełiše’s work, which is a mix of crusader tale and hagiography, but the information they apport is simply not found anywhere else.

Yazdegerd II in a miniature of the Šāh-nāma of Šāh Ṭahmāsp.

In contrast to his abysmal reputation in the two Armenian sources quoted above, Yazdegerd II’s reputation in the Zoroastrian and Perso-Arabic tradition is particularly good, being remembered fondly as a king who was interested in the wellbeing of the country, justice, and for not being harsh-tempered like his grandfather Yazdegerd I and not following his father’s practice of hunting, feasting, and holding long audience sessions. Ṭabarī and Tha'ālibī wrote that he tended to the masses and organized the army, while according to Ebn al-Balḵī and Ḥamza Eṣfahāni, he was known as “Gentle Yazdegerd”. For most of his reign he trusted the wuzurg framādār Mihr-Narsē, who seems to have returned to favor under him and to have retained the royal favor until well into his reign (as we will see, Ełiše’s work supports this). Ṭabarī devotes to this king much less space than to his father, so we can see his entry in its entirety, although I’ll edit out the tale of the succession dispute between his two sons Hormazd and Pērōz, that we will see in detail later:

Ṭabarī, History of the Prophets and Kings; The Kings of the Persians and the Kings of al-Ḥīra:

Then there succeeded to the royal power after him Yazdajird, son of Bahrām Jūr. When the crown had been placed on his head, the great men of state and the nobles came into his presence, invoked blessings on his head, and congratulated him on his accession to the royal power. He replied to them in pleasant terms and mentioned his father, his virtues, how he had behaved toward the subjects, and how lengthy his sessions for them (sc., for hearing complaints and receiving petitions) had been. He told them that if they did not experience from him just what they had been used to experience from his father, they should not condemn him, for his periods of withdrawal from public gaze at court were only for some aspect of public good for the kingdom and to trick enemies. [He went on to say] that he had appointed Mihr Narsī, the son of Burāzah, his father's aide, as his vizier, that he would behave with them in the best possible manner and would lay down for them the best of ways of conduct, and that he would unceasingly humble his enemies but continuously behave with mildness and benevolence to his subjects and his troops.
(…)
The Romans had been dilatory in forwarding to Yazdajird, the son of Bahrām, the tribute they used to pay to his father. Hence Fayrūz sent against them Mihr Narsī, the son of Burāzah, with an army and materiel such as Bahrām had originally sent against them for that purpose (sc., of exacting tribute), and Mihr Narsī secured the imposition of his master's will for him.
According to some authorities, Yazdajird's period of royal power was eighteen years and four months, but according to others, seventeen years.

His rise to the throne (after his father’s “disappearance”) seems to have been fairly peaceful and undisputed. Ṭabarī mentions the war with the Romans but leaves out altogether the Armenian rebellion and the lengthy war against the Kidarite Huns in the East, that forced this king to reside many years in the northeastern provinces of the empire. Ṭabarī says nothing about conflicts with the nobility of Iran (conflicts that had ended in the murder of his two predecessors in the throne), but another Arabic source, Tha'ālibī, points towards disagreements. When the elite informed him that his new policies had offended the populace, he objected that:

Tha'ālibī, Kitāb laṭā'if al-ma'ārif:

(…) it is not correct for you to presume that the ways in which my father behaved towards you, maintaining you close to him, and bestowing upon you all that bounty, are incumbent upon all the kings that come after him (…) each age has its own customs.

Chronologically, the first conflict of his reign was the war against Rome in 441 CE. According to Greatrex and Lieu, it was barely a war, but an incursion by Sasanian forces that ended with the pay of a money sum by the Romans. It came at a difficult moment for the Eastern Roman Empire because Carthage had just fallen to the Vandals (in 439 CE) and both Roman empires were planning a joint counter offensive, and the European Huns under Attila had just invaded the Balkans.

Marcellinus Comes, a.441.1:

The Persians, Saracens, Tzanni, Isaurians and Huns left their own territories and plundered the lands of the Romans. Against them were sent Anatolius and Aspar, magistri militum, and they made peace with them for one year.

Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Ecclesiastical History, V.37.5–6:

Just such a thing (as the repulse of Rua by the forces of nature in 435/40) happened in the Persian war. When they (the Persians) learnt that the Romans were heavily occupied, they marched against the neighboring towns, violating the peace treaty. No one came to the aid of those under attack, for the emperor, confident in the peace, had sent his generals and soldiers to other wars. By hurling down a very fierce thunderstorm and a great hailstorm (God) hindered the (Persian) advance and impeded the movement of their horses. And in the course of twenty days they were not able to traverse as many stades, and by then the (Roman) generals had arrived and mustered the soldiers.

Movsēs Xorenac’i, History of the Armenians, III.67:

He (i.e. Yazdegerd II), having forgotten the treaty, as soon as he was reigning attacked the forces of the Greeks at Nisibis, commanding the army of Azerbaijan to go into our country (i.e. Armenia).

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian War, Chapter 1:

And in his exceeding madness, like a ferocious wild animal, he (i.e. Yazdegerd II) attacked the country of the Greeks; he struck as far as the city of Nisibis and he ravaged through assault many districts of the Romans and he set on fire all the churches. He collected plunder and captives and terrified all the forces of the country. Then the blessed emperor Theodosius (i.e. Theodosius II), because he was peace-loving in Christ, did not wish to go out against him in battle, but sent him a man whose name was Anatolius, who was his commander of the East, with many treasures. And the Persians, those who had fled because of Christianity and were in the city of the emperor, he seized and handed over to him. And whatever he (i.e. Yazdegerd II) said at the time he (i.e. Anatolius) fulfilled in accordance with his wishes and he prevented him from much anger; and he returned from there to his own city Ctesiphon.

Isaac of Antioch, Homilies,11.374–80:

When the Persians plundered our frontiers, many people from within the city of Nisibis joined (them). But after a little time, the army which had come to our border was lost, (together) with those who had joined it, so that their records were destroyed.

Not much is known about the war, except that it was started by Yazdegerd II with an invasion that apparently took the Eastern Romans by surprise (or at least it coincided by chance with Attila’s invasion in the Balkans and the Vandal conquest of Carthage, which meant that the Romans could not send reinforcements to the East). As you can see, the war did not make much of an impression in the western sources, except for the Armenian ones, because of Yazdegerd II’s role as the bête noire of Armenian Christian historians. And according to one of the sources (Marcellinus Comes) the Sasanians were not the only ones to take advantage of the Romans’ troubles, for the “Saracens”, Tzanni and Isaurians also raided the Roman eastern provinces. The Isaurians were a native people who lived in a mountainous region in southwestern Anatolia and that from time to time descended to the coast and plains of Lycia, Pamphylia, and Lycaonia to raid the cities and farms. they were opportunistic raiders but were constant nuisance that forced the Romans to garrison there two small legions (I and II Isaurica) to keep them under control. The Tzanni were a similar case, a mountain people who lived in the mountainous region of northeastern Anatolia, near the border with Lazica and Sasanian Armenia. And the Saracen obviously were the Arabs of the Syrian and northern Arabian deserts, probably the Lakhmids who acted jointly with their Sasanian overlords in the invasion of the Roman East.

Gold solidus of Theodosius II. On the obverse, bust of the emperor in armor with sword and shield and the legend D(ominus) N(oster) THEODOSIVS P(ius) F(elix) AVG(ustus). On the reverse, Theodosius II (large figure, as senior augustus) and Valentinian III; legend SALVS REI PVBLICAE (“safety of the republic”). Mint of Constantinople.

The reason for this sudden invasion was probably that Theodosius II had stopped making the regular payments of gold to the Sasanians to which the Romans were compelled by treaty. As part of the ideological “reinvention” of Iran in the late IV and early V c. CE based on Avestan-Kayanian mythology, the Romans were deemed to be descendants of Salm, the second of the sons of Fereydun. As such, he took no part in the murder of the first-born Iraj by the younger brother Tur, which (in Iranian mythical lore) ignited the secular enmity between Ērān and Turān. Thanks to this, the Sasanian kings and court could justify keeping a long-standing peace with Rome (which had been the main enemy of the first Sasanian kings) but on the basis that Rome should accept its secondary position with respect to Ērānšahr, and accept that the Šahān Šāh was the only source of legitimate political authority in the whole world.

Of course, no Roman emperor would publicly accept this with a formal script or travel personally to Ctesiphon to humiliate himself in front of his Sasanian counterpart, so this was managed in a more “diplomatic” way. According to Richard E. Payne (who supports his assertion on John Lydus), in the Roman-Sasanian treaty of 387 CE (in which Armenia was divided between both empires) the Romans also accepted to deliver a sum of about 500 Roman pounds of gold at irregular intervals (approx. 36,000 gold solidi); this sum was to be the Romans’ contribution for the defense of the Caucasian passes (the Alans’ and Caspian Gates) against the northern nomads, as they were a common enemy and both empires shared a common interest. But Payne points out that while these disbursements were seen (and explained) as diplomatic subsidies by the Romans, for the Sasanians these payments were unambiguously tributary, evidence of Roman subordination (and were publicized by the Sasanian court as such). Roman failures to submit the gold “tribute” rendered a Šahān Šāh’s internal political position even more precarious (especially given the “delicate” situation in the East during all of the V c. CE, where it was the Sasanians who had to pay tribute to the Huns), and Theodosius II’s failure (or outright refusal) to do so compelled Yazdegerd II to invade Roman territory in 441 CE.

That the issue of the war was just the tribute money is made clear by the Armenian chronicler Ełiše, who states clearly that the invasion was stopped by the magister militum Anatolius not with an army, but “with treasure”. As soon as Yazdegerd II received the Roman tribute, the campaign was stopped. According to T. Daryaee, the peace treaty also established (or perhaps reaffirmed) that neither power could build new fortresses on the common border (a clause that would hold until the first decade of the VI c. CE).

Most modern historians attribute the construction of the first large-scale fortifications at Darband (New Persian name for the modern city of Derbent in the Russian Republic of Dagestan) to Yazdegerd II. According to Touraj’s Daryaee commentated translation of the Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr, Yazdegerd II fortified the city of Kūmīs and turned it into a strong border post against the Čōl (New Persian Sōl; Arabic Sūl) Hunnic tribe in what the text calls “at the boundary of the Gruzinian Guard” (Wērōy-pahr); this was probably the old name of the pass; the term Darband is only attested from the VII c. CE onwards, and historians believe it began to be used in the V-VI c. CE. The fortifications that exist today (declared as World Heritage by UNESCO) date to a reconstruction in the XII c. CE, and the VI c. CE Sasanian king Xusrō I also rebuilt them in the stone. The ones built by Yazdegerd II in the V c. CE were built of mudbrick, but were already a massive work, which included a wall that cut completely the Caspian Gate from the Caspian Sea shore until well into the nearest escarpments of the Caucasus Mountains (a distance of about 3-3.5 km). The New Persian name Darband (dar “gate” + band “bar,” meaning literally “barred gate”) has given origin to the modern Russian name Derbent.

Location of the Darband Wall and the remains of Šahrestān-ī Yazdegerd.

In early Armenian sources the city was called Čor/Čoł, and this was reflected in the Greek name used for it in Late Roman and Byzantine sources: Tzour, Chorytzon or Zōarou. In Arabic texts the city was known as Bāb wa’l-Abwāb, Bāb al-Abwāb (the “Gate of Gates”), or simply al-Bāb (“the Gate”). It must be said that ancient western sources (both Greek and Latin) display a great degree of confusion when using the term “Caspian Gates”. Some refer to this pass, others to the Darial Pass in the middle of the Caucasus Mountains (also called the Alans’ Gate; Darial is derived from Parthian Dar i Alān) and an unknown pass in the Alborz Mountains south of the Caspian. Due to this inconsistence, the German scholar Erich Kettenhofen thought that the “mountain fortress” mentioned by Priscus and John Lydus for which the Romans paid subsidies was located at the Darial Pass and not at Darband. Kettenhofen based his opinion in the fact that an invasion coming through the Darial Pass could easily proceed into the Roman Anatolian provinces, while one coming through the Darband Pass menaced Azerbaijan and Media, which were Sasanian territories. He also stated that the Greek names of the “mountain fortresses” given by Priscus and John Lydus (Iouroeipaach and Biraparach) would have been derived from the Armenian for “Georgian fortress”, and that would be hard to explain if they referred to Darband, which is not located in Georgia (ancient Iberia).

According to Armenian sources (Ełiše Vardapet and Movsēs Dasxuranc’i), Darband was the seat of a Sasanian marzbān, and the Soviet excavations of the 1970s have given us quite a clear picture of the scale of the works. It was a single wall built in mud brick, with a maximum thickness at the base of 8 m, and a maximum height ca. 16 m. It was clearly intended to protect the rich and fertile areas south of the Caucasus from the invading tribes (in late Sasanian times, the Šahān Šāhs devoted considerable effort to develop irrigation systems and to build new cities in Azerbaijan). At any rate, in 450 CE rebellious Armenians and Albanians destroyed the fortifications, and in the reign of Pērōz (459-484 CE) the Huns, led by a certain Ambazuk, temporarily occupied the city.

Although Yazdegerd II’s reign was similar in length to those of his two predecessors (about twenty years in each case), the reign of this king was really full of events. We have already seen one of them, the war/border skirmish with the Romans, and because there was so little interaction with the Roman Empire, western sources mostly ignore him. The events of his reign foreign powers other than Rome (the Central Asian Huns) or religious minorities within Ērānšahr (Christians and Jews), and so we must turn to Armenian, Syriac or other sources (also numismatics and archaeology) to reconstruct the events of his tumultuous reign. These events were Armenian rebellion of 450-451 CE (allegedly caused by this king’s anti-Christian policies), an alleged persecution of Jews that began in 455 CE, and the Kidarite war that began probably in 442 CE, and which would last until the end of his reign, with some pauses; during these years Yazdegerd II moved to the East and spent long periods of time there; either at Gorgān or New-Šābuhr. According to archaeologists, it was at this time when one of the greatest building projects ever undertaken by the Sasanian Empire was realized: the Great Wall of Gorgān and the (shorter) Tammīša Wall not far from it.

According to Ełiše, the Armenian rebellion broke out while Yazdegerd II was waging war against the Honk’ (Huns, in Armenian), which could mean either the European Huns in the Caucasus or the Central Asian Huns (Armenian chroniclers used the term indistinctly in both cases, which has caused considerable confusion among historians). Both accounts coincide in putting the blame for the uprising on the wuzurg framādār Mihr-Narsē and the “magi” (i.e. the Zoroastrian priests, the mowbeds). Mihr-Narsē (especially in Łazar’s account) is depicted as a sort of diabolical, almost caricature-like figure, who managed to entice and manipulate the Šahān Šāh into his wicked plans to uproot Christianity from Armenia (this is a commonplace literary device in Christian accounts of Zoroastrian “persecution”, where the blame is usually diplomatically shifted from the ruling king and into his ministers and the wicked Zoroastrian priests).

Aerial view of the remains of Šahrestān-ī Yazdegerd.

But while Łazar goes straight into the description of the supposed plot by Mihr-Narsē to destroy Armenian Christianity, Ełiše provides a much more detailed background, saying that previously the Šahān Šāh had already been campaigning in the East (the Armenian chroniclers are the best source for the Sasanian-Hunnic wars because the Sasanian kings usually deployed Armenian troops in Central Asia; with the caveat that Armenian sources are usually infused with heavy doses of patriotism and Christian zeal, and in them the Sasanian armies are usually defeated unless they have an Armenian commander). Robert William Thomson, who translated Ełiše’s work, dated this “first round” of war between Yazdegerd II and the Kidarites to 442-449 CE, which means that the Šahān Šāh turned against the Kidarites as soon as the conflict against the Eastern Romans was finished:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 1:

The Magi said: “Valiant King, the gods have given you your empire and victory: they have no need of human honor; but if you convert to one religion all the nations and races in your empire, then the land of the Greeks will also obediently submit to your rule. But do you, king, immediately fulfill one counsel of ours. Raise an army and gather a force; march to the land of the K’ušan; assemble all nations and bring them through the Pass, and there make your dwelling. When you detain and enclose them all in a distant foreign land the plains of your desire will be fulfilled; as it seems to us in our religion, you will rule over the land of the K’usan, and the Greeks will not venture forth against your power – on condition that you exterminate the sect of the Christians” (…).
When the king (i.e. Yazdegerd II) saw this whole muster (i.e. the army he had gathered to march against the Kidarites, which included Armenian naxarars), and the numerous troops of the several nations which had cheerfully hastened to his service, he manifested his joy thereat before the nobles and all the host of his army. Outwardly he hid the desires of his mind, and unwillingly bestowed lavish presents on them. He marched immediately against the kingdom of the Honk’, whom they call K’ušan (i.e. the Kidarites), but after fighting two years he was unable to make any impression on them. Then he dispatched the warriors to each one’s place and summoned to his presence others in their stead with the same equipage. And thus, he established the habit from year to year and built there for himself a city to dwell in, beginning from the fourth year up to the eleventh.
When he saw that the Romans remained firm in their pact which they had with him, that the Xailndurk (i.e. probably the European Huns) had ceased to cross the pass of the Čor (i.e. Darband), and that in every region his empire lived in peace, and that he had put the king of the Honk’ into even greater straits since he had ruined most of his provinces and had prevailed over his rule, when he sent messengers over all the fire temples of his land, he increased the sacrifices of fire with white bulls and hairy goats, and he assiduously multiplied his impure cult. He honored many of the magi and the greatest of the chief-magi with crowns and distinctions. He gave a further command that all the goods and possessions of the Christians in Persia should be seized.

I think it is necessary to comment this passage by Ełiše, which is filled with important information. At the Third Synod of the Church of the East in 424 CE, this Church formally proclaimed its independence from the Church of the Roman Empire, so neither Warahrān V nor Yazdegerd II needed to fear much from the Christians of their empire that adhered to this Church. But the Churches of Armenia, Iberia and Albania were separate from the Church of the East and kept closer ties with the official Church in the Eastern Roman Empire. This Synod met at the request of Warahrān V to address the abdication of the catholicos of Vēh-Ardaxšīr/Ctesiphon, Mar Dādišō’, who was persuaded by the Synod to resume his functions. At the same time, the assembled bishops annulled the right of appeal to the West, and the catholicos of the East (qatoliqā dəmadnḥā) was to be responsible only to Christ, who had chosen him and set him at the head of his Church. These decisions meant the de facto canonical emancipation from the see of Antioch, and the Church of the East placed itself out of the pentarchy of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem. So, in my opinion it’s quite conceivable that, given the long history of Armenian rebellions and troubles and the great importance that the Armenian aristocratic cavalry had for Sasanian amies, the Sasanian court tried to impose some sort of control over the religious practices of the Armenians; I will address this point in more length below. As for the real cause of Yazdegerd II’s war against the Kidarites, it is stated clearly in one of the surviving fragments by Priscus of Panion:

Priscus of Panion, Fragment 33 (from the Excerpts on Romans’ Embassies to Foreigners of Constantine VII Porphyrogenites):

The Persian monarch (i.e. Pērōz) then received into his land the ambassador Constantius, who had remained in Edessa for a time, as I said about his embassy. He ordered him to come while he was occupied not in the cities, but on the border between his cities and the Kidarite Huns. He was engaged in [a war] caused by the Huns’ refusal to take the tribute that past Persian and Parthian kings had agreed upon. His father (i.e. Yazdegerd II), having refused to pay the tribute, took up the war and then bequeathed it and the kingdom to his son.

This fragment is key, because it informs us that the “great victory” won by Warahrān V against the Kidarites had not been so great if he had been forced to pay tribute to the end of his reign. It was Yazdegerd II who stopped paying tribute and started a war that would last until the end of his rule and would extend into his son’s reign.

If Thomson’s calculation that before the Armenian rebellion Yazdegerd II was able to spend seven years in a state of war against the Kidarites, this implies a considerable degree of internal peace within the empire, and that his other borders were secure. As noted by the historian Lee. E. Patterson, we have a curious paucity of coverage for Yazdegerd II’s reign in the Perso-Arabic tradition, with emphasis on his personal piety and on tensions with the Iranian nobility, while the Armenian and Syriac sources make him into a religious zealot; a tradition that has made its way into much of modern scholarship. But as Patterson points out, it is not Yazdegerd II’s religiosity that best explains his “persecution” of Christians and Jews in the empire. Control of Armenia continued to be important for securing the Roman frontier, but even more pressing for Yazdegerd II was heightened internal instability, including strained relations with the nobility, and the volatile situation in the East. As noted in Ełiše’s text, the war against the Kidarites saw little progress between 442-449 CE, and in this situation it was key that the Šahān Šāh secured the full collaboration and loyalty of the aristocratic elites of his empire. In this respect, it is significant that Yazdegerd II, the alleged Zoroastrian zealot, did not move against the Christians until his eighth regnal year.

Remains of the Gilgilchay Wall in northern Azerbaijan, built in Sasanian times as a second line of defense after the Darband Wall.

Historians do not agree about where did Yazdegerd II relocate his residence during this war (as mentioned by Ełiše). Some incline towards Nēw-Šābuhr, but this goes against Ełiše’s text, which mentions explicitly that he built a new city. Currently, most historians seem to agree that this city must have been Kūmīs (or Qumis) (near the modern Iranian city of Qom, in Khorasan), based on the reference at the Šahrestānīhā ī Ērānšahr, and that the city’s name would have been Šahrestān-ī Qūmis. T. Daryaee thinks that this is a reference to this king’s building of the fortifications at Darband, as we have seen above. Due to the several building enterprises of the king and the confusion in names between Armenian, Middle Persian, and Syriac sources, ii is difficult to make sense of this entanglement of names and places. Like was the custom among Sasanian kings, he probably rebuilt and enlarged an existing city rather than making a completely new foundation. As we have seen in previous posts, Gorgān (which was both the name of a province and its capital city) had already played an important function under Yazdegerd I and Warahrān V, and its mint had been particularly active during the latter’s reign. The building of the Great Wall of Gorgān during this timeframe also seems to reinforce this hypothesis, but some doubts remain.

There is an East Syriac Christian document dated to the VI c. CE, the so-called Chronicle of Karkā ḏe Bēṯ Selōḵ (modern-day Kirkuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan) that states that that after the eighth year of his reign, Yazdegerd II went to campaign “against the Čol” where he subjugated the local kings and built his city. The problem here of course is that Čoł/Čor is the Armenian name for Darband, but historians of the first half of the XX c. located it to the east of the Caspian Sea, north of Gorgān. In accordance with the location of Čoł/Čor in the area of Darband pass, Šahrestan-ī Yazdegerd was identified by Soviet archaeologists as the large fortified settlement situated 20 km to the south from Darband, at a northern suburb of the modern settlement of Beliji and known as Torpakh-kala (Turkic for “Earth fortress”) and Shehergah (from New Persian Šahrgāh, “Place of the city”). This can be probably be put in connection with the mention in Ełiše’s quoted text above that Yazdegerd II moved against the Christians when he realized “that the Xailndurk had ceased to cross the pass of the Čor”. The Chronicle of Karkā ḏe Bēṯ Selōḵ gives us a precise date for the building of Šahrestān-ī Yazdegerd (different from Šahrestān-ī Qūmis), that probably marked the end of Yazdegerd II’s fight against the trespassers (in all probability, European Huns) through the Darband Pass: after Yazdegerd II’s eight regnal year, i.e. 447-448 CE. If we put this is context, this means that Yazdegerd II spent the period 442-449 CE in the East fighting against the Kidarites (probably based in Qom, as we have already seen above) and that probably in 449 CE he had to rush to the Caucasus because the European Huns had invaded his empire through the Darband Pass. And in 450-451 CE, the Christian Armenian, Iberian, and Albanian nobilities rose in rebellion.

Remains of the defensive ramparts at Torpakh-kala in in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, which correspond to the ancient Sasanian foundation of Šahrestan-ī Yazdegerd.

And there is still another opinion about the city foundations by Yazdegerd II. In his exhaustive 1989 work La geographie administrative de l'empire Sassanide, the Belgian numismatist Ryka Gyselen listed all the known bullae and seals of Sasanian officials known back then (in the thirty years since then, many more have appeared) and she listed a surviving seal of a maguh (an official of rank lower than a šahrab) for a district called Ērān-Xwarrah-Yazdegerd, whose foundation she dated to the reign of Yazdegerd II. The location is unsure, but she was of the opinion that tis royal foundation would have been located east of the Caspian Sea and north of Gorgān, in what is now southwestern Turkmenistan; an area north of the Great Wall of Gorgān actually and which most modern historians consider that was not under Sasanian control at the time.

In my opinion, given the geographic proximity between the Darband Pass and Armenia (indeed, Darband was located within Caucasian Albania, Ałuank in Armenian, or Arrān in Middle Persian), this cannot have been a coincidence. For some reason, it was this sequence of events that made Yazdegerd II (perhaps even while he was still in the southern Caucasus) lose faith or to start to doubt the loyalty of the Christian aristocracy of these countries, and decided to try to reassert royal authority (or rather, the “Idea of Iran” to borrow Michael Axworthy’s expression) over them, by fomenting Zoroastrianism (as I will explain below, I have doubts about “forced conversions” being the real intention behind Yazdegerd II’s decree).

Another intriguing point in this sequence of events is the attack through the Darband Pass. At this time, the Caucasian and Pontic Steppes were under control of the European Huns, under their king Attila. Precisely in the summer of 449 CE, an Eastern Roman ambassador named Maximinus left Constantinople accompanied by his secretary Priscus of Panion and the Hunnic nobleman Edeco, who had been sent to the Eastern Roman capital that spring to deliver Attila’s demands to Theodosius II. In 447 CE, war had broken out between the Huns and the Eastern Romans, and the Roman field armies had been unable to stop the Hunnic onslaught, with Attila advancing as far south as Greece and devastating about seventy cities and towns in the Balkans. In 448 CE, Theodosius II had signed a peace treaty with Attila and had agreed to pay tribute to the Hunnic king. When the Roman ambassadors reached Attila’s residence on the northern bank of the Danube, in what is now eastern Hungary, they stayed there for a few days. During their stay, they met a Western Roman embassy, and Maximinus and Priscus conversed with their fellow Roman ambassadors. One of them, the comes Romulus, informed the Eastern Romans that Attila was considering attacking the Sasanian Empire. When someone among the group asked what route Attila intended to follow, Romulus said that he would proceed through Media, as it lay “close to Scythia” and the Huns had followed the same route before (in the invasion of 395 CE). In our timeline, this seemingly small remark in Priscus’ account could indicate a real war plan by Attila; perhaps the invasion repelled by Yazdegerd II had been a local raid, and now Attila wanted to retaliate at a larger scale, and the building of the Darband Wall and the city of Šahrestān-ī Yazdegerd were the Šāhān Šāh’s response to this threat.

The Dutch scholar Hans T. Bakker has recently raised an intriguing question though, that of a possible cooperation between European and Central Asian Huns, and also (as we will see later) between the Sasanian and Gupta Empires against the Kidarites. This is a completely unproved (and likely impossible to prove) hypothesis, but a very suggestive one. The Hunnic attack in the Caucasus stopped Yazdegerd II’s seven-year war against the Kidarite Huns in Central Asia, at a moment in which (as Ełiše’s account says) he was starting to wear them down (and given Ełiše’s hostility against this king, any positive bit of information, however small, has a high probability of being true). And the restart of hostilities against the Kidarites by Yazdegerd II in 453 CE coincided exactly with Attila’s death (and as we will see, probably there was also a developing war between the Gupta prince Skandagupta and the Kidarite-Alkhon Hunnic confederacy in India).

Thus, in my opinion the problems of Yazdegerd II with the Caucasian Christian aristocracies must be seen and understood within this bigger picture, in which we should also take into account two further elements: the final development of Kayanian-Avestan ideology as justification for royal rule under Yazdegerd II and the role of his wuzurg framādār/Hazārbed Mihr-Narsē. Starting with Yazdegerd II, a new legend appeared on the Sasanian coinage: “The Mazda-worshipping majesty, the Kayanian”. This publicized the king’s identification with the Avestān mythical dynasty, the Kayanians, exactly at the time when Yazdegerd II stayed for a prolonged time period in the East fighting the Kidarites. There was also a new reverse style introduced by Yazdegerd II, where the attendants face the fire altar in a posture of reverence. This may put further emphasis on the religious devotion of the king and bear witness to his actions on and off the battlefield against non-Zoroastrians. From this moment until the fall of the Sasanian Empire, all the kings will style themselves as “Kayanian” in their coinage. The mints of Āsūrestān (AS) and Xūzestān (WH) were most active in the west, and the mints of Gorgān (GW) and Marv (ML) were most active in the east of the empire, no doubt providing for the wars on both fronts.

Silver drahm of Yazdegerd II. Mint of Qom or Gorgān.

 

[Semper Victor]

4.7 THE REIGN OF YAZDEGERD II. RELIGIOUS POLICIES AND BACKGROUND OF THE ARMENIAN REBELLION.


The V c. CE was a time of religious turmoil both for Christians and Jews, both within and outside the Sasanian Empire. Both the Church of the East and the Armenian Apostolic Church accepted the decisions of the great IV c. CE councils (Nicaea and the First Council of Constantinople), but the Christological disputes of the V c. CE councils caused problems. No Armenian representatives attended the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE, but the Armenian Apostolic Church accepted its canons. Again, due to the rebellion, no Armenian representatives would attend the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE, but the Armenian Apostolic Church did not accept its canons. In 506 CE, the First Council of Dvin met to address the issues left still unresolved with the Chalcedonian canons; following which the Armenian Apostolic Church adopted a Miaphysite theology in line with the Churches of Alexandria and Antioch. As for the Church of the East, it never formally adopted the canons of the councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, and in the Synod of Bēth Lapaṭ in 484 CE (held at Vēh-Andiyok-Šābuhr [or Gondēšāpūr] in Xūzestān) it adopted officially a theology in line with Nestorius’ Christology, which had been formally condemned at Ephesus. Also, in 444 CE (shortly before the Armenian rebellion) twenty Armenian prelates gathered in a synod at Šahapivan to condemn the doctrine of the Messalians, (i.e. Paulicians), a heresy that would gain deep roots in Armenia. It’s of great interest to note that the acts of this synod held just six years before the great Armenian rebellion (contrary to the claims of Łazar P’arpec’i or Ełiše) say nothing about persecutions by the Sasanian authorities or about any sort of unrest or foreign menace affecting Armenia.

Remains of the church of Mary in Ephesus, where the Third Ecumenical Council met in 431 CE.

As for the Jews, they had undergone some problems during the early years of Sasanian rule, under Ardaxšir I, but during the reign of Šābuhr I, this king was able to reach a sort of modus vivendi agreement with one of the leading rabbis of the Jewish community within the empire, rabbi Samuel. From this moment on, the Sasanian Jewry underwent no troubles until the reign of Yazdegerd II. Despite the overall loyalty of the Jews to Sasanian rule, they could also cause disturbances, usually due to Messianic expectations. According to the East Syriac Acts of the Persian Martyrs (Christian texts were systematically hostile to Jews and wasted no opportunity to paint them in a bad light), during Šābuhr II’s reign “some Jews” followed a “Messiah” who claimed that Julian’s reconstruction of the Temple marked the time to return to Palestine, and this caused the king’s troops to massacre “many thousands of them”. It is worthy to notice that this news is given by a Christian source (which as I have said above were usually deeply anti-Jewish) but Jewish sources keep complete silence about it.

Something similar could have happened under Yazdegerd II and his son Pērōz. Rabbinic sources from post-Sasanian times report that in 455 CE Yazdegerd II decreed the prohibition of celebrating the Sabbath publicly, and that in 467-468 CE Pērōz closed all the Jew’s schools and executed rabbis and even the Jewish Exilarch himself. The Jewish sources offer no explanation for this sudden change in policy by the Sasanian court, but in a later Islamic source, Ḥamza Eṣfahāni (who resorted to Perso-Arabic sources that have not survived), we read that in 468 CE “the Jews of Eṣfahān” killed two mowbeds by flaying them alive, which in turn brought brutal reprisals upon the Jewish inhabitants of the city: half of them were massacred and all the children were handed as slaves to the local fire temple. As with Christian sources, Jewish sources offer no explanation for the actions of the authorities other than the hatred of the Zoroastrians towards them, while the Iranian account transmitted through Ḥamza Eṣfahāni offers a precise reason for the reprisals.

As the American scholar Jacob Neusner noted, this sudden change in the official policy of the Sasanian court after more than two centuries of untroubled coexistence cannot be attributed to Zoroastrian bigotry alone, especially as later the Sasanian authorities and the Jewish inhabitants of the empire went back to “business as usual”. Neusner made an interesting conjecture: in 468 CE it would have been 400 years since the destruction of the Temple (dated to the rabbis to 68 CE). It is known that in the aftermath of the Council of Ctesiphon in 410 CE and Yazdegerd I’s conciliatory policies towards Christianity, some Christians harbored hopes that the king would convert and the Sasanian Empire would become a Christian state like had happened with the Roman Empire and Constantine I. These exaggerated expectations caused some Christians to kill and/or mistreat mowbeds and to destroy fire temples, which in turn would have caused the “persecutions” against Christians that appear in Christian sources during the last years of Yazdegerd I’s reign (for which Mihr-Narsē also took much of the blame in Christian sources).

Neusner thought that a similar situation could have happened with the Jewish community, but in a larger scale, involving even its religious and secular authorities, hence the execution of the Exilarch and the leading rabbis (during the “persecutions” in the late years of Yazdegerd I and the early years of Warahrān V, the catholicos of the Church of the East was left untroubled, as were the bishops). In Neusner’s opinion, the prohibitions enacted in 455 CE against public acts of the Jewish religion probably brought the undesired effect of heightening Messianic expectations among the Jewish community, which would lead to the events during Pērōz’s reign. Although in my opinion Neusner hypothesis still leaves unresolved the issue of the specific reason behind the decree of 455 CE, two years before Yazdegerd II’s death.

Agata ring seal from the Sasanian era depicting the sacrifice of Isaac. Paris, Cabinet des Médailles.

In my opinion, we should again look at the wider picture. By 450 CE, when the Armenian rebellion flared up, Yazdegerd II was in his thirteenth regnal year. If he were a genuine bigot, it would have been quite strange that he had waited this long to impose his religious policies. He had been involved for seven years in a deadly struggle against the Kidarites and he had also probably been forced to deal with a sudden Hunnic threat in the Caucasus sometime during this time frame. In these circumstances, the last thing he needed was to stir religious troubles. But what he could not compromise in these dangerous circumstances was royal authority and especially the integrity of the ideology (based on Zoroastrian lore and religion) that justified the right to rule of the House of Sāsān and the privileges and primacy of the Iranian aristocracy which provided the bulk of the armed forces of the empire. This was non-negotiable, and if the non-Zoroastrian minorities of the empire endangered these ideological foundations of the empire, they had to be put into line.

An important factor that reveals that what Yazdegerd II pursued was not the elimination of Christianity in his empire is that the Aramaic-speaking Christian population of Mesopotamia and Xūzestān that followed the Church of the East were left alone and untroubled (including aristocrats and bishops), except for sporadic cases of “persecution” that when studied in detail are always due to Christians “trespassing” into what the Zoroastrian ruling class considered to be unacceptable, like attacks against Zoroastrian priests or shrines, or proselytizing among Zoroastrians. In fact, it is during this period when the presence of the Church of the East is first attested in Sogdiana, which means that by then the spread of Christian communities had reached the easternmost parts of the empire. The “general persecution” decried in the Armenian sources happened only in the three Christian Caucasian territories of Armenia, Iberia, and Albania, and far from being a persecution against Christianity in itself, it targeted the aristocracy in particular. This was due probably to the fact that the Sasanians gave to the Armenian and other Caucasian aristocracies a status similar to that of the Ērān (the Iranian aristocrats from Iran proper). These countries (especially Armenia) had social “feudal” structures very similar to those of Iran itself, their legal systems were similar to the one in Iran, their official posts were adapted from Iranian ones (Sparapet/Spāhbed, etc.) their noble houses were intermarried with the great houses of Iran (or in some causes they were even cadet branches) and they could apport to the royal army important contingents of feudal heavy cavalry of high military quality. And to top it all, the traditional religion of Armenia before the expansion of Christianity was a variation of traditional Iranian religion, which included fire temples and the veneration of Ohrmazd, Mihr, etc. For example, the catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church when Warahrān V turned Armenia into a Sasanian province, Sahak (“Isaac”; or Saint Sahak in the Armenian, Orthodox and Catholic traditions), is also known in Armenian tradition as “Sahak the Parthian” (Sahak Parthev) and in his History of Armenia Łazar P’arpec’i describes him as a relative of Sūrēn Pahlav, the first Sasanian marzbān of Armenia, who was obviously a member of the great House of Sūrēn. And this was still respected even though his relation to the House of Sūrēn was quite remote in time: he was a descendant of Saint Gregory the Illuminator, the evangelizer of Armenia, whose father Anak the Parthian was apparently a member of the House of Sūrēn.

Due to these cumulative factors, problems arose repeatedly in Armenia under Sasanian rule, as the court of Ctesiphon struggled to adapt its policies regarding the role of the Ērān and the Zoroastrian religion within the empire to the special and complex case of the Armenian aristocracy. A further complication that is systematically sidelined in Armenian sources (that are all written by Christian priests and follow an almost zealot pro-Christian line) is that most probably (as modern historians think) the alleged conversion of Tirdat III of Armenia to the Christian faith in 301 CE did not mean that all the Armenian aristocracy followed suit. Modern scholars suspect that one of the reasons behind the factionalism and civil wars in Armenia during the IV c. CE could have been the opposition between Christian and Zoroastrian aristocrats, who would have sided respectively either with Rome or Ērānšahr. We also know (as is stated in the Armenian chronicles) that the hierarchy of the Armenian Apostolic Church was very active in its fight against “paganism” in Armenia, and if these activities (razing of “pagan temples” and the construction of churches and monasteries on their remains, etc.) continued once the country became a Sasanian province, they were going to cause a conflict with the Zoroastrian ruling class of Ērānšahr sooner or later.

The southern Caucasus in the V c. CE, showing Sasanian-controlled Armenia, along with the vassal kingdoms of Iberia and Albania. The capital of Sasanian Armenia (the residence of the marzbān) was Dvin in central Armenia.

As for the Kingdom of Iberia (which unlike Armenia was never turned into a Sasanian province but kept its own royal lineage). It was ruled by a cadet branch of the House of Mihrān, another of the Seven Great Houses of Iran (the so-called Mihranid or Chosroid dynasty, whose representative at the time of the Caucasian revolt was Vakht’ang I Gorgasali). A collateral branch of the Mihranids also ruled over the province of Gugark’ in northern Armenia (the ruler between 430-455 CE was Bakur II). According to Movsēs Dasxuranc’i, Albania was ruled by a family of Armenian origin, the Eṙanšahik of Arranshahik (who had ruled over Iberia under the Mihranids seized the throne) and bore the Persian title of Arrān Šāhs, but modern scholars dispute this and believe that Albania was ruled by a native dynasty until the late V c. CE when they were succeeded by the Mihranids. Iberia and Albania had their own “national” churches who, like the Apostolic Church of Armenia, would also follow a Miaphysite Christology after rejecting acceptance of the canons of the Council of Chalcedon.

As for Mihr-Narsē, he probably reached the highest point of his career under Yazdegerd II, and it is probable that he was entrusted with running the administration of the empire while the king spent so many years in the East. We know more about Mihr-Narsē than about any other Sasanian official thanks to Ṭabarī, who wrote in detail about him in his chapter about Warahrān V:

Ṭabarī, History of the Prophets and Kings; The Kings of the Persians and the Kings of al-Ḥīra:

He was Mihr Narsī, son of Burāzah, son of Farrukhzādh, son of Khūrahbādh, son of Sīsfādh, son of Sīsānabrūh, son of Kay Ashak, son of Dāra, son of Dāra, son of Bahman, son of Isfandiyār, son of Bishtāsb. Mihr Narsī was held in high honor by all the kings of Persia because of his fine education and manners, the excellence of his judgment, and the contentedness and tractability of the masses of the people with him. He had, moreover, several sons, who approached him in worth and who fulfilled various offices for the monarchs that almost reached his own office [in rank and importance]. There were three of them who had reached an outstanding position. One was Zurwāndādh, whom Mihr Narsī had intended for religion and the religious law. In this sphere he attained such a leading position that Bahrām Jūr appointed him Chief Hērbadh (Hirbadhān Hirbadh), a rank near to that of Chief Mōbadh. The second was called Mājusnas, who remained in charge of the department of the land tax all through the reign of Bahrām Jūr, the name of his rank in Persian being Wastrā'i'ūshān Sālār. The third was called Kārd[ār], supreme commander of the army, the name of his rank in Persian being Rathāshtārān Sālār; this is a rank higher than that of al-Iṣbahbadh and is near to that of al-Arjabadh (…).

The explanation about Mihr-Narsē continues, but I already quoted the continuation in one of the posts about Warahrān V. This is a dense paragraph in which Ṭabarī furnishes us with much information about this official. One thing that he does not say is if Mihr-Narsē was indeed a member of the Sūrēn clan. I have found this bit of information repeated by R. E. Payne and other modern historians like P. Pourshariati, but I have been unable to find their source, so I say this with some reservation. Especially because Ṭabarī says nothing of the sort, and his entry about Mihr-Narsē is filled with praise about the man; Ṭabarī clearly took it from some official source of the Sasanian period, probably from the Arabic translation of the Xwadāy-Nāmag. First of all, the genealogy of Mihr-Narsē according to Ṭabarī makes him a descendant of the Kayanians, like the House of Sāsān and the Great Houses of Iran. If an official source transmitted this information, then it is clear that Mihr-Narsē belonged to the most rarified heights of the social hierarchy of the Sasanian Empire, or was at least allowed to fabricate a genealogy that gained him access to this very exclusive social group. And not any sort of descendant: he is a descendant of Kay Wištasp himself, so he had this common ancestor with the Sasanians themselves. Another surprising fact in Mihr-Narsē’s genealogy according to Ṭabarī is that the wuzurg framādār had Arsacid ancestry (according to C. E. Bosworth, the translator of Ṭabarī’s work, Kay Ashak would be a deformation of Aršak, i.e. Arsaces). This means that after more than two centuries, the official hostility of the Sasanians against the Arsacids had abated to the point where the main official of the empire could display Arsacid ancestry publicly without it posing any trouble. This is probably not a thing that would be added in a completely fabricated genealogy, so it is possibly true that Mihr-Narsē had some sort of Arsacid ancestry.

Remains of the stone bridge built by Mihr-Narsē at Ardaxšīr-Xwarrah (modern Fīrūzābād, in Fārs).

Other than his ancestry, the important information from this passage is that Mihr-Narsē managed to place his three sons in important official positions, and they are significant ones:

• Zurvāndād (the name means “given by Zurvān”) achieved the high rank of hērbedān herbed, leader of the clerics (the ones charged with religious instruction at the religious schools or hērbedestāns scattered across the empire). The name of this official has been interpreted by many historians as indication that Mihr-Narsē might have been a follower of “Zurvanism”, an alleged “heresy” or “theological current” of Zoroastrianism, but its very existence has been questioned in more recent scholarship, as its not mentioned in any Middle Persian/Zoroastrian sources, only in Islamic sources.
• Kārdār became the “chief of warriors” (MP artēštārān sālār), which according to the Pahlavi Books formed the second “state” of the Sasanian society; hence the note in Ṭabarī that his rank was higher than that of the Ērān-Spāhbed.
• Māhgušnasp, who became the “chief of the cattle breeders” (MP wāstaryōšān sālār), the third “state” of the Sasanian society.

The British scholar Robert C. Zaehner and the Soviet scholar Anahit G. Perikhanian pointed out that this distribution of offices between the three sons may suggest that Mihr-Narsē attempted to reorganize and bring order to the Sasanian class system by appointing each of his sons at the head of each of them, which would mean that the wuzurg framādār had really overarching ambitions and a long reach in his post. The Danish scholar Arthur Christensen thought that these were not merely representative or ceremonial posts, but that they were part of the administrative apparatus of the state, especially the wāstaryōšān sālār, who would have been in charge of collecting the taxes from the peasantry (probably the main source of fiscal income for the monarchy).

As for the so-called “Zurvanism”, it is a controversial issue still to this day. The first notices of a movement called zurvānīyya among the Iranians derive from the rich tradition of Muslim writings on religions and religious movements in the early Islamic world. These sources obviously reflect, first and foremost, Muslim religious concerns. These Muslim writers had a keen interest in elaborating their own concept of the oneness of God (Arabic towḥīd) by comparing it to the views of competing religions. Whenever they found what to them must have looked like substantive differences in the description of God’s nature (both in the developing Muslim theologies and among the non-Muslim religions of their time), they intuitively translated these differences into differences of schools or sects. In this, they were the inheritors of a similar style of classifying (and solving) philosophical and religious difference that originated in the ancient world, both among historians of philosophy (known as doxographers) and among early Christian authors who intended to defend their version of the religion against the opinions of others (the so-called heresiographers, like Epiphanius of Salamis or John of Damascus).

Although much valuable information has been preserved in all these sources, this information is almost irretrievably corrupted both on an empirical and on a structural level. Empirically, the evidence is often contaminated by the intrusion of imaginary persons, schools, and opinions and on a structural level, differences of opinion were automatically translated into social units (“sects,” “movements,” “schools”) that may not correspond to any recognizable social or historical reality.

Rock inscription at Ardaxšīr-Xwarrah where Mihr-Narsē claimed that he had the bridge (picture above) built.

Western scholars who first began to write about Zoroastrianism were likewise indebted to this tradition in the history of ideas and of religions. It had acquired for them, moreover, the same sort of importance that it had had for the early Muslim writers, as the Reformation had given way to a very similar (and still ongoing then) fragmentation of the Christian churches that manifested itself in the realms of ideas (theology), of ritual, and of modes of organization. Since their sources, apart from the writings of Classical authors (who did not distinguish between different types of religion among the Iranians at all), were the same early Muslim writers on Zoroastrianism, it is not surprising that the notion of a “Zurvanite” movement entered Western views of Zoroastrianism at an early stage (in the XVIII c.).

Zurvān (meaning “Time”) appears as a minor god in Avestan texts. He is not mentioned very often, but he is clearly present as one among many abstract deities, in this case representing the notion of “time” in the sense of a “period of time”. The Yasna ceremony ends with an invocation of this deity, in the company of the related gods Rāman (“peace”), Thwasha (“firmament”), and Vayu (representing the “void” between the worlds of light and darkness), introducing an element of speculation on the structure of the cosmos in terms of space and time as the precondition for the genesis of our present world of mixture. It is this theme that is consistently taken up in much later sources, which give systematic discussions of the crucial narrative of the origin of creation in the battle between the two spirits.

Another version of Zurvān appears in Manichean texts, which is important for two reasons: it shows that the notion of Zurvān as supreme deity is older than the earliest sources we have for the myth of Zurvān (that I will address shortly below), and it seems to suggest that this role for Zurvān was more typical of Pārs and speakers of Middle Persian than it was of the other Iranian lands. The evidence seems conclusive, in the sense that the interpretation of the “Father of Greatness” as Zurvān occurs already in the Šābuhragān, the book written in Middle Persian and dedicated by Mani to Šābuhr I (and the only text written by Mani himself of which large portions survive). This allows us to date its occurrence to the early Sasanian period. The identification of the “Father of Greatness” with Zurvān is not found in Manichean Parthian, which has usually been taken to indicate that this role of Zurvān did not correspond to a Parthian/Arsacid version of Zoroastrianism.

And finally, there is the Sasanian myth, the myth of Zurvān, which is an alternative version of the Zoroastrian myth of creation known from Greek, Syriac, Armenian, and Arabic sources. In this myth, which is surprisingly uniform in the various sources, the two spirits (Ohrmazd and Ahreman) are presented as the twin offspring of a pre-existing god Zurvān. The difference among versions of the myth is largely restricted to the origin of the two spirits: the myth presents Zurvān as sacrificing for a period of a thousand years, in order to beget a son. Zurvān experienced a moment of doubt; as a result, Ohrmazd came into being because of the sacrifices and Ahreman out of Zurvān’s doubt. When Zurvān realized that two children had been formed in his womb, he promised to give dominion to his first-born, intending it to be Ohrmazd, but Ahreman pierced the womb and presented himself as the first-born. It is here that the stories vary, but in general it is from the birth of the two spirits onwards that the narration of the cosmogony follows the customary lines known from “standard” Zoroastrianism. The myth of Zurvān is thus some sort of a “prequel” to the ordinary story of creation, and there are very few (if any) indications that this prequel was considered as crucial by any contemporary Zoroastrian, as it has seemed to modern Western scholars.

It is important to stress here that the notions of “monotheism”, “dualism” and “polytheism” are completely alien to the ancient Iranian religious tradition and do not correspond in any meaningful way to self-identifications of Zoroastrianism before the Islamic period. It has been possible for modern scholars (and even for modern Zoroastrians themselves), as a consequence, to present “standard” Zoroastrianism with each of these labels simultaneously, which is a sure indication that the labels do not fit. Rivers of ink have flown while trying to sort out if the myth of Zurvān was a “reworking” (or even “betrayal”) of classical Zoroastrianism in the face of a growing “monotheism” in the Near East in Late Antiquity, but since there is nothing to indicate that this was even noticed by any Zoroastrian of the period, most of this debate has been pointless.

In Ełiše’s narration of the Armenian rebellion of 450-451 CE, the myth of Zurvān plays an important part; he includes in his History of Vardan and the Armenian war a letter allegedly written by Mihr-Narsē to the Armenians, urging them to give up their religion and accept the truth of Zoroastrianism, which he summarizes by retelling the myth of Zurvān:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 2:

Mihrnerseh, Great Vizir of Iran and non-Iran, many greetings to Greater Armenia.
You must know that every man who dwells under heaven and does not accept the Mazdean religion is deaf and blind and deceived by the demons of Haraman (i.e. Ahreman).
For before heaven and earth existed the great god Zrvan (i.e. Zurvān) sacrificed for a thousand years and said: “Perhaps I shall have a son, Ormizd by name, who will create heaven and earth”. and he conceived two in his belly, one from making sacrifice and one from saying “perhaps”. When he knew that there were two in his belly, he said: “To the one who emerges first I shall give my rule”.
But the one who had been conceived from his doubt tore open the belly and came out. Zrvan said to him: “Who are you?” He said: “I am your son Ormizd”. Zrvan said to him: “My son is luminous and sweet-smelling; you are gloomy and evil-loving”. And when he wept very bitterly, he gave him his rule for a thousand years.
When he begat the other son he called him Ormizd. He took the rule from Arhmn (i.e. Ahreman) and gave it to Ormizd, saying to him: “Up to now I sacrificed to you, now you do sacrifice to me”. And Ormizd created heaven and earth, but Arhmn worked evil in opposition.
And creation is thus divided: the angels are Ormizd’s, but the demons Arhmn’s. And everything good, both in heaven and here, is Ormizd’s and everything harmful done there and here Arhmn worked. Likewise, whatever is good on earth Ormizd did, and whatever is not good Arhmn did. Just as Ormizd made man, Arhmn made diseases, illnesses, and death. All misfortunes and disasters that occur, and bitter wars, are the creations of the evil side; but success and empires and glory and honors and health of body, beauty of face, eloquence, and longevity, these receive their existence from the good one. And everything which is not like that has been mixed with a creation of the evil one’s.
All men are in error who say: “God made death, and good and evil derive from him”. Especially as the Christians say: “God is jealous. Because of the eating of a single fig from the tree God made death, and subjected man to that punishment”. Such jealousy not even man has for man, let alone God for men. For who says this is deaf and blind and deceived by the demons of Haraman.
Again there is another error: “God who created heaven and earth came”, they say, “and was born of some woman named Mary, whose husband was Joseph.”. But in truth he was son to a certain Banturak by an illicit intercourse. And many have gone astray after such a man.
If the Romans have ignorantly gone astray in their great folly and have been deprived of our perfect religion, they have brought their own ruin upon themselves. But why are you infatuated with their error? Do hold the same religion that your lord has, especially because we have to give account for you before God.
Do not believe your leaders whom you call Nazarenes, for they are very deceitful. What they teach in words they do not practice in deeds. “To eat meat”, they say, “is not a sin”, yet they themselves do not like to eat meat. “It is right to marry”, but they themselves do not wish even to look at a woman. “It is a great sin”, they say, “to accumulate riches”, but they praise poverty excessively. They honor misfortune and despite success; they mock the name of fortune and greatly scorn glory. They love simplicity of clothing and honor the dishonorable more than the honorable. They praise death and condemn life. They dishonor the births of men and praise childlessness. And if people were to listen to them and not approach their wives, the end of the world would soon arrive.
But I did not wish to put all the details in writing for you, because there are many other things that they say. But what is even worse than what we have just written, they preach that God was crucified by men, that he died and was buried, then rose and ascended to heaven. Should you yourselves then not have made a judgement concerning such unworthy doctrines? Demons, who are evil, are not seized and tortured by men, let alone God, the Creator of all creatures. This is shameful for you to say, and these words are most incredible to us.
So there are two possibilities before you: either answer this letter word for word or come to court and appear before the great assembly.

This letter (or decree) is thought by most scholars to be mostly authentic and to have suffered little editions by Ełiše or later editors and copyists. In it, Mihr-Narsē appears to be well informed about the basics of Christian doctrine. there is even a sign of Jewish influence in his arguments: the mention of Pantheros (Banturak in Ełiše’s Armenian text), a character whose existence was repeatedly refuted by early Christian apologists like Origenes and who according to them was “a lie” manufactured by “the Jews” to discredit the Christian doctrinal point of the virgin birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

Remains of what was probably a fire temple dated to the I-IV c. CE at Ani, eastern Turkey (anciently in the Kingdom of Armenia).

Most recent scholarship about Sasanian Zoroastrianism thinks that the so-called “Zurvanism” or the “Zurvanite heresy” was not such a thing, but that it was rather the standard version of the Zoroastrian doctrine in the V c. CE, at least in the Sasanian court. The issue though, is that this myth is absent of modern Zoroastrian doctrine, as well as from the versions of it transmitted in the Pahlavi Books of the IX c. CE (the Bundahišn and the Dēnkard). Since no Zoroastrian text refers to anything resembling “Zurvanism” as an organized movement (while showing no hesitation in mentioning Zurvān’s name or in speculating about “time”), the question of when and why did this myth go “out of fashion” difficult to answer. Most probably, it fell victim of the large-scale rebuilding of the foundations of Zoroastrian doctrine during the reign of Xusrō I in the VI c. Ce after the suppression of the Mazdakite movement and the writing down of the Avestā and the Zand. The writing down of these orally transmitted traditions marks the moment when Zoroastrianism becomes a “religion of the scripture” and its doctrines and practices were revised in accordance; everything that could not find support in the scripture was expunged. And Zurvān fell in that category, just like the VI c. CE marks the disappearance of until then traditional gods in Iran like Nana or Sāsān, who are also absent from the Avestā.

Touraj Daryaee points out too that during the reign of Pērōz (Yazdegerd II’s successor) Mihr-Narsē was accused of having committed a sin, but it did not dislodge him from his office. As we have seen in an earlier post, according to the Mādiyān ī hazār dādistān, during the reign of Warahrān V Mihr-Narsē was sent to expiate a “great sin” at a fire temple. He, along with his wife, stayed there for several years during the reign of Warahrān V, until the ascension of Yazdegerd II. Mihr-Narsē was then taken to the ōstān (the royal domain) for several more years as a further punishment for his offense. Daryaee thinks that what happened was that, during the rule of Yazdegerd II, Mihr-Narsē was divested of his ecclesiastical benefice, but kept his office, a possibility that he thinks is corroborated by the historical information. But then again, during the reign of Pērōz and under the direction of Mardbūd, the mowbedān mowbed at the time, and other authorities, he was sent to another fire temple named Ohrmazd-Pērōz. Daryaee obviously supports the old theory of the “Zurvanite heresy” as he thinks that this would have been a very valid reason to explain what his “great sin” was.

Again according to the Mādiyān ī hazār dādistān, Mihr-Narsē and his wife then served in the fire temple as the “Servant of Ādurwaxš” (Ādurwaxš bandag), that is, watching over the fire in the fire temple along with his wife, children, and slave (for the fate of his son Zurvāndād, see below). Thus, one should take Mihr-Narsē’s service not in the sense of common servitude (bandagīh), but one with full rights and authority. His servitude to these fire temples had a religious tone, serving to cleanse him of the offense for which both he (and his family) were held accountable. There is also the mention of a Zurvāndād as a great sinner along with Mazdak in the Vendīdād, which could be a reference to Mihr-Narsē’s son. In the Vendīdād, Zurvāndād is mentioned as having had authority, but he was sinful and destructive and disputed the creator of the corporeal world, that is, Ohrmazd.

 

[Semper Victor]

4.8 THE REIGN OF YAZDEGERD II. THE FIRST SPARKS OF THE ARMENIAN REBELLION.


As we have seen in the previous posts, the situation of the Sasanian empire was a complex one in the eve of the Armenian revolt. In my opinion, the troubles with Hunnic incursions in the Caucasus this must have affected Yazdegerd II’s trust in the Christian Caucasian aristocracies. Several reasons are possible for this, although these are not mutually excluding:

• The Armenians, Iberians and Albanians had failed to protect the Caucasian passes and thus the king’s army had been forced to intervene.
• Upon hearing about the Hunnic incursion in their homelands, the aristocrats of these kingdoms that were present in Yazdegerd II’s army in the East could have demanded to be allowed to return home to defend their lands. This can be perhaps supported in the fact that both the East Syriac Chronicle of Karkā ḏe Bēṯ Selōḵ and the chronicle of Łazar P’arpec’i state that Yazdegerd II blamed these aristocrats for his lack of success in the East.
• Because it is quite possible that the aristocracies of these three Caucasian countries resented the contributions that most probably were put over them by the king and his court for the building of the Darband Wall and the new royal foundation of Šahrestānīhā Yazdegerd. The fact that the rebels hurried to destroy the fortifications at Darband could also support this.

So, in my view the religious angle should be evaluated with the points above in mind. And, given that during the reign of Yazdegerd II Kayanian ideology reached its final stage as the ideological foundation for the rule of the House of Sāsān over Ērānšahr, the question of the religious loyalties of the Caucasian nobilities (who, let’s remember, represented an important part of the empire’s military force) probably became a pressing issue. The Sasanians were well aware that Armenia’s pre-Christian revolution had been a local version of the Zoroastrian tradition, and that the warrior nobility of such an important part of the empire had shunned Zoroastrianism probably irked people in the Sasanian court, perhaps even the king himself, and probably including Mihr-Narsē. It was just a glaring contradiction for the Kayanian ideological scheme that now underpinned the rule of the House of Sāsān.

This post and the ones who will follow after it contain lots of Armenian toponyms, both from within Armenia and its neighboring Caucasian kingdoms. This map actually covers Armenia in the IV c. CE, just before its partition in the 380s, but it is the most complete that I have been able to find with regards to toponyms. In it you can also clearly see the territories that were detached from Armenian in the IV c. CE and annexed to the Roman and Sasanian empires, and also to Iberia and Albania.

Still, it is difficult to evaluate how the blame for the Armenian rebellion should be divided between the king and his wuzurg framādār. Personally, I’m inclined to put more blame on Mihr-Narsē than on Yazdegerd II, because of the (apparently authentic) document reported by Ełiše Vardapet that displays the strong antagonism of the wuzurg framādār against the Christian religion, because we know from the appointment of his son Zurvāndād as hērbedān herbed that he had an interest in religion, and third because (and this is my own conjecture) I think that if Mihr-Narsē acted rashly here and his policies caused the Armenian rebellion that could explain his second “fall from grace” under Yazdegerd II, and in fact, Ełiše Vardapet says explicitly so in his History of Vardan and the Armenian war. The fact that after the defeat of the rebels (in a relatively short frame of time) complete freedom of religion was granted to the aristocracies of Armenia, Iberia and Albania seems to support that Yazdegerd II was not a religious fanatic. Had this been the case, the aftermath of the Sasanian victory would have been the perfect moment to push forward an agenda of forced religious conversion.

Now I will address the developments of the 450-451 CE rebellion in greater detail, following mostly the account of Ełiše Vardapet, and using that of Łazar P’arpec’i only when there are contradictions or when Łazar adds information lacking in Ełiše’s account. According to it, Yazdegerd II had levied forces from Armenia for his war in the East:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 1:

(NOTE: this fragment is the one that I edited out from the middle of my first quote of Ełiše’s work)
This counsel (by the “magi”, see above) seemed pleasing to the king and to the magnates, who were of the same mind. He wrote edicts and sent many messengers to every region of his empire. And this is a copy of the edict:
“To all the nations of my empire, to the Iranians and non-Iranians, may the greeting of our benevolence be multiplied for you. Be well, and we ourselves are well by the help of the gods.
Without causing you any trouble, we marched into the land of the Greeks and there, without warfare by our loving benevolence we subjected the whole land to us in servitude. Do celebrate and be unstinting in rejoicing. But immediately accomplish this command which we impose:
We have decided in our infallible judgement to march to the land of the East, to subject the empire of the Kušāns to us with the help of the gods. When you see this edict, straightway without impediment gather cavalry before us and meet me in the land of Apar (i.e. Abaršahr).
In this form the edict reached the lands of the Armenians, Georgians, Albanians, Lp’ink (north of the Ałuank’, Albanians), Tsawdēik’ (in southwestern Armenia), Korduik’ (Corduene, in southern Armenia), Aghdznik’ (Arzanene, in southwestern Armenia), and many other distant parts which were previously not accustomed to travel that road. A force of nobility and lesser nobility was assembled from Greater Armenia and retainers from the royal house; likewise from Georgia, and Albania, and the lands of the Lp’ink’, and still others from all the districts on the south near the borders of Tachkastan (the region of the Tachiks, the Arabs of northern Mesopotamia), the Roman Empire, Korduk’, Dasn (in southern Armenia). Tsawdē, and Arznarzn (in southwestern Armenia), people who were all believers into the one catholic and apostolic church.
Innocently unaware of the king’s duplicity, they marched from each one’s land obediently and with loyal intentions in order to fulfill their military service with sincere faith. they brought with them the divine holy testaments, with many ministers and priests. But they bade farewell to their lands, not as in expectation of life, but as if [they were to] pay the debt of death, commending their souls and bodies to each other. For although the king’s plan had not been revealed to them, yet suspicions were in everyone’s mind. especially when they saw the power of the Greeks broken before him, they were greatly stricken in their souls.

This passage describes how Yazdegerd II levied the cavalry armies (“feudal levies” if you want) from his dominions, of which Ełiše concentrates on Armenia and its Caucasian neighbors (surprisingly, he names Arzanene and Corduene separately from Armenia, when these regions had been long part of Armenia). According to Ełiše’s narration (which coincides with Łazar’s in this respect), Yazdegerd II had already plotted his nefarious plans with regard to uprooting Christianity in Armenia in advance to this levy (see my first quote on his work) at the instigation of the perfidious Zoroastrian priests. In this respect, Ełiše adds more details than Łazar, and hints at rising religious tensions in Yazdegerd II’s army in the East:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 2:

He (i.e. Yazdegerd II) made a review of all doctrines and compared magism and divination and all the doctrines of the empire. He also deceitfully introduced Christianity and said with raging mind: “Question, examine, see. Let us choose and hold which is best”. And he hastened quickly to fulfill what was in his mind.
But on every side the Christians in the army recognized the fire which was secretly burning and intending to consume the mountains and plains together. They too were warmed by the inextinguishable fire and valiantly prepared themselves for the trial of his hidden stratagems.
Then, with voices raised, with psalms, and spiritual songs, and glorious preaching, they began to worship openly and publicly in the great camp. Fearlessly and without hesitation, they willingly instructed whoever came to them. And the Lord prospered them with signs and miracles, for many of the heathen army who were ill received healing.

An interesting detail from this quote from Ełiše’s work is that Yazdegerd II obviously took an interest in the Christian doctrine, like later Šāhān Šāhs would do (especially Xusrō II). Łazar’s History of the Armenians begins his narration of the rebellion right at the start of Part II and says absolutely nothing of a campaign in the East by the Sasanian king or about Armenian levies joining him there. Instead, his account puts the blame rightly on the “wickedness” of Mihr-Narsē and Armenian traitors who persuaded Yazdegerd II to try to uproot Christianity from Armenia. The narration is less sound than that by Ełiše and is quite similar to the writing styles of Agathangelos or Movsēs Xorenac’i, with intrigue, murders, treacheries, and wicked villains, and as the former authors it also lacks any sort of clear chronology, while Ełiše follows a clear chronology (an exception among Armenian historians). Despite this, it can offer interesting details, like the fact that some Armenian noblemen (or “traitors” according to Łazar):

Łazar P’arpec’i, History of the Armenians, Part II, 20:

King Yazkert had a hazarapet named Mihrnerseh who was a malicious, malignant person. For many years he had been thinking about an impious plan, leading to the destruction and ruin of feeble souls. In this poisonous long-meditated scheme, [Mihrnerseh] had as a wicked assistant and impious supporter a man from the Siwnik' tohm, named Varazvaghan. Just as Satan in Paradise used a snake as an accomplice and deceived the First-Created, so [Mihrnerseh] attempted to satisfy his bitter will by means of him. This Varazvaghan was the son-in-law of Vasak, prince of Siwnik'. According to some, there was great hatred between Varazvaghan and the daughter of the prince of Siwnik'. Consequently, the girl's father looked at his son-in-law with heavy resentment. He sought to avenge the insults shown to his daughter by plotting to kill [Varazvaghan] and thus persecuted him until he left the land of Armenia.
When the malicious Varazvaghan realized the incredible rancor of Vasak, and was unable to tolerate the severe violence of his father-in-law because of the mighty authority which he exercised in the period of his princedom, he fled to the country of Iran, to Mihrnerseh, hazarapet of the Aryans. He soon had the diabolical idea of becoming the director of the destruction of the land, and in this plan of wickedness he accepted the encouragement and will of Mihrnerseh. He had the impious idea of uniting with the devil, and, apostasizing the truth, he worshipped the sun and the moon—elements established by the Creator to serve humankind. The impious Varazvaghan voluntarily separated from and rejected the blessed and just preaching of Life which the martyr and apostle of Armenia, Gregorios (who bore many very great sorrows) with tireless prayers and perpetual requests day and night implanted as a seed and nurtured in every soul. He entered the fire-temple and stated that the fire was a god. Apostasizing the inseparable, united holy Trinity, he became the cupbearer of poison for the ruination of souls and of all weak-minded individuals, by means of the impious Mihrnerseh. This bitter prince Mihrnerseh then became vardapet to the loathsome sepuh of Siwnik', Varazvaghan, who instructed the latter day and night, saying: "Look with your mind's eye, and behold such a kingdom as this one: mighty, and above all other kingdoms. [See] the power of the cavalry, the discipline and organization of the army which causes all observers and listeners, obedient and disobedient, to shiver with fear. [See] too the clearly choice, correct, and attractive faith which befits this great kingdom. For who in the entire world does not see the glory of the sun (whose rays illuminate all rational and irrational beings), or the usefulness of fire (with which all are fed, and which enjoy), or the elements or the breath of sweet air (by which plants and seeds sprout and reach maturity) which offer humankind the good life, and happiness. Now while those [people] who are not obedient to us see all of this, they do not comprehend it, for unlike us they lack our great wisdom and xrad of good sense. Such people are unable to recognize the gods and the benefits which are given to humankind by each god in every decision, and clearly the gods are angered when they cannot make the foolish realize the benevolence which they bestow on the land. But the peoples who have submitted to our great authority yet adhere to such awesome and severe rules against the realm are eternally lost, while we will be punished for it, for sinning against the gods. [?]"
When this senseless doctrine of the wily teacher Mihrnerseh was heard by his crazed pupil, Varazvaghan, the latter (stupified by Satan who polluted his mind) could not question the dull vardapet how a god who is himself lacking and incomplete could grant the requests of another. One can give what he has to the seeker of it, and one can give a part of what he has received from another, to the seeker. But clearly one cannot bestow on another what he himself does not have. For should someone who is hot and in need of cooling request it from the heat, he will not receive it. Rather, the seeker is regarded as extremely foolish by everyone and deserving of ridicule. Even the seeker knows that if he asks for something he needs from someone who does not have it, he is unable to give it. To request it from such a one, with many entreaties and protracted pleading, is senseless and full of mortification—as it would be to seek dryness from water, moisture from fire, coolness from the sun, or light from the night. While these [individual] parts indeed have power, it was given to them by God Who stipulated it, and they are obliged to ceaselessly give it to the world (not by their own will, but rather at the command of their Creator Who is the true God, creator of all fulfillment of time and of the elements) of heat, cold, dryness, dampness, light and darkness, and God contains all of them within Himself. To those who worthily request things from Him, He gives and totally accomplishes, according to each person's needs and wants".
The impious Varazvaghan had learned all of this from childhood and knew it well. But submerged in the envy of impiety against his father-in-law, this denier of God, [Varazvaghan], urged on by the devil with whom he had allied, and who had stained his heart, had conceived of the following plan: "This wisdom and the efforts I have undertaken may bring me one of two results. Either the land of Armenia will accept [Zoroastrianism] and apostatize, in which case I will merit great gifts and honor from the Aryans, as the loyal individual who first conceived of and facilitated such an important and great affair. Or, [failing that] should [the Armenians] reject and resist it, they will be unable to resist such a great [military] force [as Iran] and will be completely ruined, with their Houses and belongings, and perhaps my enemy will be lost in this situation. And even if I receive not a single benefit from it, it will be more than enough for me to hear of and witness the destruction of my enemy; even more [satisfying] than [achieving] all the benefits and greatness in the world”.

Although Łazar’s account has little plausibility regarding the ultimate cause for the Armenian rebellion of Yazdegerd II’s religious policies regarding Christianity in Armenia, it introduces an important element: the Armenian nobility was not a monolithic block. Vasak of Siwnik’ (an Armenian nobleman, Prince of Siwnik’) was the Sasanian marzbān of Armenia in 442-452 CE, so immediately before and after the revolt. That he was not deposed from his post means that he remained loyal to the Šāhān Šāh. Modern historians have been unable to attest if the character of his son-in-law Varazvaghan really existed, though; and the literary device of having a major rebellion start due to intra-familiar jealousies and infighting is a common one in ancient authors. According to Łazar, Varazvaghan soon began plotting with the wicked Mihr-Narsē to bring ruin to Armenia:

View of the hills of Shikahogh, in the modern Armenian province of Siwnik’, which more or less coincides with the ancient principality.

Łazar P’arpec’i, History of the Armenians, Part II, 21:

When the impious Mihrnerseh heard all of these words, he was delighted since he had found in the demoniac Varazvaghan a support for his poison and an implementer of his own wicked scheme. [Mihrnerseh] delightedly went into the presence of Yazkert, and began speaking with him alone: "It is fitting that Lords who benefit from their servants think not only about the attractiveness of profits, but about the saving of souls, so that the souls of the servants not be lost. For just as you are concerned about your profits and taxes, so that you benefit therefrom, so the gods regard the saving of souls warmly and like to see it. To do something worthy of the gods (no one can say what gifts and honors the gods have stored up and hold for such a one) to say nothing about someone who plans to lead numerous souls from error to the road [ranking] among the just those [formerly] accursed. The glory and luxuries which the gods have prepared for such [evangelists] no one can describe in words or write down. Now how many lands are there in which you rule as a god, where you can kill or spare whomever you chose? First and foremost, there is the great land of Armenia which is useful, and with [Armenia] is Iberia and Albania. You see only the benefits which you receive from the lands, but the great and important [issue] (that such a host of souls are being lost) you never think or worry about. Nor do you realize how much this would recommend you to the gods. For, should you look to the salvation of so many people, be assured that it will increase and benefit the present greatness of your kingdom with the good folk and grandeur which is there. I see very great benefits in this important matter for the Aryan world. For you yourself and all the Aryans know Armenia as a large and useful land. It is close to and borders the emperor's realm (i.e. to the Eastern Roman Empire), and has the same faith and worship, since the emperor has authority over them. If you get them accustomed to our faith and they become familiar with it and able to acknowledge that until then they had been strayed but now had come onto the path, then they will love you and the land of the Aryans, and will reject and withdraw from the emperor, his faith, and land. Thereafter that land [of Armenia] will be firmly bound to us in affection and unity. When the hearts of the Armenians belong to us, [the hearts of] the Iberians and Albanians will also be ours. Although I already was concerned about such a great matter and planned to point it out to you, I was made even more sure by a man from the tohm of Siwnik' (i.e. Varazvaghan). He knew enough to leave the errant faith he had held until then, and to adopt our true and firm faith which he did voluntarily and enthusiastically. From him I learned and confirmed yet more the spiritual and material benefits which would come from such a matter both to your kingdom and generally to the entire Aryan world. Now since this man, with firm affection, gave himself over [to Zoroastrianism] and chose the good, he is deserving of more prominent glory and even more honor than all of his comrades and members of his tohm, so that when his tohm and all the Armenian nobility observe the very great benefits and luxuries given by you and visible on him, motivated by envy to have such a life and such good things, the prominent [Armenians] will quickly try to surpass each other in implementing your will, and will enthusiastically obey your order(s). Should this come to pass, the kingdom of the land of the Aryans will always be at peace and ease; should this not come to pass, I suspect that in the future [the Armenians] who hold to [the Romans'] faith, perhaps will want to serve them [militarily] as well, and that no small amount of suspicion of the land of the Aryans will result."
When Yazkert, king of Iran, heard all of these agreeable words from his malicious, evil-minded hazarapet Mihrnerseh, he liked and praised them, and informed the mages and the other Aryan nobility of everything Mihrnerseh had said. All the Aryans generally were astonished at and lauded the counsel [and so Yazkert] quickly summoned the mages, had the principles of magianism written down and sent to Armenia. He sent an edict to all the Armenian nobility, having the following import:
"Former kings, who were my ancestors and occupied this royal throne (either because they were not at leisure or, because they did not think about such weighty and important affairs, I know not which) did not concern themselves with these matters. But now, informed by the mages and other wise and senior men of the land of the Aryans, I am thinking that just as we enjoy the benefits and other service from those people under the authority of our kingdom we are therefore even more obliged to show concern for and find salvation for everyone's souls. Our faith informs us that we will suffer heavy punishment from the gods should we be found indifferent with regard to this great trust. Now if we are to be punished for not demanding a certain thing from you, you should be even more frightened about laziness regarding the benefits to each person's soul, because [in that case] you will be punished both by us, and by the gods. Accordingly, we have had our correct and just faith written down and brought to you. As you are a useful land and beloved by us, we want you to study our just and balanced faith and to hold it, and not to worship the faith which we all clearly know is false and without benefit. Now, having heard our command, implement it willingly and gladly and do not even think of doing otherwise. We also want and are ordering you to write us [the principles] of your so-called faith so that [we can see] how lost you have been until today. And when, as we, you become people who recognize our true faith, then the Iberians and Albanians will not dare to stray from what we and you want".

It is interesting to compare this edict with the letter/edict that Mihr-Narsē sent to the Armenians in Ełiše’s account. The letter in the latter is more detailed and attacks the main points of Christian doctrine in detail, while explaining at the same the foundations of Zoroastrian (or “Zurvanite”) cosmology in V c. CE Iran. According to Ełiše, the king persisted in his unsuccessful attempts to make the Armenian aristocrats renounce to their faith:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 2:

Although he (i.e. Yazdegerd II) worked his confusion among all nations, he especially strove against the land of Armenia. For he saw that they were very ardent in their piety, especially those of the Armenian nobility, and they sincerely observed the holy preaching of the apostles and prophets. He deceived some of them with gold and silver, and many others with liberal gifts; some with estates and villages, some with honors and great principalities. and still further vain hopes he offered to their souls. In this way he was continuously enticing and exhorting: “If only, he said, you accept the religion of magism and sincerely convert your error to the splendid truth of the religion of our gods, I shall make you the equal of my beloved nobles in grandeur and in dignity, and shall even make you surpass them”. In such fashion he deceitfully humbled himself before all, speaking with them on the pretext of love, but hypocritically so that he might be able to seduce them according to the former advice of his counselors. Thus he acted, beginning from the fourth year of his reign up to the eleventh (i.e. 443-448 CE).
However, when he saw that his secret cunning had been in no way effective but that his opponents waxed the greater (for he saw Christianity daily increasing and spreading throughout all the regions of the distant road through which he was passing) he began to languish, to waste away, and to lose his spirits from sighing. He unwittingly revealed his secret plans. He gave a public command: “Let every nation and language under my authority abandon each one’s erring religion and only cleave to the worship of the sun, offering sacrifices and calling it god, and serving the fire. In addition to all this, let them fulfill the religion of magism and be negligent in nothing”.
These words a herald proclaimed in the great camp, and he imposed strict injunctions on everyone. He also hastily dispatched messengers to all the distant nations and imposed the same orders on them all.

As we can see, in Ełiše’s account of the events the Sasanian king allegedly tried to impose Zoroastrianism to the Christian aristocrats that had joined his army through “deceit” during a long period of time (five years), until he desisted from his “secret plans” due to the heroic persistence of the Armenian nobles in their faith. It is quite a different account of the prolegomena to the rebellion than in Łazar’s account. According to Ełiše’s account, after publishing this decree, Yazdegerd II gathered his army “in the twelfth year of his reign” (i.e. 449 CE) and marched again against the Kidarites:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 2:

Then at the beginning of the twelfth year of his reign, he gathered a force infinite in multitude and attacked the land of the T’etals (see below). When the king of the Kushans saw this, unable to oppose him in battle he retreated to the regions of the impregnable desert and lived in hiding with all his troops. But [the Persian king] assailed his provinces, regions, and lands, captured many fortresses and cities, amassed captives, booty, and plunder, and brought them to his own empire. Then, still engaged in the same vain plans, he was strengthened in his erring intention and said to his impious ministers: “With what shall we repay the gods for this great victory, in which no one was able to oppose us in battle?”

As I said before, the Perso-Arabic tradition preserves very meager information about the reign of Yazdegerd II, and the same happens with the western sources, as his engagement with Rome was quite limited. Our main sources for this king’s reign thus are Armenian ones, because of the 450-451 CE Armenian rebellion, in which most of the events of this king’s reign are intertwined with Armenian history. Ełiše and Łazar are thus the only sources we have left to reconstruct Yazdegerd II’s campaign against the Kidarites. According to Ełiše (the only one who kept a clear chronology of the events), between 442 and 449 CE he campaigned against the Kidarites without success, but in his twelfth regnal year (450 CE) he finally won a victory against them. Modern historians do not agree about the meaning of the word T’etals. Some possibilities were pointed out in the early XX c. by the German scholar Josef Marquart:

• T’ētalk’ is used by other Armenian historians like Sebeos as a loose synonym for Huns. So, it would just mean that Yazdegerd II attacked the Huns.
• Or it could be an Armenian variation of Middle Persian *Hētal, meaning “Hepthalite”. the problem is that this could be a clear anachronism, as the Hephthalites do not appear anywhere in historical documents until the reign of his son Pērōz.

If we were to follow the second suggestion by Marquart (as Daniel T. Potts does in his study about the history of nomadism in Iran), this could imply that during the reign of Yazdegerd II the Hephthalite tribe or clan, a part of the White Hunnic people/confederation, dwelled near the Hunnic-Sasanian border, but we don’t know exactly where. This possibility goes against the evidence in Chinese chronicles, as we will see in later posts. The land overran by Yazdegerd II was probably Ṭoḵārestān, the main objective of all the Sasanian attacks against the Huns. There is a problem here among historians, though. Although Touraj Daryaee and Murtazali Gadjiev think that Yazdegerd II campaigned against the Huns in the Caucasus as I stated above in 449 CE, this is in conflict with Ełiše’s account, for at this date the Sasanian king was still in the East about to win a victory against the Kidarite Huns. The confusion is augmented because all Armenian historians employ the expression “Pass of Čor/Čoł” to refer to the Pass of Darband, but as I mentioned above the East Syriac Chronicle of Karkā ḏe Bēṯ Selōḵ states that Yazdegerd II went to fight “against the Čol” where he built his city and modern historians think that this is a reference to his campaign against the Kidarites, and that Ełiše writes something strange in this passage, that comes shortly after the one quoted above that describes his victory against the Kidarites. After it, he holds council with his nobles and priests about which would be the best way to thank the gods for his victory, and the magi tell him that the best way would be to convert all the peoples in his empire to the Mazdean religion; the king follows their advice and acts thus:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 2:

Then he held within the Pass the host of cavalry of the Armenians, Georgians, Albanians, and of all who believed in the Holy Gospel of Christ. The garrison of the Pass was given strict instructions to allow through those who were coming eastwards to us, but to block the way for those going from the East to the West.

This is from the most valued English translation, published in 1978 by R. W. Thomson. Older translators, like Langlois, assumed that this pass was the Pass of Darband (or “Pass of Čor”), but this makes no sense in the context of Ełiše’s narration. This pass ran obviously in an east-west direction, while the Pass of Darband runs in a north-south direction, and furthermore, the army had been campaigning in the land of the “Kušāns”. That means that this must have been a pass across the Alborz, Kopet Dagh, or some of the ranges in what is now northwestern Afghanistan (like the Turkestan Mountains). Josef Marquart already noticed that in the latter the XIX c. the name “Čol” was used by Turkmen tribes to refer the broken, undulating territory between the Murghāb and Harī Rōd (called Tedžen in Turkmenistan) rivers, which includes a large territory immediately behind the Sasanian-Hunnic border (grossly corresponding to the Marw – Marw-Rūd – Herāt line). If this name was also applied to this territory in ancient times, then both Ełiše and the anonymous Chronicle of Karkā ḏe Bēṯ Selōḵ are referring to this part of Greater Khorasan, which is today divided between Turkmenistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. The “pass” in Ełiše’s text could thus be located in the Turkestan Range, in the northwest of Afghanistan, near the border with Turkmenistan.

The rivers of Central South Asia; notice the location of the Murghāb and Harī Rōd (or Tedžen) rivers.

Ełiše’s narration tells after this how the Armenians, and other Christian noble cavalrymen were held against their will in this mysterious “pass” and tortured, etc. to renounce their faith. And while he did this, Yazdegerd II sent his functionaries to Armenia:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 2:

In addition to all this he (i.e. Yazdegerd II) contrived even further wickedness. He sent one of his trusted servants, called Denshapuh, on a mission to Armenia. He came at the royal command, bringing the great king’s greetings, and made a census of the whole land of Armenia with soothing hypocrisy [as if] for the alleviation of taxes and the lightening of the burden of cavalry. although outwardly he dissimulated, yet within his plans were revealed as evil.

• First: he cast the freedom of the church into slavery.
• Second: he included in the same census the Christian monks living in monasteries.
• Third: he increased the tax burden on the country.
• Fourth: by slander he pitted the nobility against each other and caused dissension in every family.

He did all this in the hope of breaking their unity, scattering the clergy of the church, driving away the monks, and wearing out the peasants, so that in their great poverty they might unwillingly turn to the religion of the magi.
And even more pernicious was the fifth. The governor (“hazarapet” in the original Armenian text) had been regarded as a father and overseer by the Christians of the land, but he incited accusations against him, deprived him of office, and in his place brought a Persian to the country. In addition he also brought a chief magus as judge of the land, so that they might corrupt the glory of the church.

The war theater in Central Asia. The Sasanian border with Kidarite-held Ṭoḵārestān ran roughly along a line Merv – Marw-Rūd – Herāt.

According to the Encyclopædia Iranica, the MP name of “Denshapuh” would have been Wehdēn-Šābuhr, and his official title in the imperial bureaucracy was that of hambārakapet (quartermaster); a gem bearing his name is preserved in the British Museum in London. Thomson’s comments about Ełiše’s accusations are interesting to read. The first charge (that he “cast the freedom of the church into slavery”) means that this Sasanian official taxed the patrimony of the Armenian Church that until then had remained free of taxes. And the second charge goes in the same direction: he made a census of the monks in order to make them liable to pay taxes In other words, Wehdēn-Šābuhr was ending the tax immunity of the Armenian Church. Point four is hardly attributable to this functionary; rather there was probably a splinting within the Armenian nobility between those who opposed the new measures and Sasanian rule in general, and the ones who wanted to remain loyal to the king; factionalism wasn’t anything new within the Armenian aristocracy. It is possibly in here that we such insert the tale of Łazar P’arpec’i about the “traitor” Varazvaghan. According to Ełiše’s tale of events, when Wehdēn-Šābuhr realized even this was not enough, he informed the court, and Mihr-Narsē intervened by sending the famous letter/edict that I quoted earlier.

The edict/letter ends with Mihr-Narsē giving two options to “the Armenians”. According to Ełiše, eighteen Armenian bishops (he lists them by name) met in the city of Artashat and wrote a lengthy and detailed response to the wuzurg framādār. The letter by the bishops was then read in public at the king’s court, and “enraged” the king, Mihr-Narsē and the “chief magus” (presumably, the mowbedān mowbed, or maybe Mihr-Narsē’s son Zurvāndād), so that the king published an edict ordering several Armenian aristocrats to render themselves to his court:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 2:

Then the king summoned the chief scribe and commanded him to write an edict, not in the usual fashion but in angry terms as if to hateful and vile people, not at all recalling the great services of these loyal men but merely summoning by name the men whom he knew personally. Their names were:

Vasak, from the house of Siunik’​

Nershapuh, from the house of the Artsrunik’​

Artak, from the house of the Ṙĕstunik’​

Gadeshoy, from the house of the Khoṙkhoṙunik’​

Vardan, from the house of the Mamikonean​

Artak, from the house of Mokk’​

Manech, from the house of the Apahunik’​

Vahan, from the house of the Amatunik’​

Giut, from the house of the Vahevunik’​

Shmavon, from the house of the Andzevatsik’​

These princes were summoned by name to the royal court. Some of them were already by him in the army, others were in the garrison of the Huns in the north, and some of the princes he had left in Armenia.

Vasak of Siwnik’, then the marzbān of Armenia, is the villain of Ełiše’s tale, the traitor that acts as the wicked counterpoint to the patriotic martyr Vardan the Mamikonian. This passage incidentally gives un confirmation that at this moment Yazdegerd II was probably still in the East. Ełiše says that the army was with the king, and it is also clear that the army was not located neither in Armenia nor guarding the Caucasian passes against the Huns. The princes presented themselves before the king together on Easter Saturday, 450 CE, and according to Ełiše the king showered menaces and threats upon them if they did not adopt the Mazdean faith; when they asked the king the reason for his behavior, he answered:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 2:

But the wicked demon (i.e. this is an epithet that Ełiše uses often to refer to Yazdegerd II), full of all deceit, turned his face to one side and said: “I consider it harm to receive into the royal treasury the tribute of your land, and your valiant deeds useless. For you have ignorantly gone astray from our true religion and have dishonored the gods; you have killed fire and defiled water; you have buried the dead in the ground and corrupted the earth; and by not performing pious duties, you strengthen Haraman. And what is worst, you do not regularly approach your wives. The demons have great joy when you disregard and do not observe all the institutions of the magi. I see you as sheep scattered and lost in the wilderness. and I have great scruples that perhaps the gods, in their anger at you, will take vengeance from us. But if you wish to live and save yourselves and be sent back in honor, do what I have said immediately.

This passage is interesting, because it shows a realistic “Zoroastrian” point of view, and because in it Yazdegerd II implicitly accuses the Armenian nobles to have abandoned the practices and beliefs of Mazdeism, which as we saw earlier, is probably true (their ancestors had abandoned their Zoroastrian belief for Christianity) and was a punishable offence in Sasanian Iran (at least for aristocrats and Zoroastrian priests). The Armenian nobles refused to do so, and Yazdegerd II ordered their exile:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 2:

Three and four times he (i.e. Yazdegerd II) repeated his false oath to the sun, saying as follows: “You are unable to destroy my sure fortifications, nor shall I allow you to obtain immediately what you desire. But all of you and those in my army I shall exile in cruel bonds to Sagastan (i.e. Sakastān, Sīstān) through roadless parts, where many of you will perish on the journey from the heat, and the survivors will be thrown into secure fortresses and inescapable prisons. To your country I shall send an infinite army with elephants; your wives and children I shall have dispatched to Khuzhastan; your churches and what you call martyria I shall destroy, raze, and obliterate. and if anyone is found to resist he will be trampled by wild beasts and die a merciless death. All that I have said I shall perform and carry out on the survivors in your country”.

The account by Ełiše follows with the Christian Armenian aristocrats first trying to bribe some of the court officials, and thein being sent into exile, and then one of the king’s privy counselors, who was “secretly” a Christian, tried to help some of them by offering them advice. But the real help came from another side: a sudden Kidarite attack:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 2:

While they were gathering a force which would banish them to a foreign exile of no return, as they had banished many princes from Georgia, at that very time arrived a bearer of bad news from the regions of the Kushans, to the effect that a detachment had separated from the enemy and had ruined many royal provinces. This proved a great help to them from heaven. The impious one (i.e. Yazdegerd II) quickly and urgently sent off the cavalry, and he himself in haste followed closely behind. Deeply wounded in his intentions, he shattered his earlier firm oath.

Then, the Armenian princes, following the advice of the “secretly Christian” royal counsellor, acted as if they had abandoned the Christian religion and worshipped accord to the rites of Zoroastrianism. and the king then allowed them to return to Armenia, accompanied by an escort of cavalry and “more than seven hundred” Zoroastrian priests and teachers, to teach the Mazdean religion to the Armenians, Georgians, Albanians, and other Christian peoples of the southern Caucasus. This had the result that the remaining Christians in the royal army (because apparently there were still many of them under the banners of the Šāhān Šāh) reproached their apostasy to the Armenian aristocrats, and their priests sent messengers to the Armenian bishops (the “persecution” seems not to have been that severe if there were still Christian priests in the king’s army). This led to trouble, of course, as the bishops began to muster secretly an army. When the Armenian nobles with their forces and the crown of “magi” arrived in Armenia, they pitched tent in a town called Angł (located in the province of Tsałkotn, north of Lake Van).

The citadel of Kirkuk (called Karkā ḏe Bēṯ Selōḵ in Sasanian times), photographed by Gertrude Stein in 1911.

According to Ełiše, they waited there for twenty-five days until the “chief magus” arrived “with a great force” to break down the gates of a church on Sunday, but an Armenian priest stirred the crowd against them, and the Zoroastrian priests had to flee. the situation continued to heat up, with more Christian Armenians flocking to the place, and according to Ełiše the “chief magus” saw that his mission was pointless and launched into a long discourse to the marzbān telling him that he should persuade the king to renounce his plans for Armenia. The response by the marzbān allows us to know some more details about the situation: this “chief magus” was not the mowbedān mowbed; and under the “great hazarpet” (i.e. the wuzurg framādār, Mihr-Narsē) there was also a “chancellor” (rendered in Armenian as darandardzapet, MP dad-andarzbed, “court counsellor”, and which later in Ełiše’s account is named as Movan). Curiously, in this passage Ełiše does not give us the name of the marzbān; and the latter tells the “chief magus” to be patient and to keep silent, as he will try to “split the covenant of the church”:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

The marzpan replied to the chief-magus, saying: “All the words of advice which you have spoken are true. What at first we did not understand, you saw, and now we regret it greatly. But do what I say, and it will seem good to you. Be a little patient and keep your thoughts from most [people], except those men to whom I tell you to reveal them, until I can gather a force to bring support. Then perhaps I shall be able to split the covenant of the church. And if I manage that, I know that I can fulfill the command of the king”.
Then raising cavalry from the land of Siunik’ he increased his own forces for the support of the magi and chief-magus. Then he said: “Now send a letter to the court that the cavalry in Albania, which numbers then thousand, may come to winter quarters in Armenia. When we have them to hand there is no one who can subvert the royal command”.
The chief-magus replied and said to the marzpan: “Your counsel is again contrary to my suggestion. for if we use force against this country it will be destroyed, and we too shall not escape damage; harm to ourselves and especially loss to the king”.
But the marzpan had no desire to heed him, for he had sincerely accepted the Persian religion.

Ełiše still keeps hidden the name of the marzbān, but in this passage it is clear that he had apostatized from Christianity. The narration continues with the tale of how the marzbān, using politics of what today would be called a “carrot and stick” approach, managed to get some Armenians to the king’s side, with a mix of money bribes and threats. But that caused a retaliation from the bishops, who when they “realized” that Vasak of Siwnik’ (now Ełiše gives his name) was not feigning his apostasy to Zoroastrianism, decided to act in secret. They summoned the “commander of the army” in front of a “council of the clergy”; this person was the Sparapet of Armenia, a post which was hereditary in the Mamikonian house (and so the Sparapet in 450 CE was Vardan Mamikonian):

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

One evening the entire group of the clergy held council. Summoning the commander of the army to the council for questioning and investigation, they realized the firmness of his mind, and that he had not in the least failed in his love for Christ. after praying together over him, they received him again into [the fold of] virtue. Through him they brought any to the same union; those who had no broken away from the former union came and joined them, a force of many troops. And they became even more removed from the magi and the chief-magus and the impious Vasak.

In other words, the bishops had managed to split the Armenian nobility (and hence the army) into those who wanted to follow the “impious” Vasak of Siwnik’, marzbān of Armenia, and those who supported the Sparapet Vardan Mamikonian, whom the bishops deemed to be of sound Christian faith. A detailed description follows about the many acts of impiety and sacrileges forced by Vasak of Siwnik’ upon the Armenian noble houses. But this nobleman was not the only Armenian aristocrat to support the actions of Yazdegerd II. According to the IX-X c. CE author Tovma Artsruni, one of the Armenian magnates, Šavasp of the Artsruni clan acted in concert with Vindoy, the chief of the magi (Ełiše does not give his name), and built temples of Ohrmazd at Artashat and Dvin, and the fire-temple at Dvin was put under the care of Vindoy’s son, Široy. Ełiše quotes a certain “Nershapuh, from the house of the Artsrunik’” as one of the Armenian magnates summoned by Yazdegerd II, but this Šavasp does not appear in his History. And finally, the bishops openly went to Vardan’s encampment and incited him and his troops to an open rebellion:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

When all the holy bishops saw this grievous clamor, taking the Gospel in their hands, without asking they entered the general’s quarters where were gathered all the Armenian troops.
They raised their voices and said: “We beg you all by this Holy Gospel; if at your advice the marzpan and chief-magus are committing these impious crimes, first cut off our heads and then seize the church. But if they are committing these evils against your will, today let your vengeance be sought from them”.

 

[Avernite]

Someone's been busy

Interesting build-up to what your 'spoilers' suggest will be a rather uneventful rebellion; but who knows, maybe it will prove as good a story as the prelude!

 

[Semper Victor]

Someone's been busy

Interesting build-up to what your 'spoilers' suggest will be a rather uneventful rebellion; but who knows, maybe it will prove as good a story as the prelude!

I suffered a stroke during the first week of March, and I'm still recovering and on medical leave, so I'm trying to advance as much as I can with these threads. After the tedious narrative of Ammianus, following the chronicle of a good writer like Yeghishe is a relief (and even a pleasure), even if the man was a rabid ultra-nationalist Christian priest.

 

[Avernite]

I suffered a stroke during the first week of March, and I'm still recovering and on medical leave, so I'm trying to advance as much as I can with these threads. After the tedious narrative of Ammianus, following the chronicle of a good writer like Yeghishe is a relief (and even a pleasure), even if the man was a rabid ultra-nationalist Christian priest.

Ah... sorry to hear that, good to hear you're on the mend.

I did wonder how to read that name, I only know the l-bar from Polish where it's more like a w-ish l, rather than what I now take from your spelling to be a gh sound.

 

[Semper Victor]

4.9 THE REIGN OF YAZDEGERD II. THE ARMENIAN REBELLION (I).


Vardan and the aristocrats who were with him joined the bishops’ cause. Only one of them did not join the bishops, and he was stoned to death in the spot (Łazar P’arpec’i gives his name as Zandałan). They spent the night organizing their forces and at dawn they divided the army into three parts and fell upon the Sasanian camp, killing many and taking others as captives. One of them was the marzbān, Vasak of Siwnik’:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

When they arrested the marzpan he was for joining them with an oath to remain firm in the covenant; he repented of his earlier falling away from them. He fell in penitence at the feet of the holy bishops and tearfully begged that he should not be rejected and cast from them. Two and three times he repeated an inviolable oath on the Holy Gospel before them all; he put it in writing, sealed it, and bound it to the Gospel. He begged that it be left to God to seek vengeance and that they do not take it upon themselves as men to kill him.
Now although they knew well his deceitful hypocrisy and that he would falsely return to his old error, they were in no way anxious to seize him because of his former transgression, but they left his condemnation to the Holy Gospel.

The revolt then spread, and the rebel army began to seize the fortresses held by royal garrisons, all the while destroying all the Mazdean shrines and fire temples:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

Then once more they attacked the fortresses and towns which the Persians held in various strong places in the country. They destroyed and razed their dwellings: first the great [city] Artashat with its villages. They took the following inaccessible fortresses: the cities of Gaṙni, Ani, Artagerk’ and their villages; Eykarnordk’ and Arkhni and their villages; Bardzrabol, Khoranist, Tsakhanist, the secure Ołakan, and its villages with it, Arp’aneal, the town of Van, and its villages with it, Gṙeal and Kapoyt, Orotn and Vashakashat’.

View of mount Ararat from Khor Virap, in the modern Republic of Armenia. The hill where the church stands is the location of ancient Artashat, which was capital of the Kingdom of Armenia until 120 CE.

Thomson was able to locate only some of these places. The city of Artashat (Artaxata in Classical sources) is still existing, within the boundaries of the modern Republic of Armenia, near the Turkish and Iranian borders. But there are to Gaṙnis (in northeastern and northwestern Armenia) and two Anis (in north central and northwestern Armenia). Artagerk’ is located in north central Armenia; Ołakan is located west of Lake Van in Tarawn and Kapoyt and Orotn were located in Siwnik’. It’s possible that Arp’aneal was also located in Siwnik’, where there is a river of the same name. The wide area covered by these locations implies that the rebellion spread quickly across Armenia, until eventually they received bad news from their Albanian neighbors:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

Many days later the hazarapet of Albania arrived with the holy bishop of that country, and urgently exhorted the soldiers, saying: “The Persian army which was in the land of the Huns has returned and reached our land, and many more cavalry from the court have also arrived. In addition to all this, they have brought with them another three hundred magi as teachers; they have created discord in the country and have brought some over to themselves. They desire to lay hands on the church, and at the king’s command they put pressure on everyone, saying: “If you willingly accept his religion, you will receive gifts and honors from him and you will gain relief of taxes from the treasury. But if you do not do this willingly, we have a command to build fire-temples in villages and towns, to place inside them the fire of Vṙam (i.e. the fire of Warahrān / Veretraghna, the Avestan deity for victory; Vərəθraγna in standardized romanization for Avestan), and to appoint magi and chief-magi as arbiters for the entire country. And if anybody resists and opposes he will be punished with death; and the wife and children of such people will be exiled to [work] the royal estates”.

In view of this, the Armenians decided to appeal to the Roman emperor Theodosius II for help, without success:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

While the blessed Theodosius was questioning the whole Senate, anxious to find a peaceable solution to the matter and greatly concerned lest the churches of the East be ravaged by the impious heathen (i.e. Yazdegerd II), at that very time the end of his life suddenly befell him. This put a serious obstruction on the way of procuring help.
In his stead the emperor Marcianus (i.e. the Eastern Roman emperor between 450-457 CE) came to the throne. The king was influenced by his evil counselors Anatolius (?-451 CE; possibly “magister militum praesentalis” by then), who was the commander-in-chief, and Elpharios the Syrian (a corruption of “Florentius”, ex-“praefectus praetorium per Orientem”), both vile and wicked men, and ungodly to boot, so he was unwilling to heed the united pact of the Armenians, who with all their strength were opposing the wickedness of the heathens. But this ignoble man thought it better to preserve the pact with the heathen for the sake of terrestrial peace, than to join in war for the Christian covenant. Therefore he quickly dispatched that same Elpharios as ambassador to the Persian king and contracted a firm pact that he would not support the Armenian forces with arms, troops, or any other form of assistance.

Gold solidus of Marcian. Obverse legend: D(ominus) N(oster) MARCIANVS P(ius) F(elix) AVG(ustus). Reverse legend: VICTORIA AVGVSTORVM. Mint of Constantinople.

Marcian (Flavius Marcianus in Latin, Μαρκιανός [Markianós] in Greek) rose to the purple in Constantinople on 25 August 450 CE, a month after Theodosius II died on 28 July 450 CE, and he had far more pressing issues to deal with than to support the Armenian rebels. First of all, the succession was a delicate affair. Theodosius II had no male descendants, and the Theodosian dynasty finished with him in the East. Truly little (practically nothing) is known about his life before becoming augustus; Marcian was made a candidate for the throne by Aspar, one of the most powerful generals of the Eastern Roman empire, who held much influence because of his military power (but who could not become augustus himself because of his “barbarian” origins). After a month of negotiations Pulcheria, Theodosius II' sister, agreed to marry Marcian. Flavius Zeno, another military commander whose influence was similar to Aspar's (and who would be also augustus in turn), may have been involved in these negotiations, as he was given the high-ranking court title of patrician upon Marcian's accession.

Once he rose to the throne, Marcian reversed almost all the decisions taken by Theodosius II in foreign and religious affairs. He immediately stopped the tribute that the Eastern Romans were paying to Attila and started to prepare for a new round of war against the Huns, taking advantage of the fact that the relations between the Hunnic king and the Western Roman Empire had deteriorated to the point where Attila was preparing an invasion of Gaul for the next year, and he convened for 451 CE the Council of Chalcedon, which would have a huge impact on the unity of the Church in the Eastern Roman Empire. In this situation, the last thing he needed was to break the peace with the Sasanian empire, and so he promptly sent Florentius, an ex-consul who had been praefectus urbi of Constantinople and four times Praetorian Prefect for the East. Anatolius, who also had huge military and diplomatic experience (he had fought and negotiated both with the Sasanians and the Huns), also agreed with the decision.

Incidentally, this also allows us to precisely date the Armenian embassy to Constantinople: between July and September 450 CE. In view of this, they decided not to try to negotiate with the Sasanian king, but to redouble their efforts to “free” Armenia from the “heathen yoke” by military means, and to go to the offensive:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

They divided all their forces into three sections. The first section they gave to Nershapuh Ṙmbosean and charged him with defending the country near the borders of Atrpatakan. The second section they entrusted to Vardan, the Armenian general, with orders to cross the Georgian frontier against the marzpan of Chor, who had come to destroy the churches of Albania. The third section they entrusted to Vasak, the prince of Siunik’, who in his innermost heart had not abandoned his covenant with the heathen. he chose and took with him those whom he knew to be weak in their faith:

The prince of the Bagratunik’ with his forces,​

The prince of the Khoṙkhoṙunik’ with his forces,​

The prince of the Apahunik’ with his forces,​

The prince of the Vahevunik’ with his forces,​

The prince of the Palunik’ with his forces,​

The prince of the Gabełeank’ with his forces,​

The prince of Urts with his forces.​

And many other troops from the royal house he brought over to his side and some lesser nobles from other families. With deceitful cunning he lay in wait in the strongholds of his own land with the fictious excuse that he would rapidly move to attack the Persian army in order to expel them from Albania.

The division of the Armenian forces in three armies was intended to allow for a minimum of protection for the country while the Armenians attacked Iberia and Albania. The first army under Nershapuh Ṙmbosean was to guard the approaches into Armenia from Atrpatakan (Atropatene in Classical sources, Ādurbādagān in MP, corresponding to modern Iranian Azerbaijan) while the other two armies under Vardan Mamikonian and Vasak of Siwnik’ invaded Iberia and Albania respectively (Siwnik’ was located next to Albania, so in this respect Ełiše’s text makes sense). The alleged objective of Vardan was to defeat the forces of the marzbān of Čor, that is, the Sasanian garrison of Darband. In the account by Łazar P’arpec’i, the same list of magnates is given, but they are given personal names, and Łazar also gives the name of the Sasanian marzbān of Čor as Nikhorakan Sebukht (Ełiše names him just as Sebukht).

According to Ełiše, then the perfidious Vasak of Siwnik’ hurried to contact the marzbān Sebukht in writing, telling him what where the Armenian dispositions, that he would not move his army and that Vardan’s force was small and that the marzbān could attack and defeat him easily, as the force led by Nershapuh Ṙmbosean would be placed too far away to intervene in time.

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

This he (i.e. Vasak of Siwnik’) wrote and explained to the marzpan, whose name was Sebukht. When he heard all this encouraging news from Vasak and was assured that the Armenian general was advancing on him with a small number of troops, he did not remain in the region of Chor, but gathered all the host of his army and rapidly crossed the great river called Kura (Note: this river marked then the border between Armenia and Iberia). He encountered him near the borders of Georgia, opposite the city of Khałkhał, which was the Albanian king’s winter residence. after crossing with all his troops, he drew them up to enclose the entire plain; they were armed and equipped in total readiness for battle against the Armenian army.

Gates of the ancient city of Kabałak, located 20 km from the moder Azeri city of Gabala, in the modern Republic of Azerbaijan.

Then follows a passage in which Vardan and the Armenian army plead for God’s help against the “heathen army”. According to Thomson, this city of Khałkhał was located north of Lake Sevan (probably in modern eastern Azerbaijan); it is also named by Agathangelos and Łazar P’arpec’i as an Albanian city. After the common plea, the Armenians attacked the army of the marzbān:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

Saying this, they closed ranks and attacked. Having broken the right wing, they threw it back onto the left. they put all to the sword over the face of the plain and turned them in flight as far as the secure regions of the forests along the deep precipices of the Lop’nos River. There some warriors of royal blood, related to the king of Bałas, offered resistance; they unseated from his horse and killed one of the Armenian nobles. Mush of the Dimak’sean family, and wounded Gazrik.
At that spot Arshavir Arsharuni raised his eyes, roared like a lion, and attacked wildly, striking, and slaying Vurk, the valiant brother of the king of the Lp’ink’. Many of his sides-de-camp he killed with him. Thus they all alike struck each man his opponent to the ground. and from the great impetuosity of the attack, there were many more drowned in the river than were felled by the sword on dry land. From the great number of fallen corpses the pure waters of the river turned to blood, and none of them at all was able to escape and hide in the thick forests of the plains. But one of the enemy soldiers crossed the great river on the back of his horse with his armor. saved from the battle by the skin of his teeth, he brought the sad news to the remnants of the army who had fled the great capital.

About the exact location of the battle, Thomson only says that the river Lop’nos was located “north of Lake Sevan (today in the central part of the Republic of Armenia). As for Bałas, it was a small kingdom located on the lower valley of the Kura River, in modern Azerbaijan, near the Caspian Sea. As for the personal names, there’s a great degree of agreement between this account and that of Łazar P’arpec’i, only that the latter calls Arshavir a member of the Kamsarakan family; the passage with Arshavir raising his eyes is heavily inspired by Maccabees 6:43 (this sort of Biblical allusions are commonplace in Armenian Christian writers, and Ełiše employed them liberally). The expression “the great capital” can be interpreted according to Thomson as referring to any capital of a province or district, although he thinks that in this case it refers to the cities of Parthav or Kabałak, both of which acted as the capital of Albania. After this victory, Vardan’s army invaded Albania, attacking the cities and fortresses held by royal garrisons and loyalists, and many Albanian nobles joined his army, and the rebellion spread:

Armenia and the southern Caucasus in general (except for most of the modern Republic of Azerbaijan) is a land with a complicated topography.

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

Then they attacked with no little ardor the fortresses and towns which the Persians held in Albania. After a fierce struggle they set fire to their strongholds, and wherever they found them in various fortresses they put to the sword numerous magi who had come ready to bring ruin to the country; these they threw out as carrion for the birds of heaven and beasts of the earth. They purified the sites of all impure sacrifices and saved and delivered the churches from their terrible affliction.
Many of the Albanian nobles and of the general peasantry for the sake of God’s name had scattered and spread out among the fortresses of the Caucasus Mountains; when they saw the success of the enterprise which God had effected through the Armenian army, they too assembled and joined their forces. Together and in concert they shared in the heroic task. Then they marched against the pass of the Huns, which the Persians were holding in force. They captured and destroyed the fortifications, slaughtered the troops quartered inside, and made the pass over to Vahan, who was from the royal family of Albania. (…)
Then the man to whom they had entrusted the pass they sent as ambassador to the land of the Huns and to many other barbarian nations who were allied with the Huns in order to come to an understanding with them and make a pact that the alliance would be kept indissoluble. When these [nations] heard all that had occurred, they immediately rushed to the spot and saw with their own eyes the victory that had been won. They did not hesitate to enter into a pact with an oath in accordance with the ritual of their own religion; they also took a Christian oath to keep a firm alliance with them.

Thus, the Armenian force of Vardan Mamikonian gathered forces with Albanian rebels, took all the fortresses garrisoned by royal troops in Albania, took the fortifications of Darband and then signed an alliance with the Huns (which was probably the reason why they had attacked Albania and taken the fortifications of Darband in the first place). But then a messenger from Armenia arrived, bearing bad news: Vasak of Siwnik’ had openly changed sides and was wreaking havoc in their homeland (presumably in the estates owned by the rebels). The army set at the borders of Atrpatakan had not arrived in time to stop the force of Vasak but remained committed to the rebellion . Vardan returned in haste to Armenia and forced Vasak to flee, and then winter arrived (the winter of 450-451 CE) which forced Vardan to disperse his troops to winter quarters, but he carried on harassing Vasak of Siwnik’ and his followers, who according to Ełiše were reduced to having to eat their own horses.

Basin of the Kura River (ancient Kyros) the most important river in the southern Caucasus.

At this point, after celebrating Vardan’s victories during Epiphany, the Armenian bishops (who in Ełiše’s account were the true leaders of the rebellion) sent another embassy to Constantinople, and tried to negotiate with the Sasanian court, by releasing one of their Iranian prisoners and sending him with a message to the Šahān Šāh, although obviously the court had already received news of the rebellion through Vasak of Siwnik’. Apparently, all this news worked an almost miraculous change in the kings’ mind:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

So the man (i.e. the prisoner released by the Armenian rebels) went to the winter quarters of the king and repeated all this in his ears, making him shake and quiver. He lost all his strength, especially because he had returned from the war in the East humiliated and not with a head held high. When he had received accurate confirmation from this last messenger who had come to him, he threw all the blame for his enterprises on his counselors. then he cooled from his raging anger because the mouths of his evil advisers, who had been urging him unceasingly to cruel acts, had been silenced. He was humbled from his lofty pride, and he restored his wild heart to human nature. he looked and saw himself full of weakness. He realized that he could not complete everything he wished to do. Therefore he ceased his haughty aggression and quieted his raging cries.

He who had loudly thundered and by even more fearful commands had made those far and near quake, began to speak softly and to entreat everyone, saying: “What harm have I done, and what crime have I committed against [any] nation, or people, or individual? Are there not many creeds in the land of the Aryans, and is not the cult of each one openly [performed]? Who has ever forced or compelled [anyone] to accept the single religion of magism? especially with regard to the Christian religion, just as they have been form and true to their own religion, in such measure have they seemed to us superior to all [other] sects. No one can find any fault with their select religion. But I consider [it] equal and on a par with our Mazdean religion, just as it was respected in the time of our ancestors, as I myself remember in my father’s time when he sat on this noble throne. When he began to examine and scrutinize all creeds and had understood them well, he found the Christian religion to be the most sublime of all. Therefore [the Christians} were honored at the royal court and were blessed by him with liberal gifts; they freely travelled throughout the whole land. Likewise the leaders of the Christians, whom they call bishops, he treated as worthy of presents and offerings. and he entrusted to them as reliable officials the distant borderlands; and never did any mishap befall the great affairs of state.
You never recalled a single one of these facts, but continuously wearied my ears by speaking all sorts of evil about them. See, you have made me do what I did not wish, and great damage has occurred on the borders between two implacable enemies. While we were on a distant campaign, before we had brought any military operation to a successful conclusion, you raised war against me in my own house, the result of which will be even worse than [war] against our outside enemies”.

According to Ełiše, then the great nobles of Iran and the mowbeds agreed with the king to allow freedom of religion to the Christians of the empire, starting by those who were still in the royal army (which seems to imply that the king was still in the East, with his army assembled there to carry on the war against the Kidarites), and ending with an edict of general amnesty. But then the tale twists again:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

All this he put in writing and made known in Armenia and many other lands which practiced the Christian religion. But secretly and deceptively he made haste to send messengers to the emperor Marcian. When he had verified that the Romans had refused to help the Christians, either with Military assistance or in any other way, he reverted to his earlier wicked views. Since he put the responsibility for the success of events on his own ministers, he thus assumed that they could carry out everything in accordance with his previous intentions.

Anyway though, according to Ełiše, the rebel Armenians had not believed in the goodwill of the king’s decree and had not put down their arms. Once he realized this, Yazdegerd II gathered an army and sent it to Armenia under the command of Mihr-Narsē:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 3:

But when he (i.e. Yazdegerd II) realized that he could not break the firmness of their unity, then he dispatched from his presence the old man full of bitterness (i.e. Mihr-Narsē), in whom lurked Satan with all his power, and who had perpetrated much slaughter. The food he had craved since childhood was the pure flesh of the saints, and the drink of which he was never sated was the blood of the innocent. To the evil of this man he added his own lethal command: he gathered under his command troops from every land and sent with him many companies and elephants.
Approaching the borders of Armenia, he entered the town of P’aytarakan and spread all his troops around the city in careful preparation for his malicious plans. The old poisonous snake entered the fortified retreat, very deceitfully disguising himself so as not to be feared. He threatened the distant by fearful roaring and those nearby hissing and crawling like a snake. His name was Mihrnerseh, and there was no one at all who could escape his clutches. Not only the greatest and the least, but even the king himself obeyed his command; and now he had undertaken the latter’s sinister schemes.

Here, Mihr-Narsē also enters Ełiše’s narration like the arch-villain, while in Łazar’s tale of the events, he is the “bad guy” from page one. The “city of P’aytarakan” was probably the capital city of the district of the same name located on the eastern border of Armenia between the Kura and Aras (ancient Araxes) rivers. Ełiše was a skilled writer, and just at this point he ended his third chapter with a great cliffhanger, and starts chapter four with a meeting of two of the main villains of the story, Mihr-Narsē and Vasak of Siwnik’, and the wuzurg framādār entrusted the Prince of Siwnik’ with the task of breaking the unity of the Armenian rebels by inducing as many as possible to switch sides; according to Ełiše he had success on inducing the following Armenian aristocrats to abandon the rebellion:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 4:

Opening a breach, he snatched away and openly seized many of the nobles and very many of the peasants, and some others who were so-called priests. Here are the names of his associates:

The prince of the Ṙshtunik, called Artak​

The prince of the Khoṙkhoṙunik’, called Gadisho​

The prince of the Vahevunik’, called Giut​

The prince of the Bagratunik’, called Tirots’​

The prince of the Apahunik’, called Manēch​

The prince of the Gabełeank’, called Artēn​

The prince of Akē, called Ēnjul​

The prince of Urts, called Nerseh​

The prince of the [other] branch of the Palunik’, called Varazshapuh​

A lesser noble of the Amatunik’, called Manēn.​

And many other noble men, whom they called ostanik, from the royal house.

There are differences in this list from that given by Łazar P’arpec’i. Łazar has seven names, in order: Tirots’, Gadisho, Manēch, Giut, Varazshapuh, Artēn (but of the Abełeank’ family), and Nerseh. According to Thomson, the Armenian ostanik means strictly retainers, and Ełiše adds “of the royal house” merely as a gloss. In MP, ostān was used to refer to the royal domain. According to Ełiše, he also managed to convince some priests (not any of the bishops. though) to accept the royal edict, and he presented all the “deserters” to Mihr-Narsē as proof of his achievement. But his “evil actions” did not stop there:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 4:

Having been successful in all these evil actions, he (i.e. Vasak of Siwnik’) also broke the union of Georgia (i.e. Iberia) and Armenia; he did not allow the Albanians to advance and he held back the land of Ałdznik’ in the same fashion.in the same fashion. He wrote an epistle to the land of the Greeks, falsely confusing matters for them; it was addressed to a man called Vasak, one of the Mamikoneans who were in service to the Greeks. In this time of trouble he was the Sparapet of Lower Armenia and faithful to the Roman army of the Persian border, but in his actions was beyond the pale of God’s religion. The former Vasak found this latter Vasak to be an accomplice in the great crimes in which they both united.
He wrote and pretended continuously that all the Armenians were united behind him. The furtive Vasak had this letter taken to the emperor’s capital (i.e. Constantinople) secretly with great caution, so that he estranged the minds of the holy bishops from them [the Armenians] and caused all the Greek forces to doubt the covenant (…).
It pleased the Greek Empire to hear this happily, but through him they were subverted even more (…).
In proportion to his great wickedness the occasion brought him even more success, for no outside assistance at all was forthcoming for the Armenian army except from those Huns with whom they had a treaty. But on their account he assembled the mass of the Aryan cavalry, barring and closing the Gates to their passage. For he did not give the Persian king any pause at all but sent summons for many troops to the Chor Pass; he gathered the entire [forces of] Georgia, the troops of the Lp’ink’ and Chiłbk’, Vat, Gav, Głuar, Khras and Hechmatak, P’askh and P’oskh, P’iwk’uan and all the forces of T’avasparan, from the hill and plain and all the mountain strongholds. some he constrained by money and liberal distributions of royal treasures, and others by the threat of the king’s command.
Accomplishing all this in accordance with the king’s order, he wrote daily reports to the great hazarapet of Persia (i.e. Mihr-Narse), who was lurking hidden in the city of P’aytarakan.

In other words, Vasak of Siwnik’, acting as the marzbān of Armenia under the close supervision of Mihr-Narsē, , displayed great activity in lowering support from the rebels, mobilizing all loyal forces and attempting to make sure that they would not receive any help from outside, neither from the Romans or the Huns, or from Iberia and Albania. Ałdznik’ (Arzanene) is located at the extreme southwest of Armenia, in using it in the same sentence as Albania and Iberia, Ełiše is indicating the wide scope of Vasak’s actions, which covered all of the Armenian territory. Lower Armenia refers to what the Romans called “Inner Armenia”, the part of the old Kingdom of Armenia that they had annexed after 387 CE, and it seems that a branch of the Mamikonean family was indeed based at the district of Ekełeats’ (Acilisene or Akilisine to the Eastern Romans) at the time in question. As for the other forces levied by Vasak, they were Caucasian peoples who dwelled north and east of Armenia proper. As for the Eastern Romans , they were busy with other threats: in the spring of 451 CE, Attila would launch his invasion of Gaul that would end in the battle of the Catalaunian Fields, and in the fall of that same year, the Council of Chalcedon was to be convened by emperor Marcian, who was in the meantime busy with his magister militum Aspar preparing the Eastern Roman army to confront the Huns. The Armenian rebels had indeed chosen a really bad moment to ask for foreign help to either the Romans or the Huns (if the Caucasian Huns were indeed under Attila’s command).

The capital of Sasanian Armenia, seat of the Armenian catholicos and the Sasanian marzbān, was the city of Dvin (located within the modern Republic of Armenia), whose ruins have been continuously excavated since 1937. The cathedral of Saint Gregory the Illuminator and the palace of the catholicos stood on a hill outside of the walled precinct of the city.

At this point, Mihr-Narsē had gained full confidence in Vasak of Siwnik’, and began to prepare the loyal forces for a decisive campaign against the rebels, by gathering intelligence about them:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 4:

When Mihrnerseh saw all this evil in him (i.e. Vasak of Siwnik’), he put his hopes in him more than in himself. He inquired and discovered how many men there were in Armenia in the total host of Vardan’s army. When he learned from him that there were more than sixty thousand, he asked for even more information about each one’s individual prowess: how many wore full armor, how many were archers without armor, and likewise concerning the infantry with shields (…).
After he had been informed by him about all this, he summoned all his generals, and in his presence commanded them all to heed his advice. He entrusted all the troops with their commanders to one of the nobles, whose name was Mushkan Niusalavurt.
He himself then marched to the East and presented himself before the great king, informing him of the course of events, of his own cunning wisdom, and of Vasak’s deceitful subterfuge, namely, how he had wished to hide his original impiety because he had broken and divided the Armenian army.
When the great king heard all this from the mouth of the great hazarapet, he was inwardly embittered and uttered an inviolable oath: “If that impious one (i.e. Vasak of Siwnik’) survives the great war, I shall make him drink the cup of bitter death in great dishonor”.

Łazar P’arpec’i mentions two Sasanian generals, Mushkan Niusalavurt and Dołvech; the latter does not appear in Ełiše’s version. And once more, Ełiše ends a chapter with a cliffhanger before starting with chapter five, which deals with the battle of Avarayr and the crushing of the rebellion.

 

[Barsoom]

I suffered a stroke during the first week of March, and I'm still recovering and on medical leave, so I'm trying to advance as much as I can with these threads. After the tedious narrative of Ammianus, following the chronicle of a good writer like Yeghishe is a relief (and even a pleasure), even if the man was a rabid ultra-nationalist Christian priest.

Speedy recovery!

 

[Semper Victor]

Speedy recovery!

Thanks!

 

[Semper Victor]

4.10 THE REIGN OF YAZDEGERD II. THE ARMENIAN REBELLION (II) AND ITS AFTERMATH.


The battle of Avarayr took place on 2 June, 451 CE at the plain of Avarayr in Vaspurakan (Central Armenia). Ełiše gives a list of the Armenian magnates who took part in the battle on the rebel side, under Vardan Mamikonian’s command, with a total force (according to Ełiše) of sixty-six thousand men, between infantry and cavalry. He also mentions that the army mustered un the “plain of Artaz” in east-central Armenia, and both him (later in retrospect) and Łazar P’arpec’i state that the battle took place near the village of Avarayr. On the rebel side, the battle had the air of a holy war or a crusade, with a considerable number of priests and clergymen accompanying the army (including the catholicos Yoseph). In Ełiše’s tale of the events, Vardan Mamikonian addressed the troops with a long and pious speech, explicitly recalling the example of the Maccabees’ uprising against the Seleucids. There they waited for the Sasanian force to arrive:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 5:

A few days later the Persian general set out with his whole heathen host, marched to Armenia, and reached the province of Her and Zarevand. Halting in that province, he pitched his camp, dug ditches, erected a rampart, surrounded it with a wooden palisade, and vigilantly fortified it like a city. Detaching a large force from his army, he raided many provinces seeking plunder.

This passage is interesting because it shows that at least in the mid-V c. CE Sasanian armies built fortified camps, while the Strategikon of the early VII c. CE states that they did not. The Strategikon sees to be wrong in this respect, as we will see later, the Sasanian army in the V c. Ce made extensive use of fixed and field fortifications; the British historian James Howard-Johnston even noted that the Roman and Sasanian armies seem to have exchanged roles at this time in this respect. The rebel Armenians sent a detachment of 2,000 men to stop the Sasanian foragers, and managed to defeat them and force them to rejoin the main body of the army. According to Ełiše, Vasak of Siwnik’ made a last attempt to “break the covenant of the Armenians”, i.e., to negotiate with the rebels with the help of the Armenian priests who had gone to his side, but he was unsuccessful. Upon seeing this, the Sasanian commander decided to give battle:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 5:

After this, when the general of the Persian army saw that there were no messengers left to deceive them and that his expectation and hope of separating them from the indissoluble union had failed, then he summoned the impious Vasak and all the apostate nobles of Armenia who were with him. He questioned them to discover what means of victory there might be. On being informed about each man’s individual valor, he summoned many of the generals under his authority and ordered them to bring forward the companies of elephants. These he divided into various groups, and he assigned to each elephant three thousand armed men in addition to all the other troops.
He addressed the greatest nobles at the king’s behest, saying: “Each of you remember the command of the great king and set as your goal the flame of bravery. Choose death over a cowardly life. Do not forget the oil, the crown, the laurels, and the liberal gifts which will be granted you from the royal treasury. You are lords each of your own province, and you possess great power. You yourselves know the bravery of the Armenians and the heroic valor of each one of them. If perchance you are defeated, though alive you will be deprived of the great property you now have. remember your wives and children, remember your dear friends. Perchance you will be trampled by your enemies from abroad and be joined in grief by your friends at home”.
Likewise, he reminded them of their many companions who had fled; although they survived the battle, they had received the penalty of death by the sword. Their sons and daughters and their entire families had been banished, and all their ancestral lands taken from them.
Such were his words, and even more strongly did he emphasize the royal orders. He set in order the whole army and extended his battle line all the way across the great plain. He disposed the three thousand men to right and left of each elephant and surrounded himself with the elite of his warriors. In this fashion he strengthened the center like a powerful tower of an impregnable castle. He distributed banners, unfurled flags, and ordered them to be ready at the sound of the great trumpet. The contingents of the Aparhatsik’, the Katishk’, the Huns and the Gełk’, and all the rest of the army’s elite he assembled in one place and commanded the force on his right-hand side to be ready to oppose the Armenian general.

Depiction of the battle of Avarayr in a XV c. CE manuscript.

This is one of the best surviving descriptions of a Sasanian army organizing for battle. It agrees with the comments of Ammianus a century earlier about the harsh treatment that the Sasanians dispensed to deserters, traitors, “cowards” and to their respective families. According to Thomson, the Aparhatsik’ were the levies from Abaršahr (in Khorasan) and the Katishk’ came from the region of Herāt (following J, Marquart), the Gełk would come from Gīlān (in the Caspian Sea shore in northern Iran, but this is highly dubious; they are probably the same unknown Central Asian people that Ammianus named one century before as Gelani) and the Huns would be probably mercenaries in Sasanian service, either from the Caucasus or from Central Asia. Notice also how these contingents (the Huns and the cavalry from northeastern Iran) are described as “the elite” of the Sasanian army, just as Ammianus had done a century ago when he praised “the Parthians” as the elite of the army of Šābuhr II. On the other side, Vahan Mamikonian disposed his forces thus:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 5:

Then the brave Vardan advanced, questioned the nobles, and with their unanimous advice disposed his generals.
The first division he entrusted to the prince of Artsrunik’, with the great prince of Mokk’ in support. Many other nobles he appointed as adjutants to those two and deployed the mass of the troops on the wings to either side.
The second division he entrusted to Khorēn Khoṙkhoṙuni, with Ēntsayin and Nerseh K’ajberuni in support.
The third division he put under the command of Tat’ul Vanandats’i and ordered Tachat Gnt’uni to support him with many brave warriors to both sides on their wings.
He took upon himself the command of the fourth division, with the valiant Arshavir and his own blood brother Hamazaspean in support.
He deployed his battle line, spreading (the troops) across the whole surface of the plain opposite the Aryan army on the bank of the river Tłmut.

This passage, other than informing us about Vardan’s battle dispositions, also informs us that both armies were separated by a river (a tributary of the Aras River). According to Ełiše, both armies attacked at once, but the Armenians crossed the river first, rushing at the Sasanian force:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 5:

There one could see the commotion of the great conflict and the anguish of the immense anxiety on both sides as they resolutely attacked each other (…). Forming a solid group, the whole host blocked the river. The Persian army, fearing the difficulty of (crossing) the river, began to stir in its place. As the two sides collided with a crash, many wounded fell to the ground, rolling in the agony of death.
In that great tumult the valiant Vardan looked up and saw that the elite of the bravest warriors of the Persian army had dislodged the left wing of the Armenian force. With great vigor he attacked the spot and broke the right wing of the Persian army, throwing it back on the elephants; surrounding them, he cut them down back to the same place. Such confusion he brought upon them that the center broke and abandoned their fortified position, even the most valiant taking to flight.
Then Mushkan Nisalavurt lifted his eyes and saw that some of the Armenian troops had broken away from the main force and remained behind in the valleys of the mountains. Therefore, raising a shout, he urged on the Aryan soldiers around him, who had halted opposite Vardan’s division. At that spot, the two sides both were prepared to acknowledge defeat, as the corpses had fallen so thickly as to resemble piles of rough stones.
When Mushkan Nisalavurt saw this he waited for the elephants of Artashir, who was sitting on [one of] them in a high watchtower as if in a fortified city. At the sound of the great trumpets he urged on his troops and surrounded him [Vartan] with the troops of the front line.
Now the stalwart Vardan with his valiant companions worked no little carnage in that very place where he himself became worthy to suffer perfect martyrdom.

Both commanders divided his forces in the three bodies customary in eastern warfare, with a reserve under their personal command; and in the Sasanian case there was also the “trump card” of the elephants’ corps, that judging from the account above, was placed in the rearguard as a reserve (as attested in accounts of other battles fought by the Sasanians). The commander of the elephants, Ardaxšīr, is not named anywhere else in Ełiše’s text, nor in Łazar’s. With Vardan’s death (venerated to this day as a saint by the Armenian Apostolic Church), the Sasanians had won the battle and the rebel survivors fled in all directions, hiding in the forested valleys around the plateau, and the Sasanian cavalry pursued them until the sun set down.

Plan of the battle array and its development.

Ełiše states that there were many more survivors than fallen in the battle among the Armenians, but that with Vardan dead, the rebellion suffered a blow from which it could not recover, as none among the surviving leaders could hope to gather the rest around him as Vardan had. Ełiše gives the total number of dead for the Armenian side (noblemen, of course) as 1,036, and 3,544 fallen from among the “heathens”, with nine of them belonging to the upper class of Iranian magnates. Vasak of Siwnik’ (who according to Ełiše had “hidden in between the elephants” during the battle) then sent letters to all the rebel-held fortresses announcing the royal amnesty, but the rebels refused to believe him because of his personal record as a traitor. According to Ełiše’s tale of the events, the Armenian populace and the rebel lords who had not died or been captured deserted the villages and cities and hid in strongholds, caves and forests because nobody trusted neither the king’s pardon nor the word of Vasak of Siwnik’.

The plain of Avarayr.

The Tghmut River, actual Aghchay.

The Sasanian army, once it had received reinforcements, had to take fortress after fortress at considerable cost, while the Armenians attacked detachments of the royal army and even dared to attack provinces in northwestern Iran, across the Armenian border. They also sent envoys to the Huns, who finally honored their alliance and attacked the borders of the Sasanian empire:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 6:

Nor did those who had fled for refuge to the forests of Ardzakh remain quiet and peaceful, but they continually sent to the land of the Huns, urging and exhorting the Hun army and reminding them of the pact they had made with Armenia and confirmed with a solemn oath. Many of them were pleased to hear these words of flattery. But [the Armenians] also blamed them severely: “Why did you not come prepared for battle?” Although in the beginning they found no way to reach mutual agreement, later (the Huns) gathered a numerous force and attacked the borders of the Persian empire. They ravaged many provinces, took very many prisoners back to their own country, and clearly showed to the king their unity with the Armenian army.

This Hunnic intervention precipitated the end of the crisis, as the Sasanian court finally decided to change tactics:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 6:

When news of all this reached the Persian general he erupted in great anger; in his great wrath he piled the blame on the impious Vasak as being the cause and author of all the calamities. Then he set off and went to Persia, giving the court a full and accurate account in writing and throwing the blame on the apostate.
When the king heard of all the devastation of the country and had been accurately informed about the outcome of the great battle, he desisted from his arrogant boasting; he kept silent and refrained from his perpetual deceitful scheming. He inquired into the failure of that imprudent affair, and wishing to find out, said: “Who might there be who could inform me truthfully about these matters?” Now the person at court who knew about the impious venture was the hazarapet Mihrnerseh; he came forward and said to the king; “I can tell you that, noble sovereign. If you wish to hear the plain truth, have the leaders of the Christians in Armenia summoned. They will willingly come and explain everything to you accurately.”

Then the king wrote to one of the greatest nobles, Atrormizd (i.e. Ādur-Ohrmazd in MP) by name, whose principality touched on the land of Armenia and who had cooperated with the general in that war, and he appointed him governor of the land of Armenia. He dispatched Mushkan Nisalavurt with all the surviving troops to the lands of the Ałuank’ (i.e. Albania) and Lp’ink’ and Chiłbk’ and to Hechmatakk’ and T’avaspark’ and Khibiovan, and to all the fortresses which the army of the Huns had destroyed because of their pact with the Armenians. The king was exceedingly chagrined, not only over the ravaging of the lands and the loss of troops, but even more at the destruction of the Pass: only with difficulty over a long time had they been able to fortify it, but then it had been taken easily and razed, and there was no likelihood of its being rebuilt. So he ordered Vasak, with the leading Christians, to be summoned to court.
The marzpan Atrormizd arrived in Armenia with goodwill and in peace. Following the king’s orders he summoned Sahak, the saintly bishop of the Ṙshtunik’, to learn from him details about the accusation. And although the latter had destroyed a fire-temple and had greatly harassed the fire-worshippers, he did not hesitate to come to the public tribunal.
Furthermore, a pious priest from the house of the Artsrunik’, Mushē by name, who was a prelate in the land of the Artsrunik’, had also destroyed a house of fire and inflicted many sufferings on the magi by imprisonment and tortures; yet he did not hesitate either, but willingly came and presented himself to the marzpan.
Two other blessed priests, called Samuel and Abraham, had destroyed the fire-temple at Artashat and earlier had been imprisoned by the apostate Vasak; they also were added to the company of their virtuous companions.

This is an illustrative passage, because Ełiše is quite honest and shows that the Armenian priests were no innocent lambs and were quite able of violence against the “heathens”. And also because it shows that at times a foreign marzbān could be better received by the Armenians than one of their own nation. According to Ełiše’s account, it was the devastation brought by the Huns upon the empire what finally prompted a definitive change in policy towards Armenia, which was led by Mihr-Narsē from the court (surprisingly, Ełiše offers a more positive depiction of him in this chapter, after having described him as a “snake” and a “creature of Satan” previously, like in Łazar’s account).

Remains of the Sasanian fortress and the Darial Pass, the Gate of the Alans (modern Republic of Georgia), one of the two main passes between the Caucasian Steppe and Ērānšahr.

According to Ełiše, the bishops were brought to the court and were interrogated by the wuzurg framādār, who did not dare to torture them because the rebel Armenian nobles still held many fortresses, and the marzbān advised him against it. In the meantime, the latter carried on a conciliatory policy in Armenia that slowly rebuilt bridges between the rebel Armenian aristocracy and the monarchy, by reopening churches and allowing the bishops to return to their sees and priests to their churches. This gave confidence to the rebel lords, who asked from the marzbān to be allowed to present their case to the court. The marzbān provided them with safe letters and so they went to the king’s winter palace (presumably the royal palace in Ctesiphon). There, the king held court for many days in order to be able to hear the arguments of both parts, and according to Ełiše, “the side of the apostates lost”. There is an interesting passage among the charges brought against Vasak of Siwnik’ that I will quote here:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 6:

While all these accusations against him were being repeated for so many days, his own relatives (who had also earlier denounced him before the king) came forward. They began to expound and reveal in order how he had made friends with Heran the Hun in concert with the king of Bałas; this was at the time that Heran had slaughtered the Persian troops in Albania and had raided the land of the Greeks, carrying off many prisoners and much plunder from the Greeks, Armenians, Georgians and Albanians. [They also indicated] how the king himself had learned of his intentions and had slain the king of Bałas. At that time Vasak was governor of Armenia and he had been found to be in collusion with the king’s enemies. These relatives also revealed how they had been privy to his wicked plans.

Heran the Hun is not mentioned in any other source, Armenian or otherwise. And any Hunnic raid in the Eastern Roman provinces during the tenure of Vasak of Siwnik’ as marzbān of Armenia (442-452 CE) is also unattested in Greek or Syriac sources, but this fragment is the one that likely explains the specific reason behind the building of the Darband Wall, and the town of Šahrestān Yazdegerd. According to Ełiše’s tale, the execution of Vasak of Siwnik’ was carefully staged: the king invited him and all the other nobility in the court to a banquet, and Vasak assisted, suspecting nothing. While he waited “in the inner gallery, which was the chamber of the greatest nobles”, the court chamberlain met him and formally announced him the accusations laid against him in court. He repeated them thrice before the assembled nobles, and as Vasak was unable to answer them, he announced that he was sentenced to death, and seized by the chief executioner who led off to prison to await his execution; he died in prison before the day of his execution arrived (Ełiše took great glee in describing his death in detail). And thus Ełiše closed the sixth chapter of his work again with a cliffhanger; the next chapter covered the fate of the Armenian (noble) prisoners and exiles, both secular and from the clergy. As usual with the works of Armenian authors from Yazdegerd II’s reign, it also offers invaluable information about the foreign affairs that affected the empire, specifically the war against the Kidarites:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 7:

Now in the sixteenth year of his reign (i.e. 453-454 CE) King [Yazkert] in great wrath again marched to the land of the Kushans to wage war. Leaving Vrkan (i.e. Classical Hyrcania, Gorgān in Sasanian times) and reaching the land of Apar (i.e. Abaršahr), he ordered that the nobles and priests be kept in the same fetters in the citadel of Niwshapuh (i.e. Nēw-Šābuhr). But two of the blessed prisoners he made march with him. He struck fear into all the Christian communities through which he passed.

A certain Hun of royal descent from the land of the Khaylandurk (the Caucasian Huns), Bēl by name, was secretly inclined to the Christians and was eagerly being instructed in the truth by them. He had of his own will submitted to the king’s authority, but when he saw the saints tormented (i.e. the Armenian priests that were kept captives by the court) he became very embittered. But since he was unable to help [them], he fled to the king of the Kushans. He went and told him all the details of the sufferings that the king had inflicted on Armenia. He also informed him about the breach in the Pass of the Huns (i.e. the Darband Pass) and showed him the discord in the army, whereby many nations had defected from loyalty to the king. He also indicated to him the muttering (i.e. “the disaffection”, an expression taken from 1 Macc. 11:39) of the land of the Aryans.
When the king of the Kushans heard this, he in no way doubted or distrusted the man, nor did the suspicion he might be a spy enter his heart. For he had learned a little earlier, and Bēl as it were confirmed it, that [Yazkert] was marching on the land of the Kushans; so he immediately made haste to assemble his troops and organize an army to oppose him with force. For although he was unable to face him in pitched battle, nonetheless, falling on his rear he inflicted many losses on the king’s army. And he pressed and assailed them so hard that, overcoming them with a small number of troops, he turned them back. In hot pursuit, he plundered many royal provinces, and he himself returned safely to his own country.

This is the last military campaign of Yazdegerd II’s reign that appears in the sources (this king died 3-4 years later, and his son Pērōz inherited the war together with the empire); as you can see his long war against the Kidarite Huns ended in a resounding defeat against what, in Ełiše’s account, sounds like standard nomadic mounted warfare, with rapid surprise hit-and-run attacks exploiting the tactical mobility of cavalry Inner Asian armies. But what started as an attack against the rearguard of the king’s army ended in a full-fledged defeat and retreat, with the Kidarites (once more) invading and looting the eastern provinces of Ērānšahr. This defeat would have consequences; according to Ełiše, Mihr-Narsē feared that he would be blamed for “having brought disunity to the army” and decided to have the Armenian priests that had been imprisoned killed. Thanks to this account, we know that when this decision was taken the camp of the royal army was located at fifteen days’ travel from Nēw-Šābuhr, where the prisoners were locked in the citadel, except for two (Samuel and Abraham) who were with the army, and who were to be killed in secret.

In the medieval Islamic era, Nīšāpūr would grow to become one of the largest cities in the Islamic world (all the surface colored in green), but the Sasanian city was rather more humble: just a round citadel and a rectangular šahrestān, like so many royal Sasanian foundations (marked in yellow), according to the excavations conducted there by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 1930s-1950s.

The man charged by Mihr-Narsē with the task of going to Nēw-Šābuhr to secure their execution was Wehdēn-Šābuhr, the quartermaster whom we have already met before. In the citadel, the Armenian prisoners were under the custody of the “chief-magus”:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 7:

But the chief-magus to whom they had been entrusted had previously tortured them frequently, in excess of the king’s command. For he was the governing religious authority of the land of Apar and more enthusiastic in magism and more versed in the Zoroastrian religion than most wise men. Furthermore (what they consider a great glory in their erring hierarchy) he had the title of “Hamakden”; he also knew the “Ampartk’ash”, had learned the “Bozpayit”, and was versed in the “Pahlavik” and the “Paskaden”. For these are the five doctrines which comprise all the religion of magism. But beyond these is a further sixth, which they call “Petmog”.

This is one of the more interesting passages in Ełiše’s work and one in which he demonstrates his familiarity with Zoroastrianism, despite the fact that he himself was probably a Christian priest. The Armenianized term Hamakden is translated by Thomson as “fully versed in the (Zoroastrian) religion” (the Danish scholar Arthur Christiansen rendered it in MP as Hamaghdēn). Christensen also reconstructed the Armenian Ampartk’ash as *ambard-kēš, which would translate as “collection of doctrines relatives to the faith”. As for Bozpayit, Christensen rendered it into MP as *bazpatit, meaning “confession of the sins committed”, while Pahlavik would be (always according to Christensen) Pahlavīgh in MP, meaning “the Pahlavi code”, which the Danish scholar thought was the official legal code of the empire, and Paskaden would have been originally Pārsīghdēn in MP, meaning literally “the Persian religion”. None of those terms is mentioned in the extant Pahlavi Books, so here Ełiše offers us a priceless glimpse into Zoroastrianism as it was practiced in the Sasanian Empire in the V c. CE.

Ełiše continues his account by telling how the chief-magus (who according to him was also the provincial governor) was struck by the “miraculous light” that shone from the imprisoned priests’ bodies in the dark dungeons, and converted to the Christian faith. When Wehdēn-Šābuhr arrived at the citadel and saw this he was disturbed, because he was actually a close friend of the chief-magus, so he took the Armenian prisoners away from the city, and then returned secretly to the court and spoke to the king himself, who ordered him to try to convince him to revert to the Mazdean religion, and in case that he did not repent, to send him into exile in secret, “beyond Turan and Makuran”, i.e. Tūrān and Makrān, in modern Baluchistan.

Seal of Wehdēn-Šābuhr, Ērānanbaragbed (according to Ryka Gyselen, 2017).

Next in Ełiše’s account, Yazdegerd II also appointed two other functionaries to help Wehdēn-Šābuhr in his task: Jnikan, the royal marzpet (a title not attested elsewhere) and Movad, the chancellor “under the authority of the mowbedān mowbed”, and the three functionaries took the Armenian priests away in secret “To an even more terrible place” to have them executed. But according to Ełiše, there was in the army “a man from Xūzestān” who happened to be a secret Christian and realized what was happening. When they reached a desert place, the “saints” were tortured and then Wehdēn-Šābuhr spoke to them (Ełiše explains that one of the prisoners, the bishop Sahak, was fluent in Persian) and told them to convert to Zoroastrianism, and they of course refused. So, Wehdēn-Šābuhr had them all killed (they are venerated to this day as saints by the Armenian Apostolic Church), and later the “man from Xuzestan” recovered their relics. As for the secular nobles that had gone willingly to the court (thirty-five in total according to Ełiše) they had to endure exile for twelve years, probably in Herāt, if the name of the “great prince of the country” where they were kept in (Harevshłom Shapuh) can be taken as an indication, for Harēv or Harēy was the Middle Persian name for Herāt. According to Łazar P’arpec’i though, he was a Jew, and he called him Hrewshnomshapuh, which would put probably the place of their exile in Lower Mesopotamia, south of Ctesiphon, or maybe in Spahān (the two areas where dense Jewish settlement is well attested). The name is attested already in the Epic Histories of P’avstos Buzand, where he calls an earlier Sasanian general Hrewshołum. The delay in their release (well after the death of Yazdegerd II) was due, according to Ełiše, to the civil war between Yazdegerd II’s two sons and the rebellion of the king of Albania, who again called the Huns in his help across the Caucasian passes. Strangely, according to Ełiše, Mihr-Narsē became sort of a friend to the Armenian prisoners in this time:

Mount Binālud in winter, in the Iranian province of Khorasan, 26 km northeast of Nīšāpūr.

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war - The names of the princes who for the love of Christ gave themselves with ready willingness to imprisonment by the king:

When the great hazarapet heard this, in his mind he very much praised the firmness of their conviction. From then on he began to form an affection for them as with ones loved by God. With wordy supplications he tried to persuade the king to release them from their bonds. For although he had been removed from the office of royal hazarapet and was found guilty of treachery on many counts (he bore responsibility for the ruin of Armenia, for which he was dismissed to his home in great dishonor) nonetheless, he never wished to speak ill of the prisoners to the very last day of his life.

As I wrote in a previous post, the Dutch Indologist Hans T. Bakker, who has tried to reconstruct the history of the Alkhan Huns focusing not only on the events in India, but putting them in relation to contemporary events north of the Hindu Kush, thinks that the renewal of the offensive against the Kidarites in 453 CE by Yazdegerd II was not a casual event, and that it should be put in context with the death of Attila in Pannonia that very same year, and with the alleged fight of the Gupta prince Skandagupta against a Hunnic invasion in India.

This is based on two Sanskrit epigraphic sources: the Bhitari pillar stone inscription of Skandagupta (Uttar Pradesh, India) and the Junagadh rock inscription of Skandagupta (Gujarat, India). Both relate the events that took place during the last years of reign of Skandagupta father, the Gupta emperor Kumāragupta I (r. 415 – early 450s CE), and the succession war that followed, which Skandagupta won in the end.

Bhitari pillar stone inscription of Skandagupta:

(NOTE: I am leaving out the start of the inscription, which is an account of Skandagupta’s genealogy and his many virtues. The original inscription [except for the introduction that I’ve omitted] is in verse.)
[Skandagupta], by whom, having, with daily intense application, step by step attained his object by means of good behavior and strength and political conduct, instruction in the art of disposition [or resources] was acquired, [and] was employed as the means of [subduing his] enemies, who had put themselves forward in the desire for conquest that was so highly welcome [to them]; by whom, when he prepared himself to restore the fallen fortunes of [his] family, a [whole] night was spent on a couch that was the bare earth; and then having defeated in battle his enemies, who had developed great power and wealth, he placed [his] left foot on a foot-stool which was the king [of that tribe himself]; the resplendent behavior of whom, possessed of spotless fame, inherent, [but in increased] by … and patience and heroism, which are emphatically equaled, [and] which destroy the efficacy of the weapons [of his enemies], is sung in every region by happy men, even down to the children.
[Skandagupta] who, when [his] father had attained the skies, conquered [his] enemies by the strength of [his] arm, and established again the ruined fortunes of [his] lineage; and then, crying, “the victory has been achieved”, betook himself to [his] mother, whose eyes were full of tears from joy, just as Kṛṣṇa, when he had slain [his] enemies, betook himself to his mother Devakī; who, with his own armies, established [again] [his] lineage that had been made to totter … , [and] with his two arms subjugated the earth, [and] shewed mercy to the conquered peoples in distress, [but] has become neither proud nor arrogant, though his glory is increasing day by day; [and] whom the bards raise to distinction with [their] songs and praises.
When he [Skandagupta] joined in close conflict with the Hūṇas, the earth was made to tremble due to [the power of] his arms, since he caused a terrible whirlpool among the enemy … of arrows; the brilliant … is proclaimed …, [which] sounds like the twanging of [his] bow in [their] ears.

The purport of the Bhitari pillar stone inscription of Skandagupta is the foundation of a Viṣṇu temple in Bhitari, probably called the Kumārasvāmin Temple, in memory of Skandagupta’s father Kumāragupta I, to whom the merit of the construction is bestowed.

According to the Indian scholar Vasudev Vishnu Mirashi, the verses quoted above refer to three major conflicts in which the young Skandagupta was involved. The first conflict would have taken place during the last years of Kumāragupta I, Skandagupta’s father; the verses 3 to 5 refer to this stage. According to Mirashi, Skandagupta would not have been the legal heir of Kumāragupta I but a boy from the royal harem. Verse 3 seems to refer to his rise to a position of power and verse 4 relates his conflict with anonymous enemies and his successful restoration of Gupta authority. Against other readings of the same inscription, Mirashi thought that this enemy would have been the Vākāṭaka king Pravarasena II (Skandagupta’s nephew on his father’s side), who had crossed the boundary river Narmadā in ca. 445 CE. The Junagadh inscription suggests that the Vākāṭakas joined the revolt of the Nāgas in Malwa (see below).

Gold dinar of Kumāragupta I, with goddess Lakṣmī on the reverse.

Verses 6 and 7 may refer, according to Mirashi, to the war of succession after Kumāragupta I’s death. The adversary was possibly Skandagupta’s paternal uncle Ghaṭotkaca, who was the Gupta viceroy it Vidiśā (Madhya Pradesh, India), according to other epigraphic sources; verse 6 reports that Skandagupta came out from the struggle victorious and verse 7 may refer to his accession to the Gupta throne, in ca. 454 CE.

Following the order in which events and enemies appear in the inscription, Bakker (following Mirashi) thinks that Skandagupta had to fight the Huns, as reported in verse 8. According to Bakker, his adversaries may have been the Kidarites and Alkhans.

Junagadh rock inscription of Skandagupta:

(NOTE: Verse 1 is in praise of the god Viṣṇu, and verse 2 glorifies Skandagupta as an emperor who defeated “snakes”, i.e. the Nāga kings of Malwa. “Nāga” means “snake” in Sanskrit)
When his father had won the company of the gods, he, Skandagupta of great glory and possessed of kingly virtues, forced his enemies to their knees and conquered the earth up to the borders of the four oceans by his own power, [making also] the border territories thrive. Moreover, even his enemies spread his fame in Mleccha countries, signaling his veritable victory; not through words, [but] through the eradication of their pride. Lakṣmī [Fortune] has chosen him [Skandagupta] as her husband of her own accord, dismissing all the [other] royal princes, after she had balanced [them] one by one, carefully, and wisely, by considering their dispositions to perfection and imperfection.

The inscription consists of two parts. The first part records the restoration of an embankment in the Gupta year 136 (455 CE) and the second part the foundation of a Viṣṇu temple in the Gupta year 138 (457/458 CE), by a local ruler called Cakrapālita. He was the son of Parṇadatta, who had been appointed governor of Surāṣṭra by Skandagupta after his accession to the imperial throne, which according to Bakker took place before 455 CE.

Verse 2 refers possibly to Skandagupta’s conflict with the Nagās, as stated above. These conflict according to Bakker would have taken place while Kumāragupta I was still alive, and it launched Skandagupta’s rise to power.

The second conflict, the war of succession, is mentioned in verse 3. It resulted in the establishment of Skandagupta’s authority throughout the empire and involved a (third) conflict with the Mlecchas, a Sanskrit word used to designate non-Indian foreigners. This conflict, which may have been resolved immediately after Skandagupta’s enthronement, is mentioned in verse 4. It is generally assumed that the Mlecchas in the Junagadh inscription are the same as the Hūṇas in the Bhitari inscription.

Bakker states that it is difficult to assign a definitive chronological order to the two inscriptions. The immediate cause of the Bhitari inscription is to commemorate the death of Kumāragupta I by building a temple; so that inscription could be slightly earlier than that of Junagadh, but both inscriptions could also be dated to 456 CE. According to Bakker, the conflict with the Hūṇas (Kidarites and Alkhans) may have happened in 455 CE.

This chronology suggests that the events went as follows. North of the Hindu Kush, Yazdegerd II waged war continuously against the Kidarites in Ṭoḵārestān between 442 and 450 CE; this war saw a large-scale Sasanian invasion that was a great success, followed by a defeat. The campaign had to be stopped in 450-451 CE due to the Armenian rellion and the Hunnic incursion through the Caucasus that followed it. After the Armenian rebellion was put down for good, in 453 CE Yazdegerd II launched another large-scale invasion against Kidarite-held Ṭoḵārestān, which ended in a heavy defeat. And probably in 455 CE, Skandagupta, who had just ascended to the Gupta throne, fought the Hūṇas, without details about where exactly he confronted them. We also do not know if this war was the result of a previous Hunnic incursion or invasion, but it is quite possible.

Gold dinar of Skandagupta (r. 455-467/458 CE), with goddess Lakṣmī on the reverse.

The Bhitari and Junagadh inscription both hint at trouble in the western part of the Gupta Empire, far away from the center of the empire (which was located in the lower Ganges basin, in the modern Indian state of Bihar, with its capital at Pāṭaliputra, near the modern city of Patna), The Nagās were a local dynasty (or maybe a tribe) that ruled over Malwa and had been subjected to Gupta rule. The Vākāṭaka kingdom in the western Deccan had been historically an ally of the Guptas; Mirashi’s suggestion that it was then who crossed the Narmadā River northwards and invaded Gupta territory to help them hints at the end of this alliance, which forecasted trouble for the Guptas. Also, the succession war between Skandagupta and his uncle Ghaṭotkaca must have happened in the same area, as the latter was the Gupta viceroy it Vidiśā (modern Vidisha, 62 km northeast of Bhopal). If the chronology by Mirashi and Bakker is correct, these conflicts would have engulfed north-central India between 445 and 455 CE, a full decade. And it would have been a tempting opportunity for the Huns to extend their rule to the south and the east from their bases in Gandhāra, Uḍḍiyāna and the Punjab. That the Alkhans were at this point a loose confederacy subordinated to the Kidarites is suggested by Bakker and other scholars, but not by all of them. The most probable “window of opportunity” for the Huns to intervene in India would have been between 453 CE (the death of Yazdegerd II, according to Ełiše) and 455 CE (as we have seen above), as at this time the Kidarites north of the Hindu Kush would have been free to send military help to their allies (or subjects) south of the mountains.

 

[Semper Victor]

4.11 THE SUCCESSION WAR BETWEEN HORMAZD III AND PĒRŌZ.


Yazdegerd II was succeeded by his elder son Hormazd III (r. 457-459 CE), who after a war of succession was killed and dethroned by his younger brother Pērōz. After more than half a century of failures and humiliations against the Kidarite Huns, it would be Pērōz (meaning “victorious”, and the only Šahān Šāh with this name, so the numeral is usually dropped) who would finally break their power, only to be defeated by a new Hunnic dynasty, the Hephthalites. He would be not only defeated by them twice: the first time he was made prisoner and released under ransom, and the second one he was killed, and the entire royal army annihilated in battle. With this string of defeats, the Sasanian Empire reached its nadir before its final collapse in the VII c. CE: it lost all its eastern territories, including Merv, Herāt, Arachosia (Qandahār), Sindh and Makrān, and became a tributary vassal of the Hephthalite Empire.

His rise to the throne was already problematic and involved a war of succession against his elder brother Hormazd III. According to Ṭabarī:

Ṭabarī, History of the Prophets and Kings; The Kings of the Persians and the Kings of al-Ḥīra:

Yazdajird had two sons, one called Hurmuz, who was ruler over Sijistān, and the other called Fayrūz. It was Hurmuz (II) who seized the royal power after his father Yazdajird's death. Fayrūz fled from him and reached the land of the Hephthalites (Ar. al-Hayāṭilah). He told their king the story of what had happened between him and his brother and that he had a better right to the throne than Hurmuz. He asked the king to provide him with an army with which he could combat Hurmuz and gain control of his father's kingdom, but the king of the Hephthalites refused to respond to his request until he received information that Hurmuz really was a tyrannical and unjust king. He said, "God is not pleased with injustice, and He does not let the works of those committing it prosper; under the rule of an unjust king, a man cannot succeed properly in any enterprise or practice any trade successfully except by injustice and tyranny likewise”. Then, after Fayrūz had made over al-Ṭālaqān to him, he provided Fayrūz with an army. Fayrūz advanced with it and gave battle to his brother Hurmuz, killing him, scattering his forces, and seizing control of his kingdom.

This is an important passage by Ṭabarī. According to it, Pērōz effectively usurped the throne from his elder brother, Hormazd III, with foreign help. If we assume that the established rules of succession applied when Yazdegerd II died in 457 CE, then Hormazd III was the “legal” heir, designated by his father and accepted by the Iranian nobility, then what Pērōz launched according to this account was a usurpation. The second important bit of information in this passage is the apparition of the Hephthalites; the Arabic broken plural al-Hayāṭilah is derived from MP *Habṭal, from hence the Greek Hephthalitai), although as we will see later, this apparition is a bit premature.

Although no coins minted by Hormazd III have survived, some scholars think that this silver dish could depict him.

Hormazd III would reign for two years (457-459 CE), although Ṭabarī does not count him among the Sasanian kings (probably Pērōz had him erased from the Xwadāy-Nāmag after his rise to the throne). He became king after Yazdegerd II “died in Pārs” (according to Łazar P’arpec’i). According to Ṭabarī (see above), Hormazd III had been until then Sakān Šāh (a title often associated with the heir apparent, as with the title of “Great King of Armenia” before Warahrān V turned it into a regular province). According to the Iranian historian Rahim Shayegan, his younger brother Pērōz, who may have been residing in the eastern part in the empire, fled to the Hephthalite kingdom, while their mother Dēnak acted as regent. Both Perso-Arabic and Armenian sources agree that Hormazd was the eldest son, but the Perso-Arabic tradition also states that Pērōz was the “worthier” of the two brothers, and that Hormazd’s accession to the throne was “unfair” (probably because the official Sasanian sources [the Xwadāy-Nāmag] stated so), with only one disagreement: the anonymous Arabic source known as Codex Sprenger 30, which states that Hormazd “was the braver and better” of the two, while Pērōz was “more learned in religion”.

According to the official Sasanian tradition reported by Ṭabarī, Ya’qūbī, Dīnawarī, and others, Pērōz went to the Hephthalites and persuaded their king that Hormazd had unfairly usurped his rightful place. Having received military assistance from the Hephthalites, Pērōz returned, defeated Hormazd, and killed him (according to Ṭabarī), or pardoned him and then reigned with justice (according to the Šāh-nāma and Dīnawarī). However, Shayegan thinks that this is a legend, modeled after the flight of Pērōz to the Hephthalites which occurred after his dethronement. Actually, we have quite accurate accounts of what exactly happened left by the Armenian sources Łazar P’arpec’i and Ełiše. Let us see Ṭabarī’s account, followed by the two Armenian ones:

Ṭabarī, History of the Prophets and Kings; The Kings of the Persians and the Kings of al-Ḥīra:

Then there succeeded to the royal power Fayrūz, son of Yazdajird, son of Bahrām Jūr, after he had killed his brother and three [other] members of his family. There was related to me a report going back to Hishām b. Muḥammad [in which] he said: Fayrūz prepared for war with the resources of Khurasan and called upon the men of Ṭukhāristān and regions neighboring on it for support, and marched against his brother Hurmuz, son of Yazdajird, who was at al-Rayy. Both Fayrūz and Hurmuz had a common mother, called Dīnak, who was at al-Madā'in governing that part of the kingdom adjacent to it. Fayrūz captured and imprisoned his brother. He displayed just rule and praiseworthy conduct and showed piety. During his time, there was a seven year-long famine, but he arranged things very competently: he divided out the monies in the public treasury, refrained from levying taxation, and governed his people to such good effect that only one person died through want in all those years.

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 7:

While they (i.e. the Armenian rebel nobles who had been sent into exile) were in attendance at the royal court, at that same time the king’s (i.e. Yazdegerd II’s) life came to its close in the nineteenth year of his reign. His two sons opposed each other and fought for power; for two years bitter warfare raged.
While they were occupied with this struggle, the king of Albania revolted. He was their nephew and following his ancestral faith had previously been a Christian; but Yazkert, king of kings, had forced him to become a magus. So finding the occasion favorable, he was constrained to risk death; he reckoned it better to die in war than to rule his kingdom as an apostate. This was the cause of all the delay in their [the Armenian nobles’] release and return to their country.
Now the tutor of Yazkert’s younger son, Ṙaham by name from the family of Mihran, although he saw that the army of the Aryans was divided into two, nonetheless with one half he ferociously attacked the king’s elder son. He defeated and massacred his army and capturing the king’s son ordered him to be put to death on the spot. The surviving troops he brought into submission, unifying the whole army of the Aryans. Then he crowned his own protégé, who was named Peroz.

Łazar P’arpec’i, History of the Armenians, Part III, 59-60:

We shall record in order what transpired from the preceding part. In the seventeenth year of king Yazkert (i.e. 456 CE) the Iberian prince Ashusha (after spending an incalculable amount on each person and especially on the impious hazarapet Mihrnerseh) beseeched the court nobility, and convinced them after great effort, to get them to say to king Yazkert that he should be favored with the sons of the venerable champion Hmayeak of the Mamikonean tohm (whom Vasak, the treacherous prince of Siwnik', had taken from their dayeaks as the sons of people condemned to death and had taken to court to be killed). They were extremely young. Humane God, through the intercession of the holy blood of his fathers, persuaded the king to bestow upon Ashusha his great request, which was more unbelievable than all others, since [Ashusha] was a very dear and deserving man.
When Ashusha saw this and received the great gift from the king, he went into the palace and, in front of everyone fell to the ground, turning this way and that, and then hitting his head against the ground. Thus did he adore [him]. When the king and everyone in the palace observed this, they were greatly astonished, wondering what the man was doing. The king asked him: "Bdeshx of Iberia, what is that new thing you are showing us today?" Ashusha replied: "Benevolent king, you have bestowed upon me a new favor which none of my comrades who serve you have ever received. Therefore it is fitting that I adore you with a new type of reverence, something you have never seen from your other servants." When the king and the entire multitude of the nobility heard such words from Ashusha, they praised the man greatly and were astounded.
King Yazkert of Iran lived out the remainder of his life and died in P'arhssum (i.e. in 457 CE). After him, his two sons (i.e. Hormazd III and Pērōz) reigned, but they were at odds with each other. Going against each other in battle, the younger one killed the older one, and ruled himself. His name was Peroz. In the same year of his reign (i.e. 459 CE) [Peroz] dispatched Yazatvshnasp, the son of his dayeak whom he was especially fond of, and commanded that the Armenian naxarars be freed from bondage and that stipends be allocated for them at Hrew. He said: "Let them remain there with the cavalry and do whatever work Yazatvshnasp's father, Ashtat, says and can observe them doing." Yazatvshnasp arrived and gave them good news, saying: "The king of kings has forgiven your death-penalty, and has ordered you freed from your shackles. He has stipulated stipends for you at Hrew, and for your women, in your own land. He has ordered you to do work for the court, to listen to and obey everything that my father, Ashtat, orders you." When the Armenian naxarars heard all of Yazatvshnasp's words, they glorified God, Who cared about their souls and was their benefactor, and from Whom they with patience awaited yet other benefits, through the intercession of the remains of the saints.
When Yazatvshnasp saw the Armenian naxarars and gradually became familiar with them, he received them as if a God-given blessing, and [especially] liked Arshawir Kamsarakan, the way Johnathan liked David, and was always interceding favorably for the other Armenian naxarars as well. Then the Armenian naxarars were taken to Hrew and a stipend was allocated for each one of them. They were assembled under the care of Ashtat who put them into military service. God exalted them before the military commander of the brigade, clearly showing him their bravery and [also showing this] to all the citizens of Hrew (i.e. Harēv or Harēy in MP, Herāt in New Persian) and of the district. Furthermore, thanks to the right hand of God on High, many diverse types of medical healings were accomplished by the remains of the saints which the priests who were with them were secretly keeping. As a result, they earned the reputation of brave and miraculous men from the military commander and from the entire district. The prince of Hrew, Hrew-shnomshapuh, greatly liked the captive Armenians and frequently wrote to the grandees at court and to their friends in the assembly about their bravery, good behavior, and ability.

With these three accounts at hand, it is more or less possible to reconstruct what happened. According to Łazar, in the last year of Yazdegerd II’s reign, the Iberian ruler/bdeašx (MP bidaxš, equivalent to “viceroy”) Ashusha asked for and received the custody of the two sons of the deceased Vardan Mamikonian. According to the same source, the next year Yazdegerd II died in Pārs, entrusting his empire to be ruled jointly by his two sons. This is an unheard-of successor arrangement in Sasanian history (and it went actually against Iranian custom), and it’s quite dubious that Yazdegerd II really intended that; it’s far more probable that Hormazd III was to become Šahān Šāh while Pērōz was to become “sub-king” of some important province of the empire. Here, Ełiše contradicts Ṭabarī’s account and says that Pērōz did not flee to the Hephthalite kingdom in search of help, but that the succession war was arranged by his “tutor” Ṙahām Mihrān, and it was him who defeated Hormazd III in battle and had him “put to death on the spot”.

For “tutor” we should probably understand that he had acted as Pērōz’s “adoptive father”, as it was customary among Iranian aristocrats (and also among Armenian naxarars) that a son of a nobleman should be raised by another family, with the child becoming thus member of both households, the one of his birth and the one where he grew up. This custom strengthened family and personal alliances and could create extremely strong ties between clans. The Mihrān clan, based at Rayy (north central Iran, near the modern city of Teheran) was one of the “seven great clans” of Sasanian Iran, and the raise of Pērōz to the imperial throne accompanied the ascendancy of the Mihrān, who now supplant the Sūrēn as the most influential family in the court (if we accept that Mihr-Narsē had been indeed a member of the Sūrēn clan).

Restored fragment of the wall of the citadel of Rayy.

There is a further problem with Ṭabarī’s account: according to it, before inheriting the throne, Hormazd III had been Sakān Šāh (i.e. king of Sakastān/Sīstān), but Bal’amī wrote that “while Yazdegerd was still reigning, he sent Firūz to Sīstān and kept Hormozd at his side”. And the XV c. historian Mīr-Khvānd wrote that before ascending to the throne Pērōz had been “governor of Nīmrūz”. This is an anachronism, as Nīmrūz was one of the four “quarters” in which Xusrō I divided the Sasanian Empire in the VI c. CE, but this information agrees with Bal’amī, as Nīmrūz encompassed Pārs, Kermān and Sakastān. As there is no numismatic evidence supporting any of these opposing claims, this point is impossible to clarify, although as Sakastān was the homeland of the Sūrēn clan, this could suggest that Ṭabarī’s account is correct.

The ”new regime” (specifically, Pērōz’s “foster brother” Īzad Gušnasp) also arranged that Armenian naxarars who were guilty of rebellion and kept as royal prisoners were moved to Herāt in the northeastern corner of the empire, where the local “prince” (called Hrew-shnomshapuh by Łazar) became their protector and defender before the Sasanian court. It is possible that Ṙahām Mihrān is the same person who is called Pērōz’s “foster father” in Łazar’s account: Ashtat (MP Aštāt), and the name of his son Yazatvshnasp is the Armenian version of MP Īzad Gušnasp, who would then logically be Pērōz’s “foster brother”, and who was entrusted with posts of great responsibility during Pērōz’s reign, especially during the Armenian rebellion of 482 CE. His father Aštāt (probably the same person as Ṙahām Mihrān, as I said before) was clearly the commander of the royal army according to Łazar; as when the Armenian naxarars are freed and sent to Herāt, they are put under his orders as commander of the army there, which was probably the army gathered against the Kidarite Huns. They were freed in order to reinforce the royal army and lessen tensions in Armenia.

These same two characters appear in only one later Islamic source: the Tārikh-e Ṭabarestān (History of Ṭabarestān) written in New Persian in the XIII c. by Ibn Isfandīyār, under slightly different names. According to this source, Īzad Gušnasp (rendered by the author as Yazdān) and Aštāt, whom he considered to be brothers, came from the mountainous region of Deylam (or Daylam), southwest of the Caspian Sea, but as a result of antagonism between them and a member of another noble house, “one of the grandees and prominent men of Deylam”, they left Deylam and settled in Ṭabarestān. According to P. Pourshariati, it is not possible to ascertain to what particular history Ibn Isfandīyār is referring for his account of the brothers’ migration. What is interesting, however, is that the familial relationship of this branch of the Mihrān family with Pērōz is included in the guise of a romantic narrative in the history of Ibn Isfandīyār. In this narrative, Pērōz dreams of a beauty with whom he falls helplessly in love. To find her, he sends yet another of his relatives from the Mihrān family, one Mihrfīrūz. According to Ibn Isfandīyār, this Mihrfīrūz was also close to the king, residing with him at the royal court, which Ibn Isfandīyār locates in Balḵ. The beloved turns out to be none other than the daughter of Aštāt. The king marries this Mihrānid princess and at her behest he builds the city of Āmul in Ṭabarestān (not to be confused with the city of the same name on the Āmu Daryā). What exact status Īzad Gušnasp, Aštāt, and Ibn Isfandīyār’s Mihrfīrūz had at the court of Pērōz is not clear.

Silver drahm of Pērōz. Legend on the obverse: “The Mazda-worshipping Lord Kay Pērōz”. Mint of Darabgerd in Pārs.

The first event after Pērōz’s rise to the throne was the Albanian king’s revolt against Sasanian rule (notice that strangely the rulers of Iberia and Albania are conspicuously absent from Ełiše’s account of the Armenian rebellion). I will cover this rebellion in the next post.

In my opinion, this factional strife within the wuzurgān and the war of succession that went with it is probably a reflex of a deeper disagreement within the higher nobility and the court about the inner and foreign policies led by Yazdegerd II and his counsellors (i.e. Mihr-Narsē and the Sūrēn clan). According to Ełiše, the Armenian rebellion brought the eclipse of Mihr-Narsē as the most influential official at court, and the heavy defeat suffered by the royal army in Abaršahr against the Kidarite Huns in 453-454 CE probably arose discontent among the nobles about the conduct of a war that was becoming never ending; the account of this defeat by Łazar P’arpec’i is even more damning than the one by Ełiše:

Łazar P’arpec’i, History of the Armenians, Part II, 48:

In the sixteenth year of his reign, king Yazkert took all of his troops and went to war against the Kushans. He also ordered that the bound Armenians, priests and naxarars, be taken along from Hyrcania. Arriving in the land of Apar, he came to the shahastan called Niwshapuh. He ordered that the bound Armenians, priests and naxarars, be held there in a fortress in the Niwshapuh shahastan. But [Yazkert] commanded that the two blessed priests, lord Samuel and Abraham be taken along with him. He had them constantly oppressed with wicked torments, heavy shackles, and beatings to strike awe and terror into the Christians who were with him in the caravan. When they reached the borders of the enemy, [the Iranians] were unable to implement any part of the king's demands; rather, totally defeated, they turned back in shame, and [the king] lost choice and renowned men from his troops, as well as rhamik cavalrymen. For the enemy did not battle with the Iranians face to face. Instead, they unexpectedly fell upon one wing after another, putting many men to the sword, while they themselves returned unharmed, and vanished. Doing this for many days, they defeated the Iranian troops with severe blows.

This would accord with the accounts by both Armenian sources that the new king Pērōz and his Mihrānid entourage decided to release the Armenian naxarars as soon as it was possible to do so, in exchange for them rejoining the royal army that was again gathering in the East. In my opinion, this would imply that the new regime wanted to reduce the tension in Armenia as much as possible in order to be able to concentrate its efforts against the Kidarite Huns once more. The episode about the Iberian bidaxš Ashusha could also point in this way, because even if it happened while Yazdegerd II was still alive, the ruling family of Iberia was a Christian branch of the Mihrān family.

The Sasanians and the wuzurgān were lucky that the international situation was such that they could conduct a two-year long succession war without fearing foreign attacks. Attila died in 453 CE, and his empire fragmented soon after his death, with the Eastern Roman emperor Marcian being busy trying to profit from the Hunnic king’s death and dealing with the Miaphysite schism caused by the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE. Marcian died on 26 January CE (very near in time to Yazdegerd II’s death) and once again the magister militum Aspar played the role of kingmaker and had a military leader, Flavius Valerius Leo, acclaimed as augustus of the East as Leo I (known also as Leo the Thracian). Leo I was busy for most of his reign trying to help the Western Roman Empire (in which he did not succeed) and during his first years he also tried to shake off the supervision of the magister militum Aspar, which he finally managed in 469 CE.

Gold solidus of Leo I. On the obverse: D(ominus) N(oster) LEO PERPET(uus) AVG(ustus). On the reverse, winged victory holding a bejeweled cross with the legend: VICTORIA AVGGG(ustorum) S. Mint of Constantinople, sixth “officina” (that’s what the letter “S” means).

The death of Attila the Hun was followed by a bitter civil war between his many sons and other powerful Hunnic nobles over the vast inheritance that he had left behind. Attila’s ascent to supreme power in the mid-440s CE shook the foundations of the Hunnic state. Not only did he violently usurp the throne from the supreme ruler (i.e. his brother Bleda), but in order to successfully carry out his usurpation of power he seems to have relied inordinately on the support of tribal groups in the western half of the Hunnic state such as the Germanic Gepids to suppress the eastern tribes that supported Bleda. Attila seems to have been so dependent on the Gepids that the VI c. CE Eastern Roman author John Malalas actually calls him a “Gepid Hun”.

According to Hyun Jin Kim, these western tribes, principally grouped around the Pannonian Plain, had until the usurpation of Attila been the fringe elements within the Hunnic power structure, which had favored the eastern tribes in the Ukrainian steppe zone (as was customary in Inner Asian nomadic empires). The revolt planned by the powerful Akatziri Huns, the principal Hunnic tribe in the east, against Attila, could show in Kim’s view that the usurpation of Attila was no minor palace affair like all previous political squabbles. The rebellion was suppressed before it became politically damaging to the Hunnic Empire. However, throughout the reign of Attila one sees consistently the favoring of nobles from the west of the Hunnic Empire over those from the east. Attila’s key nobles Onegesius, Ardaric, Edeco, and Valamer were all western notables whose power base was located close to the Carpathian basin to which Attila now permanently moved the Hunnic center of government. It is therefore no accident that after Attila’s death a civil war would arise between two coalitions, one headed by the Gepids in the west (who had enjoyed the limelight at the very heart of the Hun Empire under Attila) and the other headed by the Akatziri in the east (who had been disaffected and excluded from the centers of power upon Bleda’s assassination by Attila and now wished to make a comeback). Attila’s usurpation and favoring of the west over the east, which reversed the traditional alignment and distribution of power within steppe empires therefore had catastrophic consequences for the political stability of the Hun Empire after his death, as well as the sudden nature of his death which left him no time to resolve the issue of succession and organize an orderly transfer of power to a designated heir(s).

The disaffected Hunnic princes and nobles who had kept quiet during Attila’s reign now all started to clamor for attention and the principal power brokers sought to resolve the question by force of arms. Thus an unprecedented internal military conflict arose, and this had fatal consequences for the unity of the Hunnic Empire in Europe. Traditional historiography had presented this civil war within the Hunnic Empire as a war of liberation fought by Germanic peoples led by King Ardaric of the Gepids to free themselves from the Huns led by Attila’s chosen heir Ellac. But Kim thinks that this is hardly an accurate description of the war. The identity of all the principal actors in the infighting that unfolded during the Hunnic civil wars points towards a strife over fief distribution among Hunnic princes, not a revolt among Germanic subjects against their Hunnic rulers. The confusion about the nature of the conflicts following Attila’s death is due to the erroneous assumption that the key figures with Germanic sounding names mentioned in the Getica of Jordanes, our principal source on these events, were native leaders of Germanic ethnic origin. These men were, in Kim’s opinion, Hunnic rulers of largely mixed origin. The wars they waged against each other at the head of various Turkic/Hunnic and Germanic tribal confederations were thus civil wars within the Hunnic system that lead to the dissolution of that imperial order.

In 454 CE at the battle of Nedao (fought in Pannonia, the Nedao is thought to have been a tributary of the Sava River) Ardaric, king of the Gepids defeated and killed Ellac, the eldest son of Attila and ruler of the Akatziri. Not only Ardaric, but every other major figure to emerge out of the Hunnic civil war was also like Ardaric of Hunnic provenance or a high-ranking official in the Hunnic imperial court. Edeco, king of the Scirii, was obviously, as Priscus of Panion tells us, a Hun. After establishing a short-lived Scirian state the tribes he governed would later be responsible for the death of Valamer, the founding king of the Ostrogoths. Edeco’s son Odoacer, whose ancestry was likewise Hunnic founded the first ‘barbarian’ kingdom in Italy and delivered the coup-de-grâce on what remained of the Western Roman Empire.

But this did not mean the immediate eclipse of Hunnic power in central Europe. In the 460s, Attila’s sons Ernakh (the supreme king, who ruled over the tribes on the Ukrainian steppe) and Dengizich (the lesser king in the west) managed to pull the Hunnic Empire together again, and in 466 Dengizich sent an embassy to Constantinople demanding emperor Leo I some of the rights that his father had enjoyed with Theodosius II. Leo I refused, and in 469 CE Dengizich invaded the Roman Balkan provinces, where he was defeated and killed by the magister militum Anagast (or Anagastes), who brought his severed head to Constantinople. This disaster was due to the fact that his brother Ernakh was busy with other conflicts in the East and had refused Dengizich’s attack against the Eastern Romans. Dengizich’s demise signaled the definitive end of the Hunnic empire west of the Caspian-Pontic Steppe, although Hunnic tribes would continue to rule this part of the Eurasian Steppe until the arrival of the Avars in the mid-VI c. CE.

Between the death of Attila in 453 AD and the re-emergence of political unity in the eastern half of the Hunnic Empire in the late 460s–early 470s CE, over a period of about twenty years the empire of the Huns in the western steppe was shaken by upheavals, caused mainly by the arrival of new Inner Asian peoples in Europe. These new arrivals were mostly called Oghurs (meaning tribe in Oghuric Turkic). This was probably related to the conflict between the Rouran Khaganate and Hunnic remnants (such as the Yueban [or “weak”] Xiongnu) in Central Asia. Around 434 CE the Rouran Khaganate, based in Mongolia, possibly together with the Var people under the Hephthalite clan/dynasty (to be discussed in greater detail later), initiated their great push westwards. This pressure in some way may have contributed to the replacement of the Kidarite Hunnic dynasty in the White Hun Empire with the new Hephthalite dynasty.

In what is now eastern Kazakhstan and northern Kyrgyzstan, the Yueban Huns came under intense pressure from the Rouran, as did elements of the recently formed Tiele Turkic federation of tribes, the so-called Oghurs, some of whom must have been in earlier stages members of the Hunnic confederation in Inner Asia. The Sabirs (the eastern neighbors of these Oghurs), who may have been a westerly tribe of the once powerful Xianbei (which in Early Middle Chinese would have been pronounced *Särbi or *Särvi), the old nemesis of the Huns, were likewise defeated by the Rouran (the possible ancestors of the Avars) and in turn applied pressure on the various Oghurs. Priscus of Panion wrote that the defeated Oghur groups fought their way into the western steppes dominated by the European Huns. In 463 CE the Saragurs (possibly meaning the “White Oghurs”, and since “white” means “west” in the steppe, Western Oghurs) overwhelmed the Akatziri Huns formerly ruled by Ellac, the son of Attila who had fallen at Nedao in 454 CE and who had been living in the Pontic Steppe immediately north of the Crimean Peninsula.

The assault by the Saragurs and other Oghurs on the Akatziri Huns must have been a long drawn out process and probably began sometime in the 450s CE. Therefore, just after the battle of Nedao, the eastern faction in the Hunnic civil war was prevented from taking the offensive again against Ardaric’s western faction because they became engaged in an existential struggle against more powerful invaders from the east. The inability of the militarily more formidable Huns in the Pontic steppe region to crush the secessionist movement among the militarily inferior western tribes in the decades following Nedao becomes understandable when one considers these geopolitical developments that threatened the eastern flank of these Huns.

The task of salvaging what was left of the eastern half of the Hunnic Empire fell on Ernakh, the youngest of Attila’s sons. Priscus of Panion records that Ernakh received preferential treatment from Attila because supposedly there was a prophecy to the effect that Attila’s race would fall after Attila’s death, but would be restored by Ernakh. This “prophecy” in Priscus may actually have been helped by hindsight, since Priscus was well aware of Ernakh’s successes in the decades following Nedao. Ernakh apparently became the founding ruler of the so-called Bulgar Huns (that is, according to the Nominalia of the Bulgarian khans), the confederation of Huns and the various Oghurs subdued by Ernakh. This unification was made easier it seems by the fact that the Huns themselves were largely an Oghuric Turkic speaking people. The Oghur tribes that flooded into what is now Ukraine and southern Russia to avoid Rouran (Avar?) and Sabir (Xianbei?) domination were in all likelihood formerly constituent members of the Hunnic confederacy/state (possibly that of the Yueban Huns) in Inner Asia that had fragmented under Rouran pressure.

The new Oghur arrivals, however, made a lasting impact on the nature of the Hunnic state that emerged in the late V c. CE. The names of the two wings of this reconfigured Hunnic state: Kutrigur (“Nine Oghurs”) Huns in the west and the Utigur (“Thirty Oghurs”) Huns in the east, both contain the element “Oghur” in their political designation. That these two wings were the constituent parts of the same Hunnic state and not originally separate political groups, is confirmed by the records of the Eastern Roman historians of the VI c. CE Procopius of Caesarea and Menander Protector that they had the same Hunnic origin. The foundation legend of these two wings is told by Procopius, who states that before the formation of both entities power in the steppe was concentrated in the hands of a single ruler (probably Ernakh, son of Attila). This ruler then divided the power/empire between his two sons called Utigur and Kutrigur (probably representative titles given to the two princes who headed these confederations or eponymous names later attributed to them). The peoples allocated to the two sons were then called Utigurs and Kutrigurs, with the Utigurs clearly possessing precedence in the typical Inner Asian manner, being mentioned first, and occupying the senior position to the east of the confederacy/state:

Procopius of Caesarea, History of the wars, Book VIII (The Gothic War), V:

In ancient times a vast throng of the Huns who were then called Cimmerians ranged over this region which I have just mentioned, and one king had authority over them all. And at one time the power was secured by a certain man to whom two sons were born, one of whom was named Utigur and the other Cutrigur. These two sons, when their father came to the end of his life, divided the power between them, and each gave his own name to his subjects; for the one group has been called Utigurs and the other Cutrigurs even to my time. All these now continued to live in this region, associating freely in all the business of life, but not mingling with the people who were settled on the other side of the lake and its outlet; for they never crossed these waters at any time nor did they suspect that they could be crossed, being fearful of that which was really easy, simply because they had never even attempted to cross them, and they remained utterly ignorant of the possibility.

Procopius of Caesarea, History of the wars, Book VIII (The Gothic War), V:

But the Huns, after killing some of them and driving out the others, as stated, took possession of the land. And the Cutrigurs, on the one hand, summoned their children and wives and settled there in the very place where they have dwelt even to my time. And although they receive from the emperor many gifts every year, they still cross the Ister River (i.e. the Danube River) continually and overrun the emperor’s land, being both at peace and at war with the Romans. The Utigurs, however, departed homeward with their leader, being destined to live alone in that land thereafter. Now when these Huns came near the Maeotic Lake (i.e. the Sea of Azov), they chanced upon the Goths there who are called Tetraxitae. And at first the Goths formed a barrier with their shields and made a stand against their assailants in their own defence, trusting both in their own strength and the advantage of their position; for they are the most stalwart of all the barbarians of that region. Now the head of the outlet of the Maeotic Lake, where the Tetraxitae Goths were then settled, forms a crescent-shaped bay by which they were almost completely surrounded, so that only one approach, and that not a very wide one, was open to those who attacked them. But afterwards, seeing that the Huns were unwilling to waste any time there and the Goths were quite hopeless of holding out for a long time against the throng of their enemy, they came to an understanding with each other, agreeing that they should join forces and make the crossing in common, and that the Goths should settle on the opposite mainland, principally along the bank of the outlet (where they are actually settled at the present time), and that they should continue to be thereafter friends and allies of the Utigurs and live forever on terms of complete equality with them. Thus it was that these Goths settled here, and the Cutrigurs, as I have said, being left behind in the land on the other side of the lake, the Utigurs alone possessed the land, making no trouble at all for the Romans, because they do not even dwell near them, but, being separated by many nations which lie between, they are forced, by no will of their own, not to meddle with them.
West of the Maeotic Lake, then, and the Tanais River (i.e. the Don River) the Cutrigur Huns established their homes over the greater part of the plains of that region, as I have said (…)

This story by Procopius of Caesarea is clearly an allusion to real historical processes, which took place in the late V c. CE when Ernakh reunited the Pontic Steppe and then in the usual Inner Asian manner divided his realm into two wings. Procopius of Caesarea (in the passage quoted above) locates the Utigurs in the Kuban steppe (northern Caucasus) and the Kutrigurs in “the greater part of the plains” west of the Sea of Azov, in what is today southern Ukraine.

Map showing the location of the Kutrigur and Utigur Huns in the VI c. CE, according to Procopius of Caesarea.

The Huns of the east, as mentioned above, acquired a new name, Bulgar (which in Turkic means “stir, confuse or mix”), which probably refers to the process of tribal union and the mixing of the new Oghurs (tribes) and the original Huns under the rule of Attila’s heirs. Once the unification was complete, the Bulgar Huns again emerged to threaten the Eastern Roman Empire.

There was still a further, smaller group of Huns in the west, the Caucasian Huns. They became separated from the Bulgar Huns after 506 CE, when the Sabirs settled in the lower Volga basin. These Caucasian Huns founded a smaller kingdom in what is now the Russian Republic of Dagestan. Despite the small size of their state the military prowess of these Caucasian Huns was noted by both the Eastern Romans and the Sassanians. In 503 CE the invasion of these Huns through the Caucasian passes would force the Šahān Šāh Kawād I to prematurely end his (until then) successful campaign against the Eastern Romans, and would play an important role in the Roman-Sasanian wars of the VI c. CE.

 

[Semper Victor]

4.12 THE BEGINNINGS OF PĒRŌZ’S REIGN AND THE ALBANIAN REBELLION.


After ascending to the throne and overthrowing his brother Hormazd III, the first difficulty of Pērōz’s reign was yet another rebellion in the Caucasus:

Ełiše Vardapet, History of Vardan and the Armenian war, Chapter 7:

Although profound peace had been brought to the land of the Aryans, the king of Albania did not wish to submit, but breached the Pass of Chor (i.e. the Pass of Darband) and brought through to this side the troops of the Massagetae (Note: an anachronism employed here by Ełiše, meaning perhaps some of the nomadic peoples living in the Caucasian Steppe). Uniting with the eleven kings of the mountains, he waged war against the Aryan army and inflicted much damage on the royal forces. Although they sent letters of entreaty two and three times, they were unable to bring him to terms. But in writing and by messages he blamed them for the pointless devastation of Armenia. He reminded them of the death of the nobles and the sufferings of the prisoners: “In return for so much devotion and service”, he said, “instead of granting their lives you killed them. It would be better for me to endure their tortures than to abandon Christianity”.
When they saw that they had not been able to bring him to terms either by force or by kind treatment, they had much treasure taken to the land of the Khaylandurk‘ (i.e. the Caucasian Huns); they opened the Pass of the Alans (i.e. the Pass of Darial, in what is now the Republic of Georgia), brought through a numerous force of Huns, and warred for a year with the Albanian king. Although his troops were dispersed and scattered away from him, not only were they unable to subject him but terrible afflictions befell them, some through the war and others by painful disease. So long did the blockade last that the greater part of the country was ravaged, yet no one vacillated or deserted him.
The Persian king (i.e. Pērōz) sent another message to him: “Have my sister and my niece sent out, for they were originally magi and you made them Christians. Then your country will be yours”. Now this wonderful man was not fighting for power but for piety. He sent off his mother and wife, completely renounced the world, took the Gospel, and wished to leave his country (…).
All these prolonged troubles, which lasted until the fifth year of Peroz, king of kings, were the reason for the Armenian nobles not being released. But he greatly increased their allowances and their attendance at court above the custom of [previous] years. In that same fifth year he restored to many of them their properties and held out the hope to others that in the sixth year they would all be finally released [in possession of] their property and rank.

This is a dense passage which contains many information. The king of Caucasian Albania (the Arrān Šāh) in 444-463 CE was Vach’e’ II, and as stated in the passage by Ełiše, he was a nephew of Yazdegerd II, and a brother-in-law to Pērōz, which would make him one of the foremost members of the aristocracy of the kingdom, even if he was not an Ērān, due to his religion (he was a Christian). The dynasty to whom he belonged is of unknown origins; even Movsēs Dasxuranc’i, an Armenian priest who wrote in the X c. CE a History of the Country of Albania admitted that he did not know for sure what was the ancestry of this dynasty. Although they claimed Sasanian ancestry (and intermarried with them, as we have seen) modern historians the dynasty was probably of Arsacid origin. The above passage by Ełiše is repeated almost verbatim by Dasxuranc’i (he probably used Ełiše’s account as a source), so in this respect he does not offer any new bits of information.

Albanian domed church dated to the V-VI c. CE in the town of Shaki, in northern Azerbaijan.

According to Elise, the Albanian king opened the Pass of Darband and let the “Massagetae” pass through it. Obviously, the use of this term by Elise is just an archaizing anachronism; he refers to some of the nomadic peoples of the Caucasian Steppe, although probably not the Huns as Ełiše usually refers to them by other names. Vach’e’ II also allied himself with mountaineers from the Caucasus (with “eleven kings of the mountains”) and with this joint force he fought the Sasanian army to a standstill. In view of this, Pērōz decided to bribe another nomad people of the Caucasus (the Khaylandurk‘, probably the Caucasian Huns) and let them through the other pass through the Caucasus Mountains, the Pass of Darial, to employ them against the rebel Albanian king and his allies, to great effect. Despite this, the war continued until the fifth year of Pērōz, which, if we took the start of his reign as the year in which he overthrew his brother Hormazd III (459 CE) means that the rebellion finally died down in 464 CE, when the Albanian king surrendered and abdicated and retired to a religious life (he would became a saint in the Albanian and Armenian Churches).

Yet this does not seem to be the whole history, as Movsēs Dasxuranc’i offers some more information about events during the reign of this Albanian king:

Movsēs Dasxuranc’i, History of the country of Albania, Book 1, 15:

At the order of Peroz, king of the Persians, Vach'e' constructed the great city of Perozapat, which presently is called Partaw.

Until then, the Albanian capital had been Gabala, on the northern part of the kingdom, on the southern slopes of the Caucasus Mountains. Partaw (as it was called in Armenian) became the new capital of Albania, in the southwestern district of Utik’, which had been historically part of Greater Armenia until the late IV c. CE, and which was mainly populated by the Uti people, although the aristocracy was Armenian. It would remain the capital of Albania/Ałuank’/Arrān until the X c. CE under the name of Barḏaʿa (used in New Persian and Arabic) and according to Dasxuranc’i its official MP name was Pērōzāpāt.

Remains of a bridge in the ancient settlement of Partaw/Pērōzāpāt/Barḏaʿa.

It was built on a good location for a city, strategically chosen. And it would become one of the main Sasanian strongholds in the southern Caucasus. It was situated two or three farsaḵs (i.e. 10-15 km) south of the Kura river on its affluent the Terter. Its site now lies at the western extremity of the Šervān Steppe in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Partaw was strategically situated on the edge of the lowlands of the lower Kura-Aras valley, adjacent to the Lesser Caucasus Mountains; from it there ran routes to Dvin, Tiflis, and Darband.

What is strange from Dasxuranc’i account, of course, is why (and when) would Vach’e’ II, who spent five years since Pērōz’s accession in open rebellion and then abdicated, have built a city following orders of Pērōz? Either Vach’e’ II’s abdication did not happen immediately after his surrender, or the construction of the city was not ordered by him. Personally, I think that the second option is more probable: Dasxuranc’i stated that after Vach’e’ II, Albania was left without a king for thirty years, which means that it would have been governed by a Sasanian marzbān (just like Armenia). Plus, this seems more in agreement with the great works of colonization and the building of cities and fortresses in this part of the southern Caucasus undertaken by this Šahān Šāh, allegedly started by his father and continued by Kawād I and Xusrō I.

In their paper The Northern and Western Borderlands of the Sasanian Empire: Contextualising the Roman/Byzantine and Sasanian Frontier, archaeologists Dan Lawrence and Tony J. Wilkinson studied (along other sections of the Sasanian borders) the defenses and cities built by these kings on the western Caspian seashore.

Here, the mountains of the Greater Caucasus Range form a long linear obstacle between the Caspian and Black Seas, with a narrow strip of land on the Caspian side and several mountain passes in the central part of the range offering the only viable crossing points. Although this was undoubtedly a formidable “natural frontier”, in order to function effectively it had to be supplemented at strategic points. This is most obvious along the Caspian coast, where several linear barriers, large forts and fortified urban sites were constructed. From north to south, these include the fortifications at Derbent in the Russian Republic of Dagestan, with a fortress and parallel set of walls within the modern city and a 42 km mountain section to the west, the 125 ha fort of Torpakh Qala, the Ghilghilchay Wall and Chirakh Qala in the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Beshbarmak Fort and possible wall further south. All of these features appear to have been constructed during the V-VI c. CE, with an initial construction of a mudbrick wall at Darband followed by the Ghilghilchay Wall and later a reorganization of the Darband defenses, which were rebuilt in stone.

Map showing the several layers of linear defenses built by the Sasanian kings during the V c. CE on the western shore of the Black Sea, according to Lawrence and Wilkinson.

Some general patterns in the organization of the linear barriers and forts are worth mentioning. Both the Darband and Ghilghilchay Walls make use of local topographic features to enhance their defensive capacities. Darband is located at the narrowest point of the coastal strip, where a long spur of raised land extends to within 4 km of the Caspian Sea. The major stone walls linking the fortress of Narynqala, situated on the end of this spur, to the coast could therefore be relatively short, reducing the amount of manpower and materials needed and allowing for a fairly rapid period of construction. Nevertheless, the walls within Darband in its final state represent a substantial investment, standing at between 18 and 20 m in height and including 100 round towers. Much less is known about the 42 km mountain section further inland, of which there is no trace on either the CORONA (a set of spy photographs taken by American satellites in the 1960s and declassified in the last twenty years) or modern high-resolution imagery, but it was certainly a single rather than a double wall with around forty forts along its length.

To the south of Darband the coastal strip widens significantly, and here we find the major Sasanian site of Torpakh Qala, a walled rectangular site of 125 ha with regularly spaced towers along its walls and an external ditch. Although some scholars believe this is the place of a city founded by Yazdegerd II and named Šahrestān-e Yazdegerd, Lawrence and Wilkinson state that Torpakh Qala closely resembles the “mega-campaign base” at Qal‘eh Pol Gonbad in the Gorgān Plain, as well as Qal‘eh Gabri close to Varamin in the Teheran Plain (which we will address later in this thread), and thus that rather than a city it was actually a campaign base for the royal army. The position of the site, some 20 km to the south of the Darband defenses in an area of flat, fertile land, may be related to the need to provision a large number of troops. Given the German historian Eberhard Sauer’s estimate for campaign bases excavated at Gorgān of around 40 ha to hold 10,000 horsemen, Lawrence and Wilkinson expect the mega-campaign bases to accommodate 30,000 individuals (and so, likely to have been a substantial drain on local resources).

Reconstruction of the Ghilghilchay Wall on a CORONA satellite photography, according to Lawrence and Wilkinson.

The Ghilghilchay Wall makes similar use of local topography and is again situated at a point where the mountains lie close to the Caspian Sea. Drawing on fieldwork undertaken by a joint Azerbaijani–Daghestani–American team, Lawrence and Wilkinson used CORONA satellite imagery to examine the extant remains of the wall as it was visible during the late 1960s. The remote sensing analysis has revealed several previously undocumented sections of the wall, most of which had been destroyed by industrial and agricultural development by the time of the surveys in the early 2000s, as well as a new fortification structure in the mountain section. The wall extends at least 27 km inland from the coast and includes an 8 km section in the plain ending at the Yenikend Fortress, a 10 km piedmont section which runs parallel to the Ghilghilchay River, and a section in the mountains (total length still undetermined, but longer than 9 km), running to the stronghold of Chirakh Qala or beyond. The plain and piedmont sections of the wall were constructed from mudbrick and its remains reach 7 m in height in places, with a ditch on the northern side visible in the plain section, perhaps a source for the mudbricks used in its construction, and clear use of the steep-sided River Ghilghilchay as an extra barrier in the piedmont section. The mountain section was not investigated by Soviet and Azerbaijani archaeologists with the same care as in the plain, but given the similarity in size and morphology visible on the CORONA imagery, it is likely to follow similar construction techniques and date to the same period. Unlike the fortifications further north, there are no obvious campaign base sites in the vicinity of the Ghilghilchay Wall. However, the size of the forts incorporated within the wall itself is much larger, with Yenikend Fortress at the edge of the plain covering approximately 9 ha, while Chirakh Qala and the three smaller sites in the piedmont section add an extra two or three hectares of potential settled area. It is possible that the wider coastal strip in this area could accommodate a greater number of troops in the immediate vicinity of the wall itself.

Further to the interior, the Pass of Darial, also known as the Alan Gates in the Republic of Georgia was the main route for hostile forces seeking to cross the Upper Caucasus during the ancient and medieval periods and is still a major routeway today. This narrow gorge was controlled by several small forts, the most important of which, Dariali Fort, has been securely dated to the Sasanian period. Again, the landscape setting is clearly of the utmost importance here, with the fort situated at one of the narrowest points in the gorge, with areas of open land to the south available for cultivation to feed any potential garrison. There is also evidence for terracing and landscape management dating back to at least the X c. CE, and potentially much earlier.

To the south of the Greater Caucasus Range, the plains of the Kura and Aras River valleys provide ample evidence for significant Sasanian presence and capital investment. To the south of the Aras River (ancient Araxes, in what was then Albania, today within the Republic of Azerbaijan) in the Mughan Plain (or Steppe) survey and excavation work made in the 2000s revealed several Sasanian sites and fortifications, many of which were directly associated with large-scale irrigation canals. The most important of these is Ultan Qalası, a 70-ha settlement comprising a rectangular fortified complex, a substantial lower town, and an associated canal system (we will address the issue of the identification of this site later). Further north on the Mil Steppe in Azerbaijan, a similar configuration is visible at Ören Qala, ancient Baylaqan, which was excavated by a Soviet team in the 1950s and 1960s. Survey transects undertaken as part of the Mil Steppe Survey recovered Sasanian ceramics similar to the Ultan Qalası assemblage across a vast area, suggesting the settlement could have been as large as 300 ha. Continuing north, layers described as late antique have been recovered from Nargiz Tepe, a site of unknown, but probably large, size very close to the disputed Nagorno Karabakh region, and at the 25 ha site of Qala Tepe, both of which have been excavated by Azerbaijani archaeologists. Recent work by British archaeologists at Barḏaʿa has confirmed the Sasanian occupation suggested by textual sources. There is also some textual evidence that the major Islamic site at Shemkir was occupied during the Sasanian period, as the city was described as ancient at the time of the Arab conquest by Balādhurī in the IX c. CE, although excavations have so far only recovered remains dating back to the VIII c. CE. Of these, Ören Qala, Qala Tepe and Shemkir all include substantial fortifications. Unfortunately the interpretation of all of the sites in the Republic of Azerbaijan is hampered by significant occupation layers postdating the Sasanian period, especially during the medieval period at Ören Qala, Qala Tepe and Shemkir, but even continuing to the present day at Barḏaʿa, which means dating individual features such as city walls requires excavation. The alignment of these sites is suspiciously linear and follows the edge of the plain as it runs along the Karabakh Hills. It is possible that they formed nodes on a road network which may have extended as far as the Pass of Darial in the north.

The Mil Plain on the lower valleys of the Kura and Aras rivers, showing the location of the main Sasanian sites quoted in the text, according to Lawrence and Wilkinson. “MPS” stands for “Mill Plain Survey” and MSAP stands for “MUghan Steppe Survey”.

In addition to the urban centers, evidence from the Mil Plain (or Steppe) Survey (an international survey undertaken in 2010-2011 in this area of Azerbaijan) suggests a rise in rural settlement during the Sasanian period. The preliminary findings indicate peaks in site numbers during the Iron Age, Sasanian, and medieval periods, interspersed with periods of near abandonment of the region. This mirrors the cycles of settlement seen in the Mughan Steppe south of the Aras River, today divided between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Islamic Republic of Iran, although here a mid-XX c. irrigation system and the short duration of the survey meant that recovery of small rural sites was much more limited. The Sasanian sites in the Mil Steppe are small and fairly evenly distributed along the larger streams running down from the Nagorno Karabakh range, with a particular concentration close to the site of Ören Qala. Taken together, the new evidence from the Mil Plain survey and the excavations conducted by the British team at Barḏaʿa suggests that the Iranian archaeologist Karim Alizadeh’s argument for significant investment in infrastructure during the late Sasanian period along the Aras should be extended much further north, where a similar pattern of the foundation of large urban centers and the construction of canals and forts is visible. The settlement evidence from the Mil Plain may also support Alizadeh’s proposal for large-scale resettlement of local nomadic groups and population transfer from central parts of the empire to frontier zones.

Works on this scale, located well beyond the border itself, especially if they included large resettlements of population, suggest direct involvement by the Sasanian monarchy, and this would have been far more feasible if it was undertaken after the abdication of the Albanian king, with the country under the direct rule of Sassanian governors. The resettled population could have been either nomadic groups from within or outside the empire, or sedentary populations deemed “loyal” (like for example Šābuhr II did in Nisibis after conquering the city). In the XIX c. there was still a sizeable Persian-speaking population in Derbent, and the policy of “Persianizing” this area was a systematic one under the Safavids, as they shared similar concerns with the Sasanians.

The Mughan Steppe offers a better-known example of such colonization, as studied by the historians Jason Ur and Karim Alizadeh as part of the Mughan Steppe Archaeological Project (MSAP). The climate and geomorphology of the Mughan plain is within the bounds of generally reliable rainfed cereal cultivation, but it has traditionally been given over to pasture. Mughan and adjacent areas were the favorite winter grazing lands of the Mongols, and later Timur also wintered in the area. Since the early XVIII c. it has hosted the winter camps of the Shahsevan tribal confederacy, who migrated annually between pastures in Mughan and on the slopes of Mount Sabalan. In the mid-XX c., however, this long-term economic mode began to shift. An initial irrigation system of almost 20,000 ha was built in 1951. It was expanded to 90,000 ha with the joint Soviet-Iranian creation of a dam across the Aras near Aslandouz in 1971. The best of the former Shahsevan grazing grounds are now under cultivation. The results of the 2004-2005 survey showed that the modern replacement of a pastoral landscape with a state-imposed irrigation agricultural landscape actually represents the reappearance of an economic mode already present in the Sasanian period.

General situation map of the southern Caucasus, showing the location of the Mughan Steppe, according to Ur and Alizadeh. The borders of the Sasanian Empire in the V-VI c. CE in this area are also shown.

In the first millennium CE, Mughan was known as Balāsagān (P’aytakaran in Armenian). During the Arsacid period, Balāsagān was a part of Armenia. After a brief period of independence in the early IV c. CE, Balāsagān became part of the Sasanian Empire with the partition of Armenia in 387 CE, administratively attached to Ādurbādagān (Iranian Azerbaijan, ancient Media Atropatene), where it remained until at least the VI c. CE century. In the Sasanian division of the world into “Iran” and “Non-Iran,” however, Balāsagān and the lands of the southern Caucasus were considered to be non-Iranian (Anērān), although Ādurbādagān, its neighbor to the south, was considered to be Iranian. Balāsagān was a generally stable territory within the empire, but was occasionally caught up in intrigues between Albania, Armenia, and the Sasanian state.

In addition to its position on a cultural frontier between the Iranian world and the lands of culturally and linguistically non-Iranian peoples, Mughan remained a dangerous political frontier zone throughout the Sasanian period, despite the fact that the Sasanian Empire extended over Albania and Armenia to its north. Mughan was astride the easiest invasion route of nomadic groups from the northern side of the Caucasus (variously Alans, Huns, and Türk Khazars). Ever since a disastrous Hunnic invasion in 395 CE which reached deep into both the Roman and Sasanian provinces in the Middle East, both empires were keenly aware of this threat and made substantial efforts to protect the easiest passes through the mountains at Darial and along the Caspian coast at Darband, as stated before.

Epigraphic documentation for settlement in Mughan in the Sasanian era is rather sparse, although several routes of communication through it are documented. The major route ran between Ardebil north to Bajarvan, across the Aras to Baylaqan, and on to Barḏaʿa, which was the political center of Albania. Baylaqan (as we have seen above) is identified with Ören Qala, the square fortified settlement complex 33 km north of the Aras, in the Republic of Azerbaijan, and Ultan Qalası represents the ruins of Vardanakert, a place known through Armenian geography. This place continued to be settled into at least the X c. CE, when it was well known to Arab geographers a Warthān, a thriving market town with a wall and a Friday mosque.

The Mughan Plain is dominated by the remains of Ultan Qalası/Vardanakert, a large settlement complex perched on the edge of the Aras floodplain. Travelers from the XIX c. and later archaeologists were drawn to the 33-ha rectangular fortification. Its southeastern side extends 720 m, its northeastern side is about 504 m, and its southwestern side is about 320 m. Its builders used the curving terrace edge to define its northwestern side, which extends 745 m. There is extramural settlement southwest, south, and east of this citadel.

A more detailed map of the area covered by MPS and MSAP, north and south of the Aras River, across the international border between Iran and Azerbaijan, according to Ur and Alizadeh.

Beyond the wall to the southwest is an extensive area of settlement cut by ancient irrigation channels. The extramural areas to the south were damaged by the 1951 irrigation scheme, and more recently, gravel extraction has disturbed the western suburban area visible in CORONA photographs. Despite these disturbances, the traces of several canals are visible through ground survey and satellite images. One of main canals surrounds the citadel like a moat and flows to the Aras River then its northeastern end. In size and settlement morphology, Ultan Qalası is remarkably similar to its contemporary at Ören Qala, (ancient Baylaqan), which was also a square fortified complex on a long canal from the Aras River.

MSAP undertook a field survey in 2005, and it quickly became clear that Ultan Qalası/Vardanakert was only the largest of a series of rectangular fortified complexes on the steppe. The survey was able to visit nine of these sites but the analysis of CORONA photographs showed that many others exist within Iranian Mughan and to the east in the Republic of Azerbaijan. Aside from Ultan Qalası, Ören Qala, and a large site just beyond the Azerbaijani frontier (a good candidate for the location of the city of P’aytakaran), the other sites have modest fortified components, rarely as much as 100 x 100 m and often closer to a quarter of that size. When terrace or foothill topography did not dictate otherwise, the ideal plan appears to have been square. Wall height rarely exceeded 2 m, especially on the plowed sites; the exception is Nader Tepe, whose great height appears to be due to its position on a foothill spur extending out into the plain.

In all cases, these settlement complexes were in close association with the remains of irrigation canals. Unfortunately, the 1971 irrigation system removed most traces of the canals, except in some places where the planners consciously incorporated them as drains. Therefore archaeologists of MSAP relied heavily on georeferenced CORONA satellite photographs which predate the completion of the modern irrigation system. The major sites along the Aras River terrace (Ultan Qalası, Aq Mazar) have been in the midst of modern settlement and irrigation since at least the 1950s, and their associated canals are preserved only in fragments as a result. The sites along the foothill edge, however, are strung along a major feeder canal that can be traced from the Aras River near the modern town of Aslandouz to beyond the frontier with the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Using CORONA photographs, the canal can be traced for 80 km within the boundaries of Iran. The situation is complex near the canal head, where the remains of multiple systems are visible, but in the eastern half of Iranian Mughan, only a single feeder canal was in use (or has survived). The fortified complexes themselves appear to command weirs that diverted water from the main feeder into distributaries north and northeast on the plain. The pattern of channels at these offtakes is often difficult to understand from the images; their apparent redundancy may result from consecutive rebuilds.

Detailed archaeological map of the Ultan Qalası citadel, according to Ur and Alizadeh.

The Ultan Qalası citadel and its immediate environments, with the extramural settlements, remains of ancient irrigation canals and the Aras River, according to Ur and Alizadeh.

The position of the main canal head remains a difficult question. It is possible to follow the main channel back the point where it meets the Aras River’s floodplain, a point 6 km downstream from Aslandouz. If the canal head was near this location, it has been removed by the Aras, which flows directly against the terrace edge at this point, now some 15 m below the level of the plain. A second major system is known by archaeologists exclusively from CORONA photographs. It lies almost entirely within the Republic of Azerbaijan, although its canal head is to be located six kilometers northeast of Parsabad. It may also be dated to the Sasanian period because the signature of this feeder canal on the photographs is remarkably similar to the signature of the main canal within Iranian Mughan. It is associated with several fortified settlement complexes, including an impressively walled 14 ha settlement that is a good candidate for the city of P’aytakaran, as already noted above.

The clear association between the fortified settlement complexes and the major elements of the irrigation system suggest that most of the traces visible on CORONA imagery are to be dated to the Sasanian period. The total of all visible canals must, however, represent a sort of “palimpsest” of multiple noncontemporary systems, although the degree to which this is true cannot yet be determined. For example, there is a historical tradition, going back to Sharaf al-Din’s Zafar-nama, that in 1401 Timur dug two canals in the area, one from the Aras leading to the city of Baylaqan on the northern side of the river, and a second from the Qara Su, a right bank tributary of the Aras, leading across the Mughan Steppe.

The reinforcement of the northern frontiers at Darband and Gorgān is firmly placed in the V c. CE by historians and archaeologists. It seems logical that these walls would be protecting more than client or buffer states, but rather would provide security for the Sasanian state’s investment in revenue-producing agricultural systems, and now the fieldwork conducted during the 2000s and 2010s in Mughan and Gorgān has helped to reconstruct such agricultural systems.

 

[Semper Victor]

4.13 THE APPEARANCE OF THE HEPHTHALITES.


Despite being the mightiest among the dynasties/claims who reigned over the Central Asian Huns, the origins of the Hephthalites remain exceedingly obscure to this day, and scholars seem unable to reach a consensus. This is mostly due to the fact that the ancient sources themselves (Chinese, Greek, etc.) are also unable to offer a consistent account. As an example of the still largely ongoing ongoing state of confusion about the subject, the Turkmenistani historian Aydogdy Kurbanov surveyed the literature about the Hephthalites in his PhD dissertation (both ancient sources and western theories since the XVIII c.) and found these opinions:

• They lived in the Eftali valley (location not given).
• They called themselves War/Uar/Var or Jabula or Alkhan.
• They were a political rather than ethnic unit.
• They, the Chionites and Kidarites were the same people or three different peoples.
• They were the ruling class of the Chionites. They were not Chionites. They were not the "White Huns".
• They were natives of Bactria, or the Pamirs, or the Hindu Kush.
• They began as the Hua who were subjects of the Rouran in the Turfan area.
• They were a branch of the Yuezhi in the Altai area who merged with the Dinglings, defeated the Yueban Huns and moved south.
• They arose near the Aral Sea from a fusion of Massagetae and Alans and moved southeast under the name of Chionites.
• They were partly Tibetan or Mongol or Tokharian or Huns who returned east after the fall of Attila.

Kurbanov gives still a few other theories but makes no attempt to reconcile them. Even among the old Chinese sources there survive conflicting accounts. I will try my best to offer a general view of the “state of the question”; so let’s start with the origins of their name. The English word Hephthalite (or Ephthalite) is derived from the Greek word Hephthalitai (or Ephthalitai) employed by Procopius of Caesarea in the VI c. CE. This is probably taken from MP Haytāl, from whence derive the Arabic Hayṭāl (pl. Hayāṭila) and the Armenian Haital. Old etymologies made Haytāl derive from either a Khotanese word *Hitala meaning "Strong" or from MP *haft āl "the Seven". In their own coinage, they called themselves Ebodalo (ηβοδαλο) in Bactrian. Their endonym (according to the French scholar Frantz Grenet) may have been *evdal or *yevdal. There is no specific Indian term to refer to them.

In Chinese chronicles, the Hephthalites are usually called Ye-tha-i-li-to, or the more usual modern and abbreviated form Yada. The latter name has been given several Latinised renderings, including Yeda, Ye-ta, Ye-tha; Ye-dā and Yanda. The corresponding Cantonese and Korean names Yipdaat and Yeoptal (, which preserve aspects of the Middle Chinese pronunciation (roughly yep-daht) better than the modern Mandarin pronunciation, are more consistent with the Greek Hephthalite. Some Chinese chroniclers suggest that the root Hephtha- (as in Ye-ta-i-li-to or Yada) was technically a title equivalent to "emperor", while Hua was the name of the dominant tribe (as was the case of the Yuezhi and the Kušān).

A very rough map of the approximate extension of the Rouran Khaganate in the Eastern Steppe, nort of the empire of the Northern Wei in the Huang He River valley. Also notice the location of the Tuyuhun people, through which territory the Hephthalite embassies reached the court of the Liang in southern China.

The “traditional” view among modern historians was that the Hephthalites were a new arrival in Central Asia, where the Chionites had already arrived about a century before; this view was based on a literal reading of Chinese sources, and most of the investigation was directing at identifying the ethnicity of the Hephthalites, a concern that has become discredited in recent times, as it reflects more of a XIX-XX c. western worldview than any reality or actual concern VI c. CE Inner or Central Asian societies may have had. They themselves claimed to be Huns and that is how they were also known to their immediate neighbors. The Hunnic origin or self-identification of the Hephthalite dynasty is reflected in the form OIONO or HIONO (in Bactrian), which appears in their coinage. The Hephthalites then would have conquered the Kidarite kingdom from the north, which actually seems to go against most modern research; which seem to indicate that the Hephthalites rose first in Ṭoḵārestān and expanded from there; with the last redoubts of Kidarite rule being located in Gandhāra and Kashmir and perhaps in Osrušana.

This traditional narrative was first contested by the Japanese historian Kazuo Enoki, who in 1967 proposed a Bactrian, non-Hunnic origin for the Hephthalites, arguing that they were a native people from the Hindu Kush or eastern Karakorum. Enoki based his theory on the fact that no language other than Bactrian is attested in Hephthalite coins or documents and that most of the names recorded for their kings and aristocracy seem to have an Iranian etymology, but this theory has lost favor nowadays because the Hephthalites themselves identified as “Huns” in their coinage and shared close links with the Alkhans (who were clearly Huns) and displayed many nomadic Inner Asian features.

Territory ruled by the Northern Wei dynasty in China at the height of its power, IV-VI c. CE

The more accepted narrative today appeared in the 2000s, proposed by scholars like Étienne de la Vaissière, and according to it the Hephthalites may have been part of the original wave of “Chionite” invaders that invaded Kušanšahr, and that they were a “clan” or tribe” who probably settled in eastern Ṭoḵārestān (in Kunduz and Badaḵšān) and who in the mid-V c. CE successfully revolted against the Kidarites, allied themselves with the Sasanian king Pērōz and supplanted the Kidarite line of rulers as overlords of the Central Asian Huns, to then turn against the Sasanians with overwhelming success, even achieving control over the Alkhan Huns in India.

The problem is that this theory (same as Enoki’s) does seem to disagree with Chinese sources (which are the ones that deal most extensively with the issue of the origin of the Hephthalites), and this is a big problem. The issue is further complicated because the main Chinese source, the Weishu, was lost in its original form already in the early Middle Age, and the lost parts (that dealt with the “peoples of the west” and the Ruanruan, which is precisely the part that interests us here) were reconstructed by the Chinese official Liu Shu and his contemporaries in the XI c. CE based on the Beishi and other texts. One of the most important passages appears in the reconstructed Weishu:

Weishu, 102:

The state of the Yeda: its people are descendants of the Great Yuezhi. A division of the Gaoju. They originated from north of the Chinese frontier and moved south from the Altai Mountains. Until the reign of Emperor Gaozong (r. 452-466 CE), eighty or ninety years have elapsed.

The Weishu (Book of Wei) is the dynastic history of the Wei dynasty, describing the history of the Northern and Eastern Wei dynasties from 386 to 550 CE. These dynasties ruled over northern China and were themselves of nomadic origin (from the Tuoba clan of the Xianbei people), and due to their geographic position (they bordered the Mongolian Steppe and they controlled access to the Gansu Corridor), they were the most interested among Chinese dynasties of their time about the events that happened west of China. The first sentence (its people are descendants of the Great Yuezhi) has been controversial among historians. Some think it is an interpolation of later texts that went into Liu Shu’s reconstruction, while others (like De la Vaissière and Grenet) think that it was already included in the original Weishu. Of course, what is polemical about this sentence is that it states that the Hephthalites were “descendants” of the tribes that were expelled from the Eastern Steppe by the Xiongnu in the III-II c. BCE, and which ended up finally in Bactria and formed the Kušān Empire, but in the same passage it says that the Hephthalites moved south from the Altai region eighty or ninety years before the reign of Emperor Gaozong of the Northern Wei (r. 452-466 CE) that puts squarely in the date accepted since the 2000s and initially proposed by De la Vaissière for the mass migration of the Altai Huns to the west and South (i.e. the appearance of the Chionites in Central Asia), so both assertions seem hardly compatible with each other.

The Gaoju (also named as Tiele, Gaoche, Dili, Chile, and Tele in Chinese sources) were a confederation of Turkic peoples that dwelled the north of China and in Central Asia, emerging after the disintegration of the Xiongnu Empire. Chinese sources associate them with the earlier Dingling. Their original Turkic name has been reconstructed as *Tegreg, meaning "[People of the] Carts". They first appear in Chinese sources in 357-363 CE.

Under the rule of their leader Shelun, the Rouran people (usually referred to as Ruanruan in Chinese sources) conquered most of the Gaoju tribes and proclaimed himself Khagan of the Rouran on March 11, 402 CE, establishing a powerful empire in the Eastern Steppe, centered on what is today Mongolia. According to Chinese sources, by the time of the Rouran domination, the Gaoju comprised six tribes and twelve clans. During the reign of Shelun and his successor Datan, the Rouran pushed west as far as the Issyk Kul Lake in Kyrgyzstan, where they defeated the Wusun and drove them to the south. In the east, they raided the Northern Wei before they were heavily defeated by them in 429 CE. The Gaoju (presumably as vassals of the Rouran) conquered the important city-state of Turfan and its basin during the V c. CE, an important stage in the Silk Road to the northeast of the Jade Gate at Dunhuang.

Territory under control of the Liang dynasty in southern China, after the split of the Northern Wei into Western and Eastern branches.

To further complicate things, in the historical records of the Chinese southern dynasties (Liangshu, Nanshi and Liang zhigong tu) the Yeda/Hephthalites are referred to as Hua:

Liangshu, 54:

The state of Hua is another branch of the Jushi. In the first year of the Yongjian reign of the Han (i.e. 126 CE) a Jushi named Bahua, who under [the Chinese general] Ban Yong had rendered distinguished services in conquering the northern savages [i.e. the Xiongnu] was promoted, upon [Ban] Yong recommendation, to the rang of the Houbu Qin Han hou [Marquis of Posterior Jushi, friendly to the Han].

Liangshu, 30:

During this period, beyond the northwestern frontiers there were the states of Baiti and Hua, who sent envoys through the mountain road along the Min [river] [in today’s Sichuan] to offer tribute. These two states had not been guests of the previous dynasties, their origin was unknown. [Pei] Ziye said: “There was Baiti, a “hu” general, who was killed by Marquis Yingyin of Han. Fu Qian’s commentary [to the Hanshu] says: ”Baiti is a “hu” name”. Moreover, it is known that the Marquis Dingyuan of Han was accompanied by Bahua when attacking the barbarians, so perhaps these two states are their descendants”. His contemporaries admired his wide knowledge”.

Liangshu, 54:

While the Yuan Wei settled [their capital] along the Sanggan [River] [i.e. 398-494 CE], the Hua was still a small state under the Ruirui.

This adds yet another layer of complexity. The Jushi were an ancient tribe located to the north of Turfan. The Liangshu is the historical record of the Liang dynasty, which ruled over southern China in 502-557 CE. Despite their location they were in continuous contact with Central Asia through Qinghai (hence the reference to the embassy reaching the Liang via the Min River in Sichuan). Already Kazuo Enoki rejected the commentary linking the Hephthalites with a Jushi general as a learned gloss and nothing else. De la Vaissière added that, according to the biography of Pei Ziye (471-532 CE; the author of the erudite linguistic explanation that arose such admiration in the Liang court) it seems indeed clear that the only information the Liang court had was the name of Hua, so that the Jushi theory is devoid of any basis. But De la Vaissière commented too that it is strange that the ambassadors themselves were unable to provide any reliable information about their origin. To De la Vaissière, this might suggest that the precise origin of the Hephthalites had become already unclear in their own country in the first quarter of the VI c. CE, an idea that according to the French historian can be found too in other Chinese texts. Hu is a generic term employed in Chinese texts to refer to non-Han peoples, especially those from the west like Sogdians, Tokharians, etc.

The Liang Zhigongtu (Liang dynasty images of tributaries) is an illustrated manuscript describing ambassadors sent to the Liang from various tributary countries, with images of them (twelve out of thirty-five are extant, in two fragments, here put together). In this roll, from left to right we can see envoys from Ambassadors from the Western countries or from the sea are depicted: from left to right, from Marw (Mo), Balḵ (Boti), Kumedh (Humidan), Qubadiyan (Hebatan), Karghalik (Zhouguke), Dengzhi (some mountainous tribes on the road to Gansu), Langyaxiu (Ceylon or Malaysia)/Japan, Kucha, Paekche (Boji in Korea), the Sasanian Empire (Bosi), and Hephtalites (thecountry of Hua). This is not the original, but a Song copy made in the XI c. CE.

The other assertion to be found in the Liangshu, that the Hua were still a small state under Rouran (the Liangshu uses the variant Ruirui instead of the more common Ruanruan) rule while the Northern (Yuan) Wei had their capital by the Sanggan River (398-494 CE) is repeated almost word by word in the Nanshi and Liang Zhigongtu, and it doesn’t help at all to solve the question, because it runs completely against the chronology in the Weishu quoted above about the migration of the Yeda south from the Altai. According to this information from the Liangshu and other southern Chinese records, in order to appear in Ṭoḵārestān in the 460s CE, the Hua/Hephthalites should have departed from Rouran-ruled territory during the first half of the V c. CE, at least forty year after the great wave of Hunnic/Chionite migration from the Altai region.

Later sources from the Sui and Tang periods offer some more bits of information:

Xin Tangshu, 211:

[The people of] the state of the Yida are descendants of the Great Yuezhi of the Han period. When the Great Yuezhi were defeated by the Wusun, they crossed the [land of the] Dayuan and attacked the Daxia, subjugating those. Their seat of government was in the city of Lanshi. The [land of] Daxia is the [region of] Tuhuoluo of the Sui period. Yeda was the surname of the king, and his descendants made this surname the name of the state; they also call it Yida or Yitian, which are corrupted forms of the same.

Tongdian, 193:

The Yeda, {Identical with the Yida}
[…] According to Liu Fan’s “Liangdian”, the clan name of [the king of] Hua was Yeda. His descendants made this clan name the name of state. It is also called Yida, which is a corrupted for of the same.
{Some say that [the people] of this [state]belongs to the Jushi, others that it belongs to the Gaoju, yet others that it belongs to the Great Yuezhi}.
{Furthermore, Wei Jie’s Xifanji says: “I personally inquired from the people of the state [of Yeda/Yida] and [therefore know] that they call themselves Yitian.
{Moreover, in the Hanshu it is stated that the viceroy of Kangju, [whose personal name is] Yitian, plundered provisions and arms of the Zhizhi [Chanyu] when the latter was attacked by Chen Tang. This may imply that [the Yeda/Yida] are descendants of the Kangju. Nevertheless, information coming from remote countries by way of foreign languages is subject to corruption and misunderstanding and, moreover, it concerns matters of the remote past. Thus we do not know what is certain and cannot determine [the origin of the Yeda/Yida]}.

The Tongdian (Comprehensive Institutions) is a Chinese institutional history and encyclopedia that covers a wide range of topics from high antiquity up to the year 756 CE; a quarter of the book focuses on the Tang Dynasty. The book was written by Du You from 766 to 801 CE, incorporating many materials from other sources, among them the original Weishu. It shows clearly the confusion existing in the VIII c. CE in China regarding the origins of the Hephthalites, and how already then (two centuries after the fall of their empire) the Chinese could not reconcile the diverse theories about their origins that could be found in their own historical chronicles.

As for the Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), it was compiled in the XI c. CE by order of Emperor Renzong of Song, who thought that that the original Jin Tangshu (Old Book of Tang) was lacking organization and comprehensiveness. It basically makes the Yeda a part of the Great Yuezhi confederacy, and the Hephthalites a clan/tribe of that people, along with the Kušāns. Dayuan was the Chinese name for Ferghana, and Daxia was the Chinese name for Bactria, which changed later into Tuhuluo (for Ṭoḵārestān). It is also the Xin Tangshu that offers the information about Yeda being the name of the king/royal clan (same as in the case of the Kušāns).

Map of Late Antique Central Asia, with Bactria/Ṭoḵārestān in the center.

Although at first glance the theory of the Hephthalites being descendants of the Great Yuezhi seems to be supported more widely in the Chinese sources, De la Vaissière points out that it has long been known that all these texts copy each other. The original text of the Weishu, the basis of this textual tradition, is lost. The chapter of the Weishu in question was reconstructed in the XI c. CE according to the Beishi, and Enoki demonstrated that some parts of the chapter in question of the Beishi and Weishu are copied from the Zhoushu and Suishu. In particular, the description of the Hephthalites as a branch of the Da Yuezhi was interpreted by him as meaning only that in the VI c. CE they occupied the former territory of the Da Yuezhi (Great Yuezhi), that is, Bactria/Ṭoḵārestān.

Enoki also agreed that this part of the Beishi must have been in the original Weishu as it is not in the Zhoushu and Suishu, but he nevertheless dismissed the Gaoju theory as well, as according to him it was not clear why the Hephthalites were identified with a branch of the Gaoju, as according to him the language of the Hephthalites was different from that of the Rouran, Gaoju and other tribes of Central Asia (according to the Beishi). Enoki carried on by arguing that to him there was is no evidence, both literal and archaeological which showed that the Hephthalites originated in the neighborhood of the Altai Mountains or anywhere to the north of the Tianshan Mountains. According to Enoki, all that was known for sure is that the Hephthalites had risen to power in Ṭoḵārestān, where the Hephthalites continued to live even after the destruction of their empire. To Enoki, this showed that the origin of the Hephthalites should be looked for in, or in the neighborhood of, Ṭoḵārestān.

De la Vaissière though found flaws in Enoki’s argument. If Enoki assumed that the Hephthalites had always lived in Ṭoḵārestān, why did he try to explain the Chinese texts saying that they arrived in Ṭoḵārestān? He also argued back that saying that there are no archaeological remains of the Hephthalites in the Altai does not help Enoki’s argument, as there has been no archaeological research on this period in the Altai, while identified Hephthalite remains, even in Ṭoḵārestān, are also almost nonexistent. De la Vaissière also found unconvincing Enoki’s argument about the lack of textual sources, given the fact that the only texts that deal with northern Central Asia at that time are Chinese.

To De la Vaissière, the most important text among the extant Chinese sources is the passage in the Tongdian quoted above. The Tongdian is the only text in the Chinese sources that gives a date of the migration of these nomadic tribes from the Altai to the south, between 360 and 370 CE. And De la Vaissière thinks that this date must have come from the original Weishu, as Wencheng (r. 452–466 CE) was a Wei emperor, and he adds that it is known that a great part of the Wei knowledge of Central Asia came from the first Hephthalite embassy that reached their court in 456 CE, as Enoki himself also acknowledged.

Landscape of Badaḵšān, an area that stretches between northeastern Afghanistan and southern Tajikistan.

De la Vaissière goes on to explain that the Wei were certainly the Chinese dynasty that best knew the Western countries, as they sent some envoys to the West and received several embassies. But the embassy of 456 CE was the earliest contact between the Hephthalites and China and is separated from the next one by half a century. Thus, the data in the Weishu derived from this embassy are logically the most reliable ones to be found in the Chinese dynastic histories. According to these data, gathered from the Hephthalites and early enough to be regarded as a reliable account of their origin, the Hephthalites had migrated from the Altai to the south in the middle of the IV c. CE and were of the same stock as the Gaoju. De la Vaissière does not see any reason to doubt the veracity of this claim.

Thus, to De la Vaissière the Hephthalites were among the tribes that arrived in Ṭoḵārestān in the IV c. CE, at least if we are to believe the date provided by the Tongdian. They were one of the various tribes loosely united under the old Xiongnu political and cultural leadership and which were called Chionites by Ammianus. In other words, the Hephthalites were already in Ṭoḵārestān a century before gaining control there and were under the leadership of others. The last nomadic dynasty did not arrive in Ṭoḵārestān later than the other ones but was there from the beginning of the nomadic period. And to De la Vaissière, this probably means that all the nomadic kingdoms that flourished in Ṭoḵārestān between the middle of the IV c. and the middle of the VI c. CE can trace their origin back to a single episode of massive migration in the second half of the IV c. CE (circa 350–370 CE), and not to a whole set of successive migrations.

Moreover, according to the French historian these leading tribes may be better described in political terms than in ethnic or linguistic ones. This would be quite clear regarding the Hephthalites. If for one century the Hephthalites, already united or not, were among the numerous tribes living as nomads on the pasture grounds of the mountains (they seem to have settled primarily in the good pasturelands of Kunduz and Badaḵšān in eastern Ṭoḵārestān), and were not at the apex of the political hierarchy, the possibility that they partially or totally lost their language and their ethnic identity in a new environment should be taken into account. According to De la Vaissière, this idea could be demonstrated from the succession of the Chinese sources. If each of them gives a static view, it may be worth addressing them chronologically:

• The oldest source, which is preserved in the Tongdian and goes back to the embassy of 456 CE, is able to record quite a precise origin, as argued above.
• The Beishi and the Tongdian state that “their speech is different from that of the Rouran, the Gaoju and all the other hu”, while a few lines before this state that the Hephthalites are a branch of the Gaoju. De la Vaissière is certain that this part of the text would originate from the first half of the VI c. CE when Song Yun and several embassies gathered most of the data, while the only data from 456 CE are concentrated at the beginning of the text, where Emperor Wencheng is mentioned. An evolution had taken place, and according to De la Vaissière it would mean that the Hephthalites had ceased to retain their original Altaic language and adopted Bactrian.
• The Liangshu and the Liang Zhigongtu, based on data gathered in the 520s CE, bridged the gap concerning the origin of the Hephthalites with a learned gloss. The Liangshu also adds that “they were without a written language and kept records by notching wood; [but from] the exchange of ambassadors with the neighboring countries they came to employ a Hu alphabet, using sheepskin for paper” and that the people of Henan, which according to De la Vaissière means here the Tuyuhun, a proto-Mongolic people in the Qinghai region, acted as translators for them. It has been understood as an indication of the proto-Mongol character of the Hephthalite language. However, the Liang dynasty was mainly linked with Central Asia through the Qinghai region (as noted above), and as the main go-betweens in that region it is quite natural that the Tuyuhun acted as translators, and that they translated from Bactrian, explicitly mentioned in this text.
• The Zhoushu, from data of the third quarter of the VI c. CE, says nothing about their origin, except that they are Da Yuezhi.
• The Suishu says only that they are Da Yuezhi.
• The Tongdian, finished at the beginning of the IX c. CE, adds to the text of the Suishu a commentary of Wei Jie, the envoy of the Sui dynasty to the Western countries between 605 and 616 CE (quoted above), according to which it is impossible to ascertain the origin of the Hephthalites.

De la Vaissière’s hypothesis could bridge the apparent contradiction of their Turkic origin according to the Chinese sources and the fact that already when they first appear in scene the onomastics of their kings is clearly Iranian, and they employ Bactrian in all their know coins and texts. De la Vaissière stresses that this does not mean that they were Iranian from the beginning, as Enoki tried to prove, but only that the pace of assimilation for a tribe or a clan not at the height of the political hierarchy would have been swift after one century in Bactria. The Chinese texts are not contradictory or devoid of value (the various Chinese courts were in constant contact with the Hephthalites during the sixth century) but they reflect the fact that in the Hephthalite Empire itself, the old ethnic origin was an intricate or perhaps even meaningless question, while, linguistically speaking, an evolution had already taken place when the Hephthalites came to power and was still going on during the period recorded by the Chinese sources. In plain language, the Hephthalites “went Bactrian”.

De la Vaissière also states that it would be possible to go beyond linguistic assimilation. Greek sources do confirm that an assimilation regarding their way of life took place, although later than the ethnic/linguistic assimilation. Procopius of Caesarea wrote, from information of the 530s or 540s CE:

Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, 1, 3, 1-22:

The Hephthalites are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name; however they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us, for they occupy a land neither adjoining nor even very near to them; but their territory lies immediately to the north of Persia; indeed their city, called Gorgo, is located over against the Persian frontier, and is consequently the center of frequent contests concerning boundary lines between the two peoples. For they are not nomads like the other Hunnic peoples, but for a long period have been established in a goodly land. As a result of this they have never made any incursion into the Roman territory except in company of the Median army. They are theonly ones among th Huns who have white bodies and countenances which are not ugly. It is also true that their manner of living is unlike that of their kinsmen, nor do they live a savage life as they do; but they are ruled by one king, and since they possess a lawful constitution, they observe right and justice in their dealings both with one another and with their neighbors, in no degree less than the Romans and the Persians.

The accent in this fragment by Procopius is clearly put on the difference between the Hephthalites and what De la Vaissière calls “pure nomads”. Assimilation with the sedentary population probably was a major tendency in the Hephthalite kingdom. Another source, Menander Protector, confirms slightly later that towards the end of their rule the Hephthalites were regarded as a mainly urban population. In this fragment by Menander, the Eastern Roman emperor asks to a Sogdian ambassador, after the conquest of the Hephthalite empire by the Türks:

“You have, therefore, made all the power of the Hephthalites subject to you?” “Completely”, replied the envoys. The Emperor then asked, “Do the Hephthalites live in cities or villages?” The envoys responded: “My Lord, that people live in cities”. “Then”, said the Emperor, “it is clear that you have become masters of these cities”. “Indeed”, said the envoys.

But these Eastern Roman descriptions from the mid-VI c. CE stand in sharp contrast with that of Chinese envoy Song Yun, who met the Hephthalite emperor as he was nomadizing in the mountains in 519 CE. The Beishi, from the testimony of Song Yun and other contemporary embassies, states that:

Without cities and towns, they follow water and grass, using felt to make tents, moving to the cold places in summer, to the warm ones in winter. [The king?] separates his various wives, each one in a separate place, apart from one another at a distance perhaps of 200 or 300 li. Their king travels around and changes places every month, but in the cold of winter stays three months without moving.

But in the Zhoushu, using later mid-VI c. CE data, we read:

Its king has his capital in the walled city of Badiyan, which means something like ‘the walled city in which the king resides”.

And this statement is in agreement with the Eastern Roman sources. The evolution of the Hephthalites’ way of life seems thus quite clear, although it took place later in time than in the case of other Hunnic groups.

Pastureland in the Kunduz province, northeastern Afghanistan.

De la Vaissière suggests using the contemporary and parallel evidence from northern China as a model for understanding the situation in northern Ṭoḵārestān. The Northern Wei state had been formed in the North China Plain in the IV c. CE by the Xianbei people under the ruling Tuoba clan. This dynasty split in the VI c. CE, among other reasons due to the question of their relationship to the sedentary past, here Chinese. The Qi were more in favor of Sinization than the Zhou, who at least ostensibly clung to the Xianbei past. Although the context is different, for De la Vaissière it is beyond doubt that the question of assimilation was a major one for the tribes in Ṭoḵārestān. In this regard, the main difference between the Hephthalites and the others, either Kidarites or Chionites, is their renunciation of the title of Kušān Šāh, which implies a different relationship to the sedentary Bactrian past. The Hephthalites, like the Zhou in China, chose at the beginning of their political history not to present themselves as the inheritors of the past glory of the Kušān empire, and are described by Song Yun in 519 CE, and in all the other sources, as clinging to their nomadic way of life up to the first quarter of the VI c. CE. On the other hand, their Kidarite predecessors, who seem to be the first creators of the new urban network in mid-V c. CE Central Asia (see previous posts), had chosen to display a Kušān title that might be in agreement with this urban policy.

 

[Semper Victor]

4.14 THE END OF THE KIDARITE KINGDOM.


The succession war recorded in practically all the accounts between Pērōz and his brother and the lack of coins minted in Hormazd III’s name has raised some doubt. So, some historians think that Pērōz would have been appointed king by his father and that it would have been Hormazd III who revolted against him, based on the lack of coins minted in the latter’s name and because Łazar P’arpec’i attributed 27 years of reign to Pērōz, which would only make sense if he counted from 457 CE. This could be further supported because, as showed by the numismatist Nikolaus Schindel, Pērōz displayed a different crown on his coinage from his second regnal year onwards. But according to Daniel T. Potts and Nicholas Sims-Williams, there are three Bactrian Documents dated to these confused time frame that could shed some light on the issue. In these documents, a certain Kirdēr-Warahrān appears with different titles. In one of them, he bears the title “loyal to Pērōz” and on the other two is called *Hormazd-farrox (“famous in Hormazd’s name”). To these scholars this seems to show that there was indeed a civil war between Pērōz and Hormazd, and that this Kirdēr-Warahrān allied first with one brother and then with the other, and that he accordingly received honors from each of them.

Then there is the issue of Pērōz’s flight to Hephthalite territory, and asking for their help, among them Shapur Shahbazi and Rahim Shayegan (also earlier historians like Theodor Nöldeke, Josef Marquart or Arthur Christensen); in the post about Pērōz’s accession to the throne I followed their theory. But not everybody agrees with that. Shayegan and Shahbazi base their refusal of Pērōz’s flight to Hephthalite territory on the Armenian sources, in which this story is completely absent. And this is important, because these sources are the ones closest in time to the events (they were written in the second half of the V c. CE or slightly later), and they were written within the Sasanian Empire.

Although I have already posted this map in previous posts, I will post it here again as this post will contain again plenty of geographical terms, especially in Ṭoḵārestān. The “Saghaniyan” in the map is the “Čaḡānīān” in the text.

But not everyone agrees with it, seeing that almost all the Perso-Arabic sources agree on this point. It’s worth noticing that Pērōz would not have been asking for help the same people who had defeated his father a few years earlier (the Kidarites) but to the Hephthalites, who presumably would have rebelled against them, in a tactic similar to the alliance of Xusrō I in the VI c. CE when he allied himself with the Türks against the Hephthalites. Not only Ṭabarī, but also Bal’amī and other sources wrote that Pērōz was Sakān Šāh when his father died, and Bal’amī specifies that he was in Sīstān when his father died. The key issue here is where do the Perso-Arabic sources locate the Hephthalites at this point in time, as modern historians place them in eastern Ṭoḵārestān, as we have already seen.

Perso-Arabian sources differ considerably when placing the Hephthalites at this point in time:

• Ṭabarī: “Khorasan” and “Ṭoḵārestān”.
• Nihāyat al-arab: Kābul or Kābolestān.
• Dīnawarī: Kābul/Kābolestān, Čaḡānīān and Balḵ.
• Ferdowsī: Čaḡānīān.
• Bal’amī: Ṭoḵārestān, Balk, Badaḵšān and Ġarğestān.

As you can see, Ṭabarī is the only source who mentions “Khorasan”. In late Sasanian times, “Khorasan” designated one of the four large partitions in which Xusrō I divided his empire, and which encompassed Abaršahr (ancient Parthia), Gorgān, and the territories reconquered by him in Ṭoḵārestān and the Hindu Kush. In Islamic terms though the term came to encompass practically all of the Islamic East north of India, including all of Transoxiana. So, his account is the only that could have accounted for the use of troops recruited within the Sasanian borders. Bal’amī locates the Hephthalites in Ṭoḵārestān at large (as does Ṭabarī), without specifying further, while Dīnawarī limited Hephthalite control to the Bactrian region of Čaḡānīān, which is also quoted by Ferdowsi under the name of Čaġān. The region of Čaḡānīān is located to the northeast of Termeḏ, in the upper valley of the Sorḵān Daryā River, and it formed the northeastern border of Ṭoḵārestān. According to Dīnawarī, the Hephthalite lands limited with Balḵ, but according to Bal’amī, Balḵ was already controlled by them. Badaḵšān is located between the upper valley of the Āmu Daryā and the Hindu Kush. The Nihāyat al-arab is the only source that specifies the alleged destiny of Pērōz when he fled the Sasanian Empire to request for Hephthalite help: Kābul, and Dīnawarī also says that Kābolestān was under Hephthalite control. Ġarğestān is a region located on the upper valley of the Morġāb River, to the east of Herāt.

So, if we accept the accounts in the Perso-Arabic tradition as veridic ones, in 457 CE the Hephthalites would have already in control of most of Ṭoḵārestān, would have already been in control of the Bactrian territories north of the Amu Darya, and would control the main pass across the Hindu Kush to India, the Kābul basin (Kābolestān). They would have probably cut Kidarite-ruled territory in half. The Kidarites retained control in Gandhāra for some more time, and in Kashmir even longer, as the Beishi records an embassy from Jiduoluo (the Chinese term for Kidarite) coming from Kashmir in 477 CE, and until 509 CE Sogdiana kept sending its own embassies to China, which the Chinese sources named differently from the ones sent by the Yeda/Hua. In this respect, it’s important to keep in mind that the first Hephthalite embassy to China is recorded by the Weishu/Tongdian in 456 CE, just a year before the death of Yazdegerd II and the start of the succession war between is two sons, so chronologically it is perfectly possible that the Hephthalites had already formed an independent state by then, able to send its own embassies to the court of the Northern Wei. There is absolutely no historical account or proof in which to base this assumption, but I agree with Hans T. Bakker that this sudden appearance of the Hephthalites as independent players north of the Hindu Kush must have been related to the Hunnic defeats in northwestern India and probably also to the long war between Kidarites and Sasanians, in which the former had also suffered defeats against Warahrān V and Yazdegerd II.

Again, I have already posted this map, but I am posting it again. It completes the map above for a proper following of most of the toponyms in the text. Notice the location of Termeḏ (“Tarmid” in the map) and Tālaqān to the east of Ṭoḵārestān.

Another important point is the prize that Pērōz had to pay the Hephthalites in return for their alleged support against his brother Hormazd III. According to Ṭabarī, Bal’amī and the Nihāyat al-arab, he had to hand down the city of (al-)Tālaqān to the Hephthalites, but the identification of this city is problematic, as there are several cities called so in Greater Khorasan. The Tālaqān located near Qazvin can be completely discarded as it is located in the northwest of Iran, the are two other candidates:

• A city now disappeared that was called Tālaqān and that according to Islamic geographers was located in Gūzgān, between Balḵ and Marw-Rūd and probably near Maymanah, in northeastern Afghanistan.
• The Nihāyat al-arab names specifically the city of Tālaqān in northern Ṭoḵārestān, between Balk and Kondūz.

Both candidates are located south of the Āmu Daryā, which would agree with the general consensus among historians that at this time the limits of the Sasanian Empire did not extend north of said river. Dīnawarī and Ferdowsī though wrote that the price paid by Pērōz was the city of Termeḏ, also in Ṭoḵārestān but on the northern shore of the river, in its confluence with the Sorḵān Daryā. And Ferdowsī adds the city of Vīsehgerd to the price paid, which was located north of the Āmu Daryā. The geographical problems don’t stop here, though: all these cities are located east of Balḵ, which would mean that after his long wars, even after his defeat in 453 CE, Yazdegerd II had managed to recover Balḵ and most of Ṭoḵārestān, which is hard to understand given that this seems to contradict one of the surviving fragments left by Priscus of Panion (if the city of Balaam that according to him was the Kidarite capital and was conquered by Pērōz is indeed the same as Balḵ).

The name of the Hephthalite king is also problematic. Most sources do not name him, but he is named as Faġānīš by Ferdowsī and as Ḵušnawār/Ḵušnawāz by Bal’amī (Xašnawāz in MP). According to the French scholar Xavier Tremblay, the New Persian Faġānīš is a corruption of the Sogdian word for “husband”. The last Hephthalite king according to Ferdowsi also had this same name, and the first Faġānīš would have been succeeded by the Ḵušnawār/Ḵušnawāz of Bal’amī’s account. Ṭabarī and Dīnawarī name a certain Aḵšonvār as the Hephthalite king that would later inflict three devastating defeats upon Pērōz; it is unclear if it is the same name, corrupted by textual transmission. In its second form Aḵšonvār, it is probably an Arabic corruption of the Sogdian word for “king” (literally “he who holds power”) and some scholars think that it may have been a title displayed by all the Hephthalite kings. The real problem though is that neither of these names is attested in sources other than literary ones. Hephthalite coins do not display the king’s name, only his effigy and the letters ηβο (ebo, abbreviation for Bactrian ηβοδαλο, ebodalo), or the Hephthalite tamgha.

As described by the Austrian numismatists Michael Alram and Matthias Pfisterer, the Hephthalite tamgha has curious origins. It appears for the first time in Alkhan coins from Kābolestān in the late IV c. CE, but then it disappears and appears only in a coin by the Alkhan king Khiṅgila minted in Gandhāra. Nevertheless, during the first half of the V c. CE appear in Ṭoḵārestān some coins minted in name of a certain king Tobazini that imitate Sasanian coins of Warahrān IV. The numismatist Nicholas Sims-Williams believes that Tobazini could be a composite from the Turkic Tupa or Chinese Dubo, which was a Turkic tribe ruled by the Rouran. Sims-Williams proposed that maybe this king spent some time with the Tupa tribe, and hence his name “under the protection of the Tupa”. What is remarkable about these coins is that they display the Hephthalite tamgha, and from this moment in time onwards, this tamgha comes to be associated exclusively with the Hephthalites not only in coins but also in seals and other objects, in Ṭoḵārestān and in Sogdiana. The common use of the Hephthalite tamgha by both Hephthalites and Alkhan has been interpreted by Alram and Pfisterer (cautiously) as a hint at a common origin of both dynasties/clans.

Obverse of one of the coins issued by “Tobazini”. To the right, Hephthalite tamgha.

As for the relations between the Alkhans in northwestern India and the Hunnic dynasties north of the Hindu Kush, there is still quite a lot of uncertainty. Hans T. Bakker and other scholars believe that a silver bowl found in the Swāt valley (ancient Uḍḍiyāna) north of Gandhāra can shed some light in the relationship between Kidarites and Alkhans during the first half of the V c. CE. The provenance of this bowl is not completely clear. Its discovery was announced to the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1912, when Charles Hercules Read reported that, according to his informant, this vessel had been recovered when “during a flood on the Swāt River part of the bank was washed away”. It may originally have been gilded. Advances in the interpretation of the iconography of the bowl were not made until numismatists examined it closely. They supported tentatively a chronology dating back to the first half of the V c. CE, based on the similarities between the crowns and headgear of the four mounted hunters depicted on the bowl with those that appear on the coinage of Hunnic kings in Swāt and Gandhāra.

The Austrian numismatist Robert Göbl compared the crowns of two of the four hunters with Kidarite coins, one with, the other without korymbos. The third hunter, according to Göbl, displays an elongated skull, comparing it to early Alkhan coins of king Khiṅgila. The fourth hunter, who might be the same one depicted on the central medallion of the bowl, is without crown, which, according to Göbl, was common in early coin issues of Indian Huns, both Kidarite and Alkhan ones. He also supported the chronological attribution to the first half of the V c. CE, which has become accepted by all subsequent numismatists.

There exists to date a general consensus regarding the iconographic interpretation of the bowl from Swāt: it represents a secular scene of a hunt in which princes of two ethnic groups take part, probably Kidarite and Alkhan. According to the historian Elizabeth Errington, the bowl represents the c-existence between Kidarites and Alkhans in the first half of the V c. CE in Gandhāra and Swāt, who may have been in control of different areas at the same period. The bowl also displays a Brahmi inscription near the upper rim, which Hans T. Bakker reads as displaying the Hunnic name Khiṅgi(la) and a date “206”, that if is taken to have been written according to the Bactrian Era (that starts with the founding of the Sasanian Empire by Ardaxšīr I in 224 CE), would correspond to the year 428-429 CE.

The Swāt bowl, and detail of the four mounted hunters.

Bakker points out that if his reading of the inscription is correct, this could be put in relation with another silver bowl that also displays the name Khiṅgila. In 1970, an eight-lobed silver bowl was found in the former Northern Wei capital of Dai/Pincheng (today Datong, in Shanxi province) bearing many similarities to the bowl of Swāt and to another similar one (but without inscriptions) found at Chilek near Samarkand, and which displays a Bactrian inscription that reads as “Property of Khiṅgila the lord”. Bakker speculates that this object could have reached the court of the Northern Wei with the 459 CE embassy from Jiduoluo recorded in the Weishu. As we will see in later posts, Bakker argues rather convincingly that after the collapse of Kidarite rule in Ṭoḵārestān and its replacement by the Hephthalites, the later placed a ruler over the Alkhan in northwestern India who was named Khiṅgila and who minted names in his own name, and could have been the same ruler whose name appears engraved in these bowls.

To confuse matters even more about political boundaries and control in Central Asia during the first decade of Pērōz’s rule, there is another interesting document. One of the Bactrian Documents, dated to the year 239 of the Bactrian Era (i.e. to between December 461 CE and January 462 CE) This document is a letter in which a certain Meyam, king of the Kadag, calls himself “governor of the famous and prosperous Šahān Šāh Pērōz”. This Meyam could be the same person that appears in a seal with a male bust under the Bactrian name Mēhan. Some scholars have vinculated also this character with the Alkhan king Mehama, which is listed in the Schøyen Copper Scroll as mahāṣāhi Mehama. But this association is problematic by several reasons. First, there’s the chronology: the scroll is dated to 492-493 CE (or 495-496 CE), and second, despite the fact that the scholar who first published it in 2006 (Gudrun Melzer) located the Tālagāna quoted in the scroll with Tālaqān in eastern Ṭoḵārestān, but in 2007 Étienne de la Vaissière argued convincingly for an Indian (specifically, Punjabi) origin of the scroll, and that the Tālagāna quoted in it should be identified with Tālagang in Punjab. Bakker thinks that Meyam/Mēhan/Mehama should be treated as three distinct people: the first and last one are far too separated in time, and we have no secure chronological frame for the second one.

One of the early coins issued in the name of the Alkhan ruler Khiṅgila. On the obverse, bust of Khiṅgila with the Bactrian legends “kiggilo” (left) and “alchono” (right), and the Alkhan tamgha. On the (badly worn out) reverse, fire altar with attendants, a relic from the original Sasanian coinage that the Huns began copying in the late IV c. CE. Tentatively dated to the mid-V c. CE. Notice the elongated skull, displayed in the portraits of all the Alkhan kings.

The interesting bit though is that in 461-462 CE there was a certain local king named Meyam who ruled Kadag/Kadagstān, and declared himself to be Pērōz’s governor (more specifically, MP kadag-bid, which translates as “master of the royal household”, implying that perhaps this area was considered part of the royal demesne of this Sasanian king), a region located northeast from Rōb, in the area of Baġlan south of Tālaqān, in eastern Ṭoḵārestān. There is another Bactrian Document dated to years later (474-475 CE) in which Meyam appears again, and still describes himself as being subordinated to Pērōz. In my opinion, this scattered evidence complicates considerably the storyline that seems to have become the current consensus among historians, i.e. that the Sasanian border with the Kidarites stood at the line Marw – Marw-Rūd – Herāt, and that the entire Ṭoḵārestān was under Kidarite control. The strongest proof for this theory is that there are no Sasanian coins of Yazdegerd I, Warahrān V and Yazdegerd II minted in Balḵ or any other Bactrian city, but the fact is that a certain Meyam (who could be a Hun, as a later Alkhan name bore this same name) ruled over a province/principality in eastern Ṭoḵārestān (well to the east of Balk) in Pērōz’s name. And as we have also seen, there are also hints that the Hephthalites had already broken free from Kidarite rule in eastern Ṭoḵārestān. If we consider both possibilities together (that the Sasanians controlled territory in Ṭoḵārestān as far east within Ṭoḵārestān as Tālaqān and Kadagstān, and that the Hephthalites may have already become an independent force in eastern Ṭoḵārestān (Čaḡānīān, Badaḵšān, and perhaps even Kābolestān), on both banks of the Amu Darya, then the claim of the Perso-Arabic sources that Pērōz handed them Tālaqān, or Termeḏ (or both) in pay for their intervention in the Sasanian war of succession could gain some semblance of plausibility.

The main problem though is that the only literary sources that are roughly contemporary to the events (Łazar P’arpec’i and Ełišē) say nothing about an Hephthalite intervention, and that based on their accounts the eastern wars of Yazdegerd II had been not remarkably successful. In this respect, not much more can be said, but in my opinion is that the evidence seems to point toward a certain degree of Sasanian control deep into Ṭoḵārestān, well to the east of Balḵ. The Bactrian Document of Meyam dated to 461-462 CE is direct evidence of it, and it cannot be discarded.

It would not be until 464 CE when Pērōz resumed the war against the Kidarites. In the meantime, according to Ṭabarī, he had to deal with a seven-year drought that devastated his territories:

Ṭabarī, History of the Prophets and Kings; The Kings of the Persians and the Kings of al-Ḥīra:

He displayed just rule and praiseworthy conduct and showed piety. During his time, there was a seven year long famine, but he arranged things very competently: he divided out the monies in the public treasury, refrained from levying taxation, and governed his people to such good effect that only one person died through want in all those years.

Ṭabarī actually offers two versions of Peroz’s reign, stating that he follows two different sources with differing views:

Another purveyor of historical traditions other than Hishām has stated that Fayrūz was a man of limited capability, generally unsuccessful in his undertakings, who brought down evil and misfortune on his subjects, and the greater part of his sayings and the actions he undertook brought down injury and calamity upon both himself and the people of his realm. During his reign, a great famine came over the land for seven years continuously. Streams, qanats, and springs dried up; trees and reed beds became desiccated; the major part of all tillage and thickets of vegetation were reduced to dust in the plains and the mountains of his land alike, bringing about the deaths there of birds and wild beasts; cattle and horses grew so hungry that they could hardly draw any loads; and the water in the Tigris became very sparse. Dearth, hunger, hardship, and various calamities became general for the people of his land. He accordingly wrote to all his subjects, informing them that the land and capitation taxes were suspended, and extraordinary levies and corvées were abolished, and that he had given them complete control over their own affairs, commending them to take all possible measures in finding food and sustenance to keep them going. He wrote further to them that anyone who had a subterranean food store, a granary, foodstuffs, or anything that could provide nourishment for the people and enable them to assist each other, should release these supplies, and that no one should appropriate such things exclusively for himself. Furthermore, rich, and poor, noble, and mean, should share equally and aid each other. He also told them that if he received news that a single individual had died of hunger, he would retaliate upon the people of that town, village, or place where the death from starvation had occurred, and inflict exemplary punishment on them.
In this way, Fayrūz ordered the affairs of his subjects during that period of dearth and hunger so adroitly that no one perished of starvation except for one man from the rural district of Ardashīr Khurrah, called Dīh. The great men of Persia, all the inhabitants of Ardashīr Khurrah and Fayrūz himself considered that as something terrible. Fayrūz implored his Lord to bestow His mercy on him and his subjects and to send down His rain (or, assistance) upon them. So God aided him by causing it to rain. Fayrūz's land once more had a profusion of water, just as it had had previously, and the trees were restored to a flourishing state.

If we assume that Ṭabarī counts here his regnal years starting in 457 CE and not in 459 CE, then seven years is the exact time elapsed between 457 CE and 464 CE, when Pērōz renewed the war in the East. In this precise year or a little latter (464-465 CE), there was a diplomatic row with the Eastern Romans about the matter of the Roman “contribution” to the upkeep of the fortifications in the Caucasus, as recorded by Priscus of Panion:

Priscus of Panion, Fragment 32, from the Excerpts on Foreigners’ Embassies to the Romans of Constantine VII Porphyrogenites:

While the fugitive nations feuded against the Eastern Romans, an embassy arrived from Italy, saying that they could no longer resist unless the Easterners reconciled them to the Vandals. An embassy also arrived from the Persian monarch on behalf of Persian fugitives dwelling in the Roman Empire and on behalf of Magi who dwelled in Roman land from ancient times. The ambassadors charged the Romans with wishing to keep these people from practicing their ancestral customs, laws, and religious practices, and so harassing them and not permitting them to perpetually kindle the fire they call unquenchable, as the law required. The embassy also stated that the Romans must provide money and show concern for the fortress Iouroeipaach, which lies at the Caspian Gates, or at least to send soldiers to guard it. The Persians, they said, should not be alone in bearing the expense and the protection of the place. For if they should fail, the neighboring nations’ violence would readily strike not only the Persians but also the Romans. They also said that they must, like allies, supply funds for the war against the so-called Kidarite Huns. If the Persians should succeed, the Romans would benefit from the nation not being permitted to cross into the Roman Empire.
Regarding all these demands, the Romans answered that they would send someone to negotiate with the Parthian monarch. They said that there were no fugitives among them, nor were they harassing the Magi about their religious worship; furthermore, they were not justified in demanding money for garrisoning the fortress Iouroeipaach and for the war against the Huns since the Persians had taken up these activities on their own behalf.
Tatianos, a man enrolled at the rank of patrician, was sent as ambassador to the Vandals on behalf of Italy. Constantius, who had attained the consulship three times and had reached the rank of patrician as well as consul, was sent to the Persians.

Graeco-Roman sources often mistake the Caucasian passes with each other, so it is unclear if the Sasanian ambassadors were referring here to the fortifications at Darband or at Darial. Sasanian demands for money (or tribute) from the Romans for the upkeep of the Caucasian garrisons, as we have seen, are nothing new, but were always contentious because they were hard to justify by the Roman emperors and the Sasanian court exploited them for their propaganda value as “tribute”. Probably, the death of Attila and the disarray of the western Huns (who, as we have seen in a previous post, were engaged in their own internecine conflicts) were considered by the court of Constantinople as encouraging signs and they refused to pay. What seems to be new (or at least unattested in the sources until now) is Pērōz’s demand for help against the Kidarites, an enemy that was located too far away from the Roman borders for the Eastern Romans to feel threatened by them. It is also thanks to this fragment by Priscus that we know that the enemies Pērōz was about to engage were Kidarites, as the Perso-Arabic sources name them systematically as “Hephthalites”. Fortunately, another fragment by Priscus has survived which narrates the development of the embassy of Constantius:

Priscus of Panion, Fragment 33, from the Excerpts on Foreigners’ Embassies to the Romans of Constantine VII Porphyrogenites:

The Persian monarch (i.e. Pērōz) then received into his land the ambassador Constantius, who had remained in Edessa for a time, as I said about his embassy. He ordered him to come while he was occupied not in the cities, but on the border between his cities and the Kidarite Huns. He was engaged in [a war] caused by the Huns’ refusal to take the tribute that past Persian and Parthian kings had agreed upon. His father, having refused to pay the tribute, took up the war and then bequeathed it and the kingdom to his son. Because they kept suffering defeat in battle, the Persians wished to solve the Hunnic problem by deception.
And so, it was said, Peirozes (this was the Persian king’s name at the time) sent messages to Kounchas, the Hunnic leader, stating that, hoping for peace with them, he wanted to agree to an alliance and to offer his sister in marriage; for he happened to be very young and not yet the father of children. Kounchas, it was said, accepted the proposal, but married not Peirozes’s sister, but another woman decked out in royal fashion, whom the Persian monarch sent off after informing her that if she revealed nothing of the deception, she would share in kingship and happiness, but if she revealed the theatrics, she would suffer death as a penalty since the Kidarite ruler would not endure a servile wife in place of a well-born woman.
The treaty thus negotiated, Peirozes did not enjoy his deception against the Hunnic leader very long. Because the woman was concerned that the nation’s ruler would learn of her situation from others and would cruelly subject her to death, she revealed what had been perpetrated. Kounchas praised the woman for her truthfulness and kept her as his wife. He wished to punish Peirozes for his trickery, and so he pretended that he was having a war against neighboring peoples, and that he needed men, not men fit for war (for there were thousands available to him) but men who would be his generals. Peirozes sent him three hundred elite men. The Kidarite ruler killed some, and others he maimed and sent back to Peirozes to report that he had paid this penalty for his deceit.
Thus the war was rekindled, and they fought violently. Peirozes accordingly received Constantius in Gorga (this was the name of the place where the Persians were encamped). After treating him kindly for several days, he sent him away with no auspicious response to his embassy.

This fragment is filled with valuable information. It repeats that it was the Kidarites that Pērōz was fighting against, and that their king was a certain Khounchas (Koúγxas), usually transliterated into English as Kunkhas, a name which some scholars have interpreted as *Xūnqan (reconstructed Turkic for “Khan of the Huns”), but there’s no consensus about this reading. Priscus also informs us that the Sasanian kings had been paying tribute to the Kidarites, and that it had been Yazdegerd II who had stopped paying it, thus rekindling the war against them, a war inherited by his son. It’s possible that the negotiations for a marriage between Pērōz’s sister and “Kunkhas” would have been undertaken during the difficult years between 459-464 CE, when Ērānšahr was devastated by drought, as a way to compensate the Kidarites for not paying a tribute that would have been difficult to gather anyway in such situation. The story as such is difficult to believe, because if the initiative for the marriage offer came from Pērōz, attempting such a crude deceit would have been extremely stupid, and especially because it’s an exact parallel to the story/legend of Amasis and Cambyses as told by Herodotus, as noted by Nikolaus Schindel. Alternatively, it is also possible that the war had started with a Sasanian defeat against the Kidarites and that “Kunkhas” had forced Pērōz to agree to a royal wedding, which would perhaps explain such an uncommon story.

Aerial photograph of the remains of the Great Wall of Gorgān and one of its attached forts.

Another bit of information delivered by this fragment is that Pērōz received Constantius at Gorga, “the place where the Persians were encamped”. It is almost certain that this place was Gorgān, where Pērōz probably (according to extensive archaeological research conducted during the last twenty years) this king completed the construction of the impressive fortifications of the Great Wall of Gorgān, as well as the tens of fortified encampments located near it. Some of them were large enough to accommodate large armies, and it is almost sure that they acted as the launching point for Pērōz’s campaigns in the East, against the Kidarites and Hephthalites. Joshua the Stylite also supports Priscus’ account (minus the tale about the false bride):

Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite, VII:

Even in our days Pērōz, the king of the Persians, because of the wars that he had with the Kūshānāyē or Huns, very often received money from the Greeks, not however demanding it as tribute, but exciting their religious zeal, as if he was carrying on his contests on their behalf, “that,” said he, “ they may not pass over into your territory”. What made these words of his find credence was the devastation and depopulation which the Huns wrought in the Greek territory in the year 707 (of the Seleucid Era, 395-396 CE), in the days of the emperors Honorius and Arcadius, the sons of Theodosius the Great, when all Syria was delivered into their hands by the treachery of the prefect Rufinus and the supineness of the general Addai.

Notice how the author of this Chronicle (it is uncertain if it was Joshua or not, as it is sometimes referred to as “Chronicle of the Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite”) takes care to underline that the money paid by the Eastern Romans to Pērōz was not tribute, but a precautious measure of self-defense. Joshua also describes Pērōz’s enemies as “Kušāns”, as the Armenian sources do (Armenian and Syriac sources usually employed this term to refer to the Kidarites) but he also describes them as Huns, and links them up with the 395 CE Hunnic incursion through the Caucasus that apparently left a very harsh impression in the Roman eastern provinces.

Map of Lazica in Late Antiquity. Notice the location of Suania to its northeast.

While the Sasanian Empire had all its attention centered in the East, the Romans got embroiled in a conflict in the Caucasus that, had the Sasanians not been so distracted in Central Asia, could easily have degenerated into a war between both empires. The area of conflict was Lazica (also called Colchis by the ancient Greeks), which was the only territory of the southern Caucasus that was not under Caucasian control. It corresponds roughly with the western half of the modern Republic of Georgia and the territory of Abkhazia. The Romans went to great pains to keep this remote corner of land out of Sasanian control in order to deny their foes a naval base in the Black Sea that could have turned into a direct menace for Constantinople. In the 460s CE, the small (but strategically important) kingdom of Suania succeeded in breaking away from Lazic control, an event which was to have repercussions in negotiations between Rome and Persia a century later. There were stirrings too in Sasanian-controlled Armenia, where Vahan Mamikonian, nephew of the rebel leader of 450-451 CE, sought help from the Romans. Although emperor Leo I agreed to lend his support, none was forthcoming. In the VI c. CE, Lazica would figure as one of the main objects of dispute between Romans and Sasanians. We know about this localized conflict thanks to Priscus of Panion:

Priscus of Panion, Fragment 25, from the Excerpts on Romans’ Embassies to Foreigners of Constantine VII Porphyrogenites:

After the Romans went to Kolchis and fought the Lazi, the Roman army returned to their stations and the emperor’s retainers began preparing for another campaign. They debated whether they would initiate the war by taking the same road or the road through Armenia that borders Persia if they could first prevail upon the Parthian monarch with an embassy. They thought it was completely impracticable to sail along the difficult coast since Kolchis lacks a harbor. Gobazes himself sent ambassadors to the Parthians, and also sent ambassadors to the Roman emperor. The Parthian monarch, since he was fighting a war against the so-called Kidarite Huns, turned away the Lazi who were fleeing to him.

Priscus offers no chronological frame for this fragment, except that it happened during the reign of Marcian (450-457 CE), as we will see later, so it should be dated to the very end of the reign of Yazdegerd II (more on this below). Notice how Gobazes, the king of Lazica, tried to get the Sasanians to intervene, but they refused due to their ongoing war against the Kidarites.

Priscus of Panion, Fragment 26, from the Excerpts on Foreigners’ Embassies to the Romans of Constantine VII Porphyrogenites:

Gobazes sent ambassadors to the Romans. The Romans replied to the ambassadors sent by Gobazes that they would refrain from war if Gobazes himself gave up his power or at least if he deprived his son of the kingship. It violated longstanding law, they said, for both men to govern the land. So Euphemios, who held the office of magister, proposed that one of them rule Kolchis, Gobazes or his son, and that the war be resolved like that. Euphemios, who was admired for his intelligence and rhetorical excellence, managed Emperor Marcian’s affairs and guided him through many good deliberations. He also took Priscus the historian to share in the concerns of his office.
Given the choice, Gobazes chose to hand over the kingship to his son and give up the symbols of his power. He sent messengers to the Roman ruler to ask that, now that only one Kolchian was governing, he no longer took up arms in anger against him. The emperor ordered him to cross into Roman territory and to give an account of his decisions. He did not refuse the meeting, but he asked him to give Dionysios, the man long ago sent to Kolchis to negotiate with Gobazes, as a pledge that he would do nothing irreversible. Therefore Dionysios was sent to Kolchis and they came to terms over the disputes. Marcian’s ability to send his major ambassadors to minor hotspots perhaps indicates the sense of relief the Romans experienced after the death of Attila. With the Hunnic Empire quickly dissolving, attention could be turned elsewhere. The same was true in the West. There, though, instead of focusing on the many pressing problems such as the Franks’ continuing immigration or the Vandals’ hold on North Africa, attention turned inward and became dissension.

And there is still a third fragment covering this minor episode:

Priscus of Panion, Fragment 34, from the Excerpts on Foreigners’ Embassies to the Romans of Constantine VII Porphyrogenites:

After the city was burned in the time of Leo, Gobazes came with Dionysios to Constantinople wearing Persian dress and attended by bodyguards in the Median manner. When the courtiers received him, at first they censured his rebellion, but then sent him away cordially because he captivated them with his flattering words and by wearing Christian tokens.

The conflict in Lazica began under Marcian and ended under Leo I; the transition between one emperor and the other happened in 457 CE, the same year of Yazdegerd II’s death, so this final fragment should be probably allocated to the reign of Pērōz (during the civil war against Hormazd III). Some scholars think that Gobazes’ Persian dress may be significant. As Priscus stated earlier, the Lazi had rebelled against their status as a Roman client kingdom and had asked for Sasanian help. The Sasanian court refused at first, but the “Persian dress” and protocol (i.e. the “Median guard”) displayed by Gobazes could hint at a Sasanian acceptance of Gobazes’ offer, so that he now enjoyed some degree of “protection” from Pērōz, although this would push this trip of Gobazes to Constantinople quite forward in time, until Pērōz had achieved final success against the Kidarites, as it seems quite unlikely that otherwise the Sasanians would have risked a war against the Eastern Romans while they were still fighting in Central Asia. The end result of these disputes between the Suani and their traditional overlords, the Lazi, was thus that the latter were brought into alignment with the Sasanians, while the former retained their independence and their loyalty to the Romans.

Landscape of the Caucasus Mountains in the modern region of Svaneti in the Republic of Georgia, which corresponds roughly to ancient Suania.

Although Ełišē and Łazar P’arpec’i did not mention anything about a war between Pērōz and the Kidarites, some scholars see in their accounts of events a hint of that conflict. As we have seen in a previous post, the Armenian rebel nobles were liberated and sent to Herāt on the sixth regnal year of Pērōz, and this would have to bee seen in the context of the Sasanian war against the Kidarites. According to the German historian Andreas Luther, this conflict may have begun in 457 CE and would have lasted until 462-463 CE, and according to this chronology Luther proposed to date the agreement between Pērōz and “Kunkhas” to 462 CE, kept the date for Constantius’ embassy to 464-465 CE and proposed that a new Sasanian defeat would happen in 465 CE, which would lead to the captivity of Pērōz’s son Kawād in 465-467 CE (we’ll talk about this later). It is also interesting to notice that in his 1997 translation of the Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite, Luther read Kyonāye (i.e. Chionites) instead of Kūshānāyē, although Luther’s reading is not accepted by everybody, and the old reading by Wright is still accepted. The most accepted view nowadays is that the final war between Kidarites and Sasanians began (or rather restarted) after Kunkhas’ “revenge” and carried on until 467/468 CE, and ended with a total victory by Pērōz, who destroyed the Kidarite empire.

Priscus of Panion, Fragment 41, from the Excerpts on Foreigners’ Embassies to the Romans of Constantine VII Porphyrogenites:

As the Romans’ and Lazi’s dispute with the Souani was very great and the Souani vehemently fought against […], and as the Persians wished to make war on him because of the fortresses that had been taken away [by] the Souani, he sent an embassy, asking the emperor to send him reinforcements from among the soldiers who were guarding the boundaries of the Armenians who paid tribute to the Romans. Since they were near, he said, he would thereby have ready assistance and not be in peril while anxiously awaiting men coming from afar. Moreover, since they were close, he would not be beset by their expenses if by chance the war were delayed, as had happened before. When Herakleios had come with help against the Persians and the Iberians who were making war on him, he became preoccupied in fighting other nations and dismissed his allies because of the burden of supplying their provisions. So when the Parthians turned their sights toward them, he called in the Romans again.
After they promised to send help and a commander, a Persian embassy also arrived, announcing that they had defeated the Kidarite Huns and had forced their city Balaam to surrender. They publicized the victory and boasted about it in barbarian fashion, wishing to demonstrate how much power they had at the time, but the emperor dismissed them as soon as the news was announced, since he was deep in thought about Sicilian events.

This fragment is key and is the one that is the main proof for modern historians about the fate of the Kidarites. Based on the other events described in this fragments in the Caucasus and in Sicily (which had been occupied by the Vandals), it has been dated securely to 467-468 CE. And it is usually assumed that the city Balaam (Βαλαάμ) refers to Balḵ, the capital city of Ṭoḵārestān, but there are doubts about it. Some scholars, like János Harmatta, Evgeniy V. Zeimal or Frantz Grenet, identified it with Balḵ. But others (like Josef Marquart and Geoffrey Greatrex) have identified it with the Balxān province in western Turkmenistan, on the shore of the Caspian Sea. And still Andreas Luther located it near Marw. The option that Balaam is not identical with Balḵ was also supported by Kazuo Enoki, as he thought that by this time the Hephthalites would have already pushed the Kidarites out of Ṭoḵārestān. But there are powerful reasons to identify it with Balk. The place of Igdy Kala, that the scholars mentioned above would have been the Kidarite capital in Balxān seems to have been actually just a fort built and occupied during the Arsacid era (see the chapter about Khwārazm in the second thread). Another problem is the identification of Priscus’ Balaam with the Boluo quoted in Chinese sources, which is said to be a Kidarite city and which has been identified with Balk, Balxān or a city to the west of Bāmīān by some historians.

Scyphate dinar of Pērōz minted in Balḵ.

This Sasanian victory has been also associated with a coin and a seal by Pērōz. The coin is a rare gold issue minted in Balḵ, following the Kušān and Kidarite model of scythed dinars. In this coin, Pērōz is depicted with his second crown and with a legend in Bactrian that reads “Pērōz, king of kings”. This second crown by Pērōz is the one that Pērōz began to display after his victory against Hormazd III, and which he would keep until 474 CE, when Pērōz was defeated by the Hephthalites and the mint of Balḵ was captured by them.

Pērōz announced his victory far and wide. For starters, he started displaying again in his great seal the legend Šahān Šāh Ērān ud Anērān that had been abandoned by the Sasanian kings after Šābuhr III’s reign, signaling that he had finally managed to reassert Sasanian rule over the lands of Anērān. And just as he had sent an embassy to Constantinople to announce his victory, he also sent embassies to China. Sasanian diplomacy had been very active in Chine during this final stage of the war against the Kidarites; there had been Sasanian embassies (embassies from Bosi, as the Chinese called Iran) to the Northern Wei in 455 and 461 CE, but Pērōz sent two more embassies, very close in time, to the court of emperor Xianwen of Wei (465-471 CE) in Pingcheng, in 466 and 468 CE. The second one probably announced the final Sasanian victory to the Wei.

Joshua the Stylite confirms the Sasanian victory, although he adds more details:

Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite, X-XI:

By the help of the money which he received from the Greeks, Pērōz subdued the Huns, and took many places from their land and added them to his own kingdom; but at last he was taken prisoner by them. When Zenon, the emperor of the Greeks, heard this, he sent money of his own and freed him, and reconciled him with them. Pērōz made a treaty with the Huns that he would not again cross the boundary of their territory to make war with them ; but he went back from and broke his covenant, like Zedekiah, and went to war, and like him he was delivered into the hands of his enemies, and all his army was destroyed and dispersed, and he himself was taken alive. He promised in his pride that he would give for the safety of his life thirty mules laden with silver coin|; and he sent to his country over which he ruled, but he could hardly collect twenty loads, for by his former wars he had completely emptied the treasury of the king who preceded him. Instead therefore of the other ten loads, he placed with them as a pledge and hostage his son Kawād, until he should send them, and he made an agreement with them for the second time that he would not again go to war.
When he returned to his kingdom, he imposed a poll- tax on his whole country, and sent the ten loads of silver coin, and delivered his son. But he again collected an army and went to war; and the word of the Prophet was in very reality fulfilled regarding him, who says, “I saw the wicked uplifted like the trees of the forest, but when I passed by he was not, and I sought him but did not find him”. For when a battle took place, and the two hosts were mingled together in confusion, his whole force was destroyed, and he himself was sought but not found; nor to the present day is it known what became of him, whether he was buried under the bodies of the slain, or threw himself into the sea, or hid himself in a cave underground and perished of hunger, or concealed himself in a wood and was devoured by wild beasts.

According to this second account, Pērōz was first defeated by the Kidarites, had to leave his son Kawād as a hostage, he released him and then he went to war again, obtaining victory. This first defeat could be the one mentioned above in Luther’s proposed chronology, also accepted by other scholars like Nikolaus Schinkel. It’s within the frame of the sustained Sasanian pressure by Yazdegerd II and Pērōz (almost continuous state of war between 442 and 467-468 CE) that Frantz Grenet and Étienne de la Vaissière proposed to situate the great construction and fortification effort of the Kidarites in Sogdiana (which Grenet dated to the period 440-470 CE), as well as the arrival of Bactrian influences in Sogdiana, that both French historians see as “refugees” fleeing Ṭoḵārestān, which was apparently the main theater of war. Also it’s within this context that we should see the appearance of the Hephthalites in eastern Ṭoḵārestān; in 456 CE they were already noticeable enough to send an embassy to the Northern Wei, and if we are to believe the Perso-Arabic sources, strong enough to intervene in the Sasanian war of succession in 457-459 CE. It is also within this context that we should understand the “Indian episode” of the war between the Gupta emperor Skandagupta (r. 455-468 CE) and the Huns, which should be probably dated to the early to middle 450s, after Yazdegerd II’s defeat in 453 CE, but which could have failed (among other reasons) by the emergence of the Hephthalites in eastern Ṭoḵārestān, which, together with the renewed Sasanian pressure after Pērōz defeated his brother Hormazd III. I’m also unsure about what would have been the situation in Ṭoḵārestān after Pērōz’s conquest of Balḵ in 467-468 CE. This conquest is certain, because Pērōz minted coins there: gold dinars in Kushano-Sasanian style, describing himself in the legends as “Great Kušān King”, but I am not so certain about the status of the rest of the country. It is usually assumed by historians that most of the Kidarite territory was overtaken by the Hephthalites, but as we have seen still in 474-475 CE the king of Kadagstān called himself “the governor” of Pērōz, and Kadagstān is located quite to the east of Balḵ, so it seems that at least south of the Āmu Daryā the Hephthalites (in the aftermath of Pērōz’s victory in 467-468 CE) may have controlled little more than what I described above: Kondūz, Badaḵšān and perhaps the Kābolestān (Čaḡānīān is located north of the river). Historians also write about an alliance between Pērōz and the Kidarites, but this is not actually attested anywhere, it is only an extrapolation from the fact that allegedly they may have helped him defeat his brother in 457-459 CE. It is of course possible that both the Šahān Šāh and the Hephthalites were waging war against the Kidarites at the same time but having a firm alliance between them is another matter altogether.

Seal of the Sasanian king Pērōz, wearing his third crown.

As we have seen though, the defeat in 467-468 CE did not represent the end of the Kidarites. They ceased being an empire and a threat to Ērānšahr, but some Kidarite-ruled territories remained in existence in northern India, in Jilin, from where they still sent an embassy to the Wei in 477 CE. Kazuo Enoki thought that Jilin referred to Swāt or the Punjāb, but Xiang Wan thinks that it refers to Kashmir. These embassies are recorded in the Weishu as having been sent by Jiduoluo, which was the Chinese transcription of Kidāra, so there’s little doubt about their political adscription. The case of Sogdiana is more complicated. Several embassies from Sute (Sogdiana) to the Northern Wei are recorded in the Weishu in 435-479 CE, and Xiwanjin (Samarkand) sent embassies in 473-509 CE, from this late date onwards such embassies change and start to describe themselves as Hephthalite. The interpretation of this phenomenon is disputed. Kazuo Enoki thought that the Hephthalites had already occupied Sogdiana between 473 and 479 CE, but that there was freedom to send embassies to China without the compulsion of acknowledging Hephthalite rule, but Shoshin Kuwayama thought that this may show that Samarkand did not fall to the Hephthalites until 509 CE, and that the time elapsed between the first Hephthalite embassy to the Wei (456 CE) and the second one (507 CE) represents the time the Hephthalites spent at war in Ṭoḵārestān and Sogdiana against the Sasanians and Kidarite resistance.

Khodadad Rezakhani also thinks that a Kidarite kingdom may have survived in Sogdiana, possibly in the area of Osrušana. The legend on the famous Kidarite seal found near Samarkand reads:

Lord Ularg the King of the Huns, the Great Kušān Šāh, the Afšiyan of Samarkand.

The title of Afšiyan is a rendition of the well-known Islamic title of Afšin, for kings of Osrušana is akin to other titles from the region originating from Old Iranian *xšaita-, which also renders MP Šāh. The seal thus shows the position of a king of the Huns, with claims to the position of Kušān Šāh, living in Samarkand, a situation that matches well our other evidence for the presence of the Kidarites in Sogdiana. However, Rezakhani thinks that we should not assume that the Kidarite presence in eastern Sogdiana disappeared quickly after their demise in Ṭoḵārestān. Indeed, centuries later, in the early IX c. CE, the local king of Osrušana and the Abbasid general Al-Afšīn bore the personal name of Khydhar (Ṭabarī IX.11), which was sometimes transcribed as Haydar in Arabic (as in Dīnawarī) but was specified as Khydhar by later writers as well, while at least one source has the form Kydr. The name Kydr seems to have indeed been a popular one among the people of Osrušana, as several characters bearing it, including a certain Kydr ibn ‘Abd-Allāh al-Osrušanī, are mentioned in the Islamic sources like Ṭabarī or Ya’qūbī. This might also be related to the Afšun, Khuv of Khāhsar who is mentioned on one of the documents from the Moḡ Mountain as the addressee of a rather unhappy letter from 722 CE by Dēwāštič, the ruler of Panjikant and the last opponent of the Muslim conquest of Sogdiana.

Compilation of the crowns worn by Sasanian kings as shown in their iconography. From “The Cambridge History of Iran, Volume 3: The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian periods (Part 1)”. Collection of essays from several authors, edited by Ehsan Yarshater.

 

[Semper Victor]

5. THE SASANIANS AND THE HEPHTHALITES.

5.1 THE SARAGUR INCURSION AND THE FIRST HEPHTHALITE WAR.


Pērōz was not able to rest on his laurels, because in 467-468 CE, the Saragurs, a Turkic Oghuric tribe recently arrived at the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, invaded again his empire through the Caucasian passes:

Priscus of Panium, Fragment 30.5, from the Excerpts on Foreigners’ Embassies to the Romans of Constantine VII Porphyrogenites:

At that time embassies were sent to the Eastern Romans by the Saragouri, Ourogi and Onogouri, nations that had emigrated from their own abodes. The Sabiri had attacked them after they were driven out by the Avars, who had themselves been displaced by the nations inhabiting the coastal headland. So too the Saragouri, driven to search for land, came near the Akateri Huns and after repeatedly engaging them in battle, prevailed against the tribe and reached the Romans, whose kindness they wished to obtain. The emperor and his courtiers showed them favor and gave them gifts before sending them away.

Priscus of Panium, Fragment 37, from the Excerpts on Foreigners’ Embassies to the Romans of Constantine VII Porphyrogenites:

The Saragouri marched against the Persians after they attacked the Akateri and other nations. When they reached the Caspian Gates and found the Persian fortress there, they turned to another road. When they came to the Iberians, they ravaged their country and also overran Armenian lands. As a result, the Persians, who feared this incursion would be added to the war against the Kidarites which they had been fighting for a long time, sent ambassadors to the Romans and asked them to give money or men for garrisoning the fortress called Iouroeipaach. They said what they often said on these embassies: because they were submitting to battles and not allowing the looming barbarian nations to pass through, the Romans’ territory remained unravaged (…)
The Romans responded that each man must protect his own property by fighting on behalf of his own land, and so they went back without accomplishment.

The first fragment by Priscus makes reference to the arrival into the Pontic-Caspian Steppe of the Turkic Oghuric tribes (Saragurs, Onoğurs, and Urogi/Oğur), who sent embassies to the court of Constantinople in 463 CE. There, the ambassadors explained their provenance to the Eastern Romans: they had been displaced from their homeland (presumably in the central part of the Eurasian Steppe, in what is now Kazakhstan) by the Sabirs, another Turkic people (probably of Xianbei origin) who had moved west after having been attacked by the Rouran (possibly the Avars). Upon their arrival, the Saragurs clashed against the Akatziri Huns and defeated them, after which they presumably settled in the northern Caucasus Steppe and launched an incursion against the Caucasian border of Ērānšahr. As we have seen in a previous post, the Korean historian Hyun Jin Kim thinks that these Oghuric tribes were of Hunnic stock, a part of the original Hunnic people who had remained in the Kazakh Steppe after other parts of their people had moved to the west and south, and that they underwent a process of “mixture” with the western Huns that lived in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe to form the Bulgar Huns of later centuries.

The Turkic term oğuz or oğur is a historical term for "military division, clan, or tribe" among the Turkic peoples. Modern scholars consider Turkic tribal terms oğuz and oğur to be derived from Turkic *og/uq, meaning "kinship or being akin to". The name Onoğur is most often derived as On-Oğur "ten Oğurs (tribes)". According to Denis Sinor, Saragur or Šara-Oğur means "yellow" or "white" tribe and can even be translated as "western" tribe (once again, according to the color code customary in Inner Asia, as we have seen already with the Huns).

As Priscus explains in part 1 of his Fragment 37, the Saragurs attacked first the Caspian Gates (which in this context can be identified with security as the Pass of Darband) but found them too strongly defended (seems like Yazdegerd II and Pērōz had managed to restore fully the fortifications there after the Armenian rebellion, which caused them to look for another way to cross the Caucasus Mountains. They found it, and the mention that first the raided Iberia and later Armenia means certainly that they crossed by the Pass of Darial. This incursion happened while Pērōz was still fighting the Kidarites, and so he asked the Romans to send men or money to garrison the fortress of Darial (and incidentally, this means that “the fortress called Iouroeipaach” was the fortress guarding the Darial Pass).

After this first part of the fragment, there is some text missing, and it ends with two lines that explain that the court of Constantinople sent the Sasanian ambassadors back empty handed and told them to guard their own country better. As you can see, not much time earlier at the start of his reign Pērōz had sent another embassy to Constantinople with the same request. These embassies signal a sustained increase in the Sasanian demands for money to the Eastern Roman Empire, which became increasingly reticent to accede to the Sasanian pressure. In the long run, this would cause diplomatic relations between both empires to sour and would pave the way for a return to the historic hostility in the VI c. CE.

This Sasanian embassy to Constantinople is dated to 467 CE, so Pērōz must have been really close to achieving his final victory against the Kidarites, and so understandably he did not want to distract resources from the fight in Central Asia. We do not know how the incursion ended, and after this mentions the Saragurs disappear from the existing sources, they are only mentioned again in a passage of the Chronicle of the Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor dated to 555 CE, in a context that modern historians consider clearly anachronistic; as it is most possible that by this date the Saragurs had disappeared as a people and had integrated into the Bulgar Huns (i.e. the Utigurs and Kutrigurs).

This incursion was not the only problem in the Caucasus that Pērōz had to face at this crucial date, because the conflict between Lazica and Suania also ended up involving the Sasanian Empire:

Priscus of Panium, Fragment 41, from the Excerpts on Foreigners’ Embassies to the Romans of Constantine VII Porphyrogenites:

(1) As the Romans’ and Lazi’s dispute with the Souani was very great and the Souani vehemently fought against (…) and as the Persians wished to make war on him because of the fortresses that had been taken away [by] the Souani, he sent an embassy, asking the emperor to send him reinforcements from among the soldiers who were guarding the boundaries of the Armenians who paid tribute to the Romans. Since they were near, he said, he would thereby have ready assistance and not be in peril while anxiously awaiting men coming from afar. Moreover, since they were close, he would not be beset by their expenses if by chance the war were delayed, as had happened before.
(2) When Herakleios had come with help against the Persians and the Iberians who were making war on him, he became preoccupied in fighting other nations and dismissed his allies because of the burden of supplying their provisions. So when the Parthians turned their sights toward them, he called in the Romans again.
(3) After they promised to send help and a commander, a Persian embassy also arrived, announcing that they had defeated the Kidarite Huns and had forced their city Balaam to surrender. They publicized the victory and boasted about it in barbarian fashion, wishing to demonstrate how much power they had at the time, but the emperor dismissed them as soon as the news was announced, since he was deep in thought about Sicilian events.

The late Roman fortifications at Archaeopolis, the capital of Lazica (modern Nokalakevi, in Georgia).

What can be reconstructed from Priscus’ several fragments about this conflict (see also my previous post for more information on this subject) does not make much sense, because of the corruption and emendation of the original text during its transmission and because the fragments came from several sources (mostly from the later compendia on embassies by the X c. CE Byzantine emperor Constantine VII) and are quoted out of context and without chronological order. If we assume (as most scholars do) that this fragment is indeed chronologically later in time than the ones I have posted before, the situation seems to have changed here. Apparently, the Suani (who had rebelled against their Lazi overlords) had captured some fortresses who belonged to the Lazi, or perhaps to the Sasanians (notice that a key fragment of text is missing in that sentence), and that because of this and because of a threat of Sasanian intervention, the Lazi king (Gobazes I) asked for Roman help, and the court of Constantinople sent some forces from the army deployed on the Armenian border, commanded by a certain Herakleios. Then he sent the Romans away because of the high cost of supplying them, and finally he had to recall them again. These events can be dated with considerable security to 467/468 CE (or a little later), because the third part of the fragment quotes the arrival of Pērōz’s embassy to Constantinople announcing his final victory against the Kidarites.

If we assume that the situation remained thus, this signaled an increase in Sasanian control of the Caucasus, with Lazica returning to the Roman orbit and the breakaway territory of Suania allying itself with the Sasanians. If things did indeed happen this way, then the Sasanians at this point may have been in control of almost all of the Greater Caucasus Range, from the shore of the Caspian Sea to very near the shores of the Black Sea, which would have been a poisoned victory for Pērōz, for now the Sasanians would have been responsible to defend all the mountain passes against the dangerous northern peoples, and not only the ones in the central and eastern parts of the mountains.

Apparently, the K’art’lis C’xovreba (Georgian Chronicle) also includes this episode, although with an extremely confused chronology, and without mentioning Suania. According to this text when king Vakhtang of Iberia, who was 22 years old at the time (so, it must have been 461 CE), was informed about the events, he summons the other Caucasian kings, and his army, together with the Armenians (under Sasanian control) and Sasanian forces invade the Pontic territory, although Vakhtang himself does not take part in the events. This army is defeated and the king of the Leks, Ipaǰaǰ, dies in the fight. Then Vakhtang decides to take part directly in the conflict, defeats the “Greeks” and settles a new border with them. But this fragment is quite dubious because the settlement of these borders is dated usually to the end of the Armenian and Iberian rebellion of 482-484 CE.

Pērōz would not enjoy his victory for long. In 474, war broke out again in the East, this time against his (alleged) old allies the Hephthalites:

Procopius of Caesarea, History of the Wars, Book I (The Persian War), III:

At a later time the Persian King Perozes became involved in a war concerning boundaries with the nation of the Hephthalite Huns, who are called White Huns, gathered an imposing army, and marched against them. The Hephthalites are of the stock of the Huns in fact as well as in name; however they do not mingle with any of the Huns known to us, for they occupy a land neither adjoining nor even very near to them; but their territory lies immediately to the north of Persia; indeed their city, called Gorgo, is located over against the Persian frontier, and is consequently the center of frequent contests concerning boundary lines between the two peoples. For they are not nomads like the other Hunnic peoples, but for a long period have been established in a goodly land. As a result of this they have never made any incursion into the Roman territory except in company with the Median army. They are the only ones among the Huns who have white bodies and countenances which are not ugly. It is also true that their manner of living is unlike that of their kinsmen, nor do they live a savage life as they do; but they are ruled by one king, and since they possess a lawful constitution, they observe right and justice in their dealings both with one another and with their neighbors, in no degree less than the Romans and the Persians. Moreover, the wealthy citizens are in the habit of attaching to themselves friends to the number of twenty or more, as the case may be, and these become permanently their banquet-companions, and have a share in all their property, enjoying some kind of a common right in this matter. Then, when the man who has gathered such a company together comes to die, it is the custom that all these men be borne alive into the tomb with him.
Perozes, marching against these Hephthalites, was accompanied by an ambassador, Eusebius by name, who, as it happened, had been sent to his court by the Emperor Zeno. Now the Hephthalites made it appear to their enemy that they had turned to flight because they were wholly terrified by their attack, and they retired with all speed to a place which was shut in on every side by precipitous mountains, and abundantly screened by a close forest of wide-spreading trees. Now as one advanced between the mountains to a great distance, a broad way appeared in the valley, extending apparently to an indefinite distance, but at the end it had no outlet at all, but terminated in the very midst of the circle of mountains. So Perozes, with no thought at all of treachery, and forgetting that he was marching in a hostile country, continued the pursuit without the least caution. A small body of the Huns were in flight before him, while the greater part of their force, by concealing themselves in the rough country, got in the rear of the hostile army; but as yet they desired not to be seen by them, in order that they might advance well into the trap and get as far as possible in among the mountains, and thus be no longer able to turn back. When the Medes began to realize all this (for they now began to have a glimmering of their peril), though they refrained from speaking of the situation themselves through fear of Perozes, yet they earnestly entreated Eusebius to urge upon the king, who was completely ignorant of his own plight, that he should take counsel rather than make an untimely display of daring, and consider well whether there was any way of safety open to them. So he went before Perozes, but by no means revealed the calamity which was upon them; instead he began with a fable, telling how a lion once happened upon a goat bound down and bleating on a mound of no very great height, and how the lion, bent upon making a feast of the goat, rushed forward with intent to seize him, but fell into a trench exceedingly deep, in which was a circular path, narrow and endless (for it had no outlet anywhere), which indeed the owners of the goat had constructed for this very purpose, and they had placed the goat above it to be a bait for the lion. When Perozes heard this, a fear came over him lest perchance the Medes had brought harm upon themselves by their pursuit of the enemy. He therefore advanced no further, but, remaining where he was, began to consider the situation. By this time, the Huns were following him without any concealment and were guarding the entrance of the place in order that their enemy might no longer be able to withdraw to the rear. Then at last the Persians saw clearly in what straits they were, and they felt that the situation was desperate; for they had no hope that they would ever escape from the peril. Then the king of the Hephthalites sent some of his followers to Perozes; he upbraided him at length for his senseless foolhardiness, by which he had wantonly destroyed both himself and the Persian people, but he announced that even so the Huns would grant them deliverance, if Perozes should consent to prostrate himself before him as having proved himself master, and, taking the oaths traditional among the Persians, should give pledges that they would never again take the field against the nation of the Hephthalites. When Perozes heard this, he held a consultation with the Magi who were present and enquired of them whether he must comply with the terms dictated by the enemy. The Magi replied that, as to the oath, he should settle the matter according to his own pleasure; as for the rest, however, he should circumvent his enemy by craft. And they reminded him that it was the custom among the Persians to prostrate themselves before the rising sun each day; he should, therefore, watch the time closely and meet the leader of the Hephthalites at dawn, and then, turning toward the rising sun, make his obeisance. In this way, they explained, he would be able in the future to escape the ignominy of the deed. Perozes accordingly gave the pledges concerning the peace and prostrated himself before his foe exactly as the Magi had suggested, and so, with the whole Median army intact, gladly retired homeward.

Procopius is our main source for the conflicts between Pērōz and the Hephthalites, that he included in his work about the wars led by the Roman emperor Justinian I as a sort of introduction before he tackled the events that happened under this emperor. Photius I of Constantinople (IX c. CE), Theophanes the Confessor (IX c. CE) and Nicephorus Callistus (ca. 1256–ca. 1335 CE) have also left us short epitomes of these events using Procopius as their source. Other independent sources are as follows:

Chronicle of Joshua the Stylite, X:

By the help of the money which he received from the Greeks, Peroz subdued the Huns, and took many places from their land and added them to his own kingdom; but at last he was taken prisoner by them. When Zenon, the emperor of the Greeks, heard this, he sent money of his own and freed him, and reconciled him with them. Peroz made a treaty with the Huns that he would not again cross the boundary of their territory to make war with them (…)

The Pseudo-Joshua the Stylite is a Syriac source close in time to the events (perhaps even closer than Procopius) and as you see gives a version quite similar to Procopius. But the K’art’lis C’xovreba offers a quite different and convoluted account, as is usual in this source. The Iberian king at this time was one of the kings most exalted in Georgian history, Vakht’ang Gorgasali, and the account of his reign is lengthy and full of legendary material and many anachronisms, superimposed upon a core or authentic material. It is attributed to the chronicler Juansher Juansheriani and given the fact that it refers to the northern nomads systematically at “Khazars”, it must be dated to the VIII-X c. CE, at least three hundred years after the events.

As the account is quite long and confused, instead of quoting it I will be offering a summary. According to this source, the Sasanian king (which this source names erroneously as Khosrov), taking advantage of the good relations after a (supposed) peace with Vakht’ang, asks for his help in the war against his enemies:

Now I have one request to you: marry your sister to me and come to visit my native land,to see your relatives and to be an aid for me against my adversaries – the Abashs and Elamits, the Hinds and the Sinds, for they dared to commit an evil deed, and they humiliated my throne.

In the first place, they attacked the land of Jorjaneti and conquered it, settling “Persians” in there after their victory. Then they went to the land of India (Hind) and fought there for three four years. They were unable to take the fortified cities, but they won the field battles, so at last the king of India offered tribute to the “Persian” king and then they went to the land of the Sinds. Here, the “Persian” soldiers are overpowered by their enemies, except for the brave Georgian warriors. Then the king of Sind decided to try a ruse against Vakht’ang:

And then one night the Sindian King dug out a pit in the field by the town’s gates to disguise his horsemen, and making artful exits from the pit, placed ten select men there. Early in the morning he sent one knight out. That day it was Vakht’ang’s turn to keep guard at the gate. The knight came out and challenged him to a fight, wishing to draw him into the trap and deliver him to the hidden horsemen. Then Saurmag, Vakht’ang’s master of ceremonies, stepped up and said: “You are not worthy to fight with a King, I will fight with you, a slave with a slave,” and rushed at him. But the Sind fled, and Saurmag, as was his way, begun to pursue him, for more than once he had fought in the field. As he passed the horsemen hidden in ambush, they pounced on him at once. The pursued Sind turned suddenly to meet him. Saurmag struck him dead with his spear, but the other ten knights killed Saurmag.

Then there is finally a duel between the king of Sind and Vakht’ang, that is won by the Georgian king. Following Vakht’ang wise advice, the “Persian” king heals the king of Sind and frees him, and then he becomes his tributary. The end of the war, is dispatched in quite a summary way:

Then the King of the Sinds, feeling a great fondness for Vakht’ang, made friends with him, because, in the first place, when he fell at the hands of Vakht’ang, the latter did not kill him but brought him alive to the King of Persia; then thanks to Vakht’ang he was freed from captivity. He gave Vakht’ang great and incomparable gifts. And they left Sindia the fourth year after they had invaded, and the Sindian towns – Sindas, Topori and K’imrai – remained intact.

From there they went to Abasheti. The Abashs were living in a country surrounded by waters and reeds; ships could not sail there; beasts did not prowl. The Abashs bordered Persia and were in a state of prolonged war with the country. However, the Persians changed the course of the waters, burned the reeds, and captured the entire Abasheti. And the Persian King divided the Abashs lands into two parts: in one half he left the people in place and the other, about one thousand households, he took with him and settled in different places. The Kurds are descendants of the captured Abashs.

According to the K’art’lis C’xovreba, the whole enterprise took Vakht’ang and the “Persian” king eight years. After the Greek and Georgia sources, we have of course the Perso-Arabic tradition, with the main source being Ṭabarī:

Ṭabarī, History of the Prophets and Kings; The Kings of the Persians and the Kings of al-Ḥīra:

When Fayrūz's land had revived and his kingly rule there was firmly established, when he had inflicted condign violence on his enemies and subdued them, and when he had completed the building of these three towns, he set off with his army for Khurāsān, with the aim of making war on Akhshunwār, king of the Hephthalites. When news of this reached Akhshunwār, he was stricken with terror. It is mentioned that one of Akhshunwār's retainers offered up his life for him and told him, "Cut off my hands and feet and hurl me down in Fayrūz's way; but look after my children and family". He intended by this, so it has been mentioned, to trick Fayrūz. Akhshunwār did this to the man and threw him down in Fayrūz's way. When Fayrūz passed by him, he was distressed at the man's state, and asked him what had happened to him. The man informed him that Akhshunwār had done that to him because he had told Akhshunwār that he would be unable to stand up against the Persian troops. Fayrūz accordingly felt pity and compassion for him and ordered him to be carried with him. The man told Fayrūz, by way of advice, so it is alleged, that he would show him and his followers a short cut, which no one had ever previously used, to get to the king of the Hephthalites. Fayrūz was taken in by this trickery, and he and his troops set off along the route the mutilated man had told him about. They kept on floundering through one desert after another, and whenever they complained of thirst, the man would tell them that they were near to water and had almost crossed the desert. Finally, when the man had brought them to a place where, he knew, they could neither go forward nor back, he revealed to them what he had done. Fayrūz's retainers said to him, "We warned you about this man, O King, but you would not be warned. Now we can only go forward until we encounter the enemy, whatever the circumstances may be". So they pressed ever onward; thirst killed the greater part of them, and Fayrūz went on with the survivors against the enemy. When they contemplated the state to which they had been reduced, they appealed to Akhshunwār for a peace agreement, on the basis that he would allow them freely to return to their homeland, while Fayrūz would promise Akhshunwār, with an oath and an agreement sworn before God, that he would never in the future mount raids against him, covet his territories, or send against him an army to make war on them. Fayrūz further undertook to establish a boundary between the two kingdoms, which he would not cross. Akhshunwār was content with these promises. Fayrūz wrote for him a document, properly sealed and with his obligations guaranteed by professional witnesses. Akhshunwār then allowed him to depart, and he returned home.

Eutychius of Alexandria (IX-X c. CE, contemporary with Ṭabarī), Maqdīsī (X c. CE) and Mīr-Khvānd (XV c. CE) offer accounts that agree with Ṭabarī. Bal’amī (who translated Ṭabarī’s work into New Persian, enlarging it in the process with new material) though offers a slightly different account. According to him, the king of the Hephthalites, who reigned over Balḵ, Ṭoḵārestān, Ġarğestān and other lands, committed “impure acts” and ruled tyrannically, which causes many of his subjects to seek refuge at Pērōz’s court. The Sasanian king warns the Hephthalite monarch to change his ways, but the latter ignores him. Four years later, Pērōz declares war against the Hephthalites. Before the Sasanian army reaches Balk, when they only have “the desert of Marv” to cross, the Hephthalite king gathers a war council to seek advice from his generals. From this point, Bal’amī’s account follows quite a similar path to the one by Ṭabarī, with slight differences. According to Bal’amī, it is a general who asks to be mutilated to trick Pērōz. When the Sasanian king meets him, his army was still at twenty days distance from the Hephthalites, and the mutilated man offered Pērōz to each them in five days. After crossing the desert, the Sasanian army had been reduced to 1,000 men when initially it amounted to 50,000 effectives, and Ḵošnavāz then reproaches his temerity to Pērōz, reproaching him that he had forgotten about Ḵošnavāz’s help to secure the Sasanian throne. Ḵošnavāz then orders a stone tower to be built to mark the border between both kingdoms (in Ṭabarī’s account, that tower had been built by Warahrān V). The construction of the tower lasts six months which Pērōz must spend as a prisoner in the Hephthalite kingdom, and once it is finished, Pērōz must swear a non-aggression oath in the tower, in front of Ḵošnavāz and all his generals and councilors.

Landscape of the province of Bāḏḡīs, in northwestern Afghanistan.

Tha’ālibī also offers a different account: all the kings acknowledged the overlordship of Pērōz, except for Ḵošnavāz, who was based in Balḵ and Ṭoḵārestān. The Sasanian king marched towards Khorasan to attack the Hephthalites, but his scouts got lost in the desert and this caused many loses to the royal army. Finally, Pērōz signed a peace treaty with Ḵošnavāz, in which he swore never to attack him again nor to send his armies to the lands of the Hephthalites.

And lastly, the XII c. CE Christian author Mārī ibn Sulaymān wrote that Pērōz’s expedition was intercepted in the desert by the Hephthalites and fell into a trap prepared by a general “of the king of the Turks” (an obvious anachronism). Then the Sasanians ask the Roman emperor Marcian for help (another anachronism, this time an error in chronology). Marcian then wrote to the king of the Turks asking for Pērōz to be set free, and the Turk king agreed, on the condition that Pērōz would never again attack the Turks.

The fact is that despite all the sources, modern scholars still do not even agree about how many campaigns Pērōz fought against the Hephthalites. The most accepted theory seems to be the one proposed by C.E. Bosworth, according to which there were three campaigns in total, of which the one dealt with in the passages quoted above would be the first one (although it must be said that the only ancient source that states clearly that there were three campaigns is Joshua the Stylite). There is general agreement in identifying the enemies of Pērōz in this campaign as the Hephthalites, but the chronology is unclear. Mainly using numismatics (i.e. the change in the crown displayed by Pērōz in his coinage to its third model), the defeat and capture of Pērōz by the Hephthalites has been dated by N. Sims-Williams, N. Schindel, K. Vondrovec, M. Alram, X. Wan et al. to 474 CE at the latest, although this does not let us know how long did the campaign last. In the sources, there are two chronological references; the first one (although it is not a particularly specific one) appears in the text by Joshua the Stylite, who dates the events to the reign of the Eastern Roman emperor Zeno. Zeno the Isaurian was Eastern Roman emperor from 474 to 475 CE and again from 476 to 491 CE. In January 475 CE, Zeno was forced to flee Constantinople due to a plot orchestrated by empress Verina (the widow of the previous augustus Leo I), the ex-Magister Officiorum Patricius, and Verina’s brother Basiliscus (who was raised to the post of augustus), and several generals of the army. Zeno fled to his native Isauria, and eventually he made a comeback and besieged the capital in August 476 CE. He managed to retake the city after a short siege without bloodshed and executed Basiliscus and all his relatives. This of course does not help us much in this respect. If Pērōz’s defeat happened during Zeno’s first reign (which is not implied in Joshua’s account), that leaves only a relatively short window of time open: from his rise to the purple on 9 February 474 CE to his flight from Constantinople on 9 January 475 (supposing of course that Joshua the Stylite got his chronology right and that he was not using the expression “in the times of Zeno” loosely).

Gold solidus of the Eastern Roman emperor Zeno. On the obverse: D(-ominus) N(-oster) ZENO PERP (-etuus) AVG(-ustus). Reverse: VICTORIA AVGG(-ustorum). Mint of Constantinople.

The second reference is provided by Theophanes the Confessor, who dates Pērōz’s defeat to the year AM (Anno Mundi) 5967, which scholars correlate to the year 474 CE. This is also reinforced by Bal’amī assertion that this defeat took place during the seventeenth year of Pērōz’s reign, which would correspond to 474 CE. Another indirect reference in support of this chronology can be found in the Gallo-Roman author Sidonius Apollinaris, who mentioned in a letter dated to 476 CE that the Sasanians were subjected to a foedus stipendiale, and maybe this could be a reference to the tribute imposed by the Hephthalite king on Pērōz.

Another landscape from Bāḏḡīs. This province is famous for its good pasture lands. During late Sasanian times, Bāḏḡīs was settled by the Hephthalite people of the Kadisheans (the name surviving into early Islamic times as a place name Qādes). There was a Christian population here; in the Synod of Išōʿyab in 588 CE, a bishop of Bāḏḡīs and Qadīšastān, suffragan of the Metropolitan of Herāt, is mentioned.

The motivations for the war vary according to the account. Procopius and most other sources quote border disagreements, while Tha’ālibī quotes the “licentious” and “tyrannical” nature of the Hephthalite king, and Bal’amī his states that the Hephthalite ruler did not acknowledge the overlordship of the Šāhān Šāh.

The mention by Procopius of the presence of a Roman ambassador (Eusebius) accompanying the Sasanian king is important, because this means that the Romans had an eyewitness for the campaign who was the source for an official diplomatic account which in turn was probably the source that Procopius employed for his work almost a century later. This in turn could be put in relation to the references by Joshua the Stylite and Mārī ibn Sulaymān that the Romans paid a rescue to free Pērōz; some modern scholars think that perhaps the court of Constantinople indeed paid a ransom, but not to free Pērōz, but to free Eusebius and his staff.

There also seems to be general agreement in the sources and among modern scholars that these Hephthalites were based in Balḵ, Ṭoḵārestān and Ġarğestān, immediately to the east of the Murghāb River. This adds to the confusion about this conflict. In a previous post, I wrote how Pērōz had probably conquered Balḵ from the Kidarites in 468 CE, and his minting of coins in this city in the style of the ancient Kušāno-Sasanian kings reinforces this possibility. Also, there is a Bactrian document that states that a local Bactrian ruler based in Kadagstān, well to the east of Balḵ, acknowledged his submission to Pērōz in the 460-470s CE. If in 474 CE the Hephthalite king was based in Balḵ, a city that apparently had been conquered by Pērōz six years earlier, this raises a problem:

• Either the Hephthalites had attacked previously and wrestled control of Balḵ and central/western Ṭoḵārestān from the Sasanians sometime between 468 and 474 CE.
• Or Balḵ and most of Ṭoḵārestān was only nominally under Sasanian overlordship, and it was de facto controlled by the Hephthalites, as vassals of Pērōz.

The second possibility would agree with Bal’amī’s account, but the first one with agree with Procopius and many other sources, that quote “border disputes” as the reason for war. Then there is also the obvious problem of the battle itself. Procopius and the Byzantine sources talk specifically about a mountainous environment, but the Perso-Arabic tradition insists that Pērōz’s defeat happened in a desert. Both environments exist in Ṭoḵārestān, but in different parts of the country. There is an extensive desert east of the Murghāb River and west of the Balḵ oasis, limited to the north by the Āmu Daryā and to the south by the Afghan mountains that become the main Hindu Kush Range further to the east. As for mountains, there are so many of them that it is practically impossible to choose one of them. We can make a distinction if we consider that the “ambush” happened east or west of Balḵ, and north or south of the Āmu Daryā.

Based on Procopius’ account, Kazuo Enoki hypothesized that the battle may have happened to the west of Balḵ and well to the south of the Āmu Daryā as he identified the city of Gorgo (said by this Roman author to be the Hephthalite capital and to be located near the Sasanian border) with the Afghan province of Gōr (or Ghōr), located in the upper valley of the Harī River, in north-central Afghanistan, in what is indeed a very mountainous environment, and one with an especially difficult topography. The area is indeed so remote and access so difficult that it was not Islamized until the XII c. CE, when it had been long surrounded by Muslim territories on all sides.

Landscape of the Afghan province of Ghōr.

But Enoki is quite alone in defending this option. Most scholars follow the opinion of Geoffrey Greatrex, who noted that Procopius described Gorgo as a Hephthalite city, but not as their capital, and thought that it would be more probable to identify it with Gorgān, in northeastern Iran. This could be supported by the fact that Pērōz carried out a really massive project of fortification along the Gorgān River between the Kopet Dagh Mountains and the Caspian Sea to protect this city. But personally I have doubts with this identification. Gorgo is called by Procopius a Hephthalite city, and Gorgān was never occupied by them (not even after Pērōz’s final defeat), as the mint of Gorgān minted Sasanian drachms without interruption during the reigns of Pērōz, and his successors Walāxš, Kawād I and Xusrō I.

There is a third possibility that in my opinion should also be considered: that Procopius’ Gorgo may correspond to the city of Gurgānj in Khwārazm (modern Urgench in Uzbekistan), on the lower reaches of the Āmu Daryā. This is supported by A.H.M. Bivar and H. Börm, based on a remark in the work of Łazar P’arpec’i that says that the survivors of Pērōz’s final defeat against the Hephthalites (but not explicitly this expedition) reached Vrkan (Hyrcania, i.e. Gorgān) from another place, and it would be quite logical that this place would be to the north of Gorgān, and so that this place could well be Khwārazm, whose main city was Gurgānj.

Map of the northeastern corner of the Sasanian Empire (Khorasan) and adjacent territories. It corresponds to 600 CE but in it you can see the location of Gorgān, Gurgānj in Khwārazm, Marv, Marw-Rūd, Herat (Harīy in the map) and Dihistān. Bāḏḡīs is located to the southeast of Marw-Rūd and to the northeast of Herāt, on the upper valley of the Murghāb River.

Khwārazm is separated from Gorgān by the Karakum desert, which turns progressively onto dry steppe to the south as it reaches the Kopet Dagh Mountains and the valley of the Gorgān River. This land was called Dihistān (or Dehistān) in Middle Persian, and apparently the Sasanians exerted some sort of suzerainty in there. In her analysis of the administrative divisions of Ērānšahr, based on her study of the bullae of Sasanian officials, numismatist Ryka Gyselen located several cities and districts that could have been presumably located in this are north of Gorgān, and founded during the reigns of Yazdegerd II and Pērōz, who seem to have made an effort to colonize this land area and annex it to their empire. According to medieval Islamic authors like Maqdīsī, there were still 24 settlements populated by Iranian-speaking people in Dihistān the X c. CE. It would seem more logical (at least to me) that there may have been border disputes in this badly delimited area, instead of in Ṭoḵārestān, where after more than half a century of continuous conflict, borders seem to have been quite well delimited.

So, the area in dispute may have been either central Afghanistan (according to Enoki) or the Karakum Desert in eastern Turkmenistan, between Gorgān and Khwārazm. Another thing is the place of the Sasanian defeat. Either a mountainous environment with dense forests or a desert. In this respect, it is impossible to reconcile Procopius’ account with the one by Ṭabarī and other Perso-Arabic sources. Procopius (apart from mentioning Gorgo) says absolutely nothing about the geographical whereabouts of the ambush, while the Perso-Islamic tradition points towards “Khorasan” at large, and some of these sources state that the Hephthalites were based in Ṭoḵārestān, mentioning specifically Balḵ and Ġarğestān. Most modern scholars think that the desert environment quoted in Perso-Arabic sources is the eastern Karakum Desert, between Marv and Balḵ. But I have not found a similar consensus for the mountain environment that appears in Procopius’ account. It could be anywhere in the Afghan mountains, from their westernmost spurs near Marw-Rūd (the Band-e Torkestān Range north of Herāt, the ancient region of Bāḏḡīs, where Hephthalite presence is well attested; and which according to medieval Islamic authors was still a densely forested area, unlike today) all the way to Badaḵšān and the Pamir Plateau. Or if we follow Enoki’s suggestion, it could have been the dense maze of mountains in the modern Afghan province of Gōr, although this was a marginal area at the time.

It is difficult to choose an account over the other. Procopius’ account comes probably from the official report by Eusebius, who was an eyewitness, but it obviously contains embellishments (like the role of Eusebius himself in warning Pērōz). The Perso-Arabic sources are later in time, but they probably rely on official Sasanian records (perhaps the Xwadāy-Nāmag) now lost to us, so it is a hard choice. Procopius’ account depicts the Sasanian army falling into a trap in a valley, and being surrounded on all sides, the sort of situation that was potentially lethal for any Sasanian army (and a situation very similar to the Sasanian disaster at Nehāvand in 642 CE), because the army would be completely locked by the terrain and thus unable to maneuver exploiting its main asset, the tactical mobility of its cavalry, while at the same time being unable to retreat. In this situation, the Sasanian warriors would have been sitting ducks. The account of the Perso-Arabic tradition of the Sasanian army losing many men in the desert is also plausible, as this is a situation that has happened many times to armies in this part of the planet, if the supply system was faulty or the army was delayed. Let us just remember the defeat of Yazdegerd II by the Kidarites in his last campaign by standard nomadic harassing tactics.

Silver drahm of Pērōz where he is still wearing his second crown. After his humiliating defeat against the Hephthalites in 474 CE, as a measure in propaganda he modified his crown by adding wings to it, a symbol of kingly glory (Fārr / Xwarrah) in the Iranian tradition. The legend on the obverse reads “The Mazdayasnian king Pērōz, the Kayanian”. Mint mark AT (probably meaning “Ādurbādagān”).

The common points in both traditions are that Pērōz was “tricked” and the role of the Hephthalite mutilated man/spy, although there are variations. As I have mentioned before, Mārī ibn Sulaymān (a late source) wrote that the Sasanians were intercepted by the Hephthalites while marching across a desert, and then they fell into a trap prepared by a Hephthalite general. The only Perso-Arabic source that does not mention a trap or any sort of treason is Tha’ālibī, who only wrote that the guides of the army “got lost” and so the army suffered many losses. Despite the fact that this “mutilated man” only appears in the Perso-Arabic tradition and not in Procopius, it has been noted that the episode is extraordinarily similar to the episode of the Persian nobleman Zopyrus narrated by Herodotus (which in turn resembles an episode by Homer, when he wrote that Odysseus mutilated himself in order to spy on Troy)..

Drawing of Pērōz wearing his third crown, taken from a silver dish.

Maneuver warfare and “treachery” (false retreats, harassment, etc.) were standard practice in nomadic warfare, and as we have seen it is quite probable that the Hephthalites had clung more to their nomadic heritage than the Kidarites. This could of course be easily construed by their enemies as “treachery” and “dishonorable fighting”, but the fact that the Hephthalites chose to meet the Sasanians on the field (instead of relying on fortified cities) and that they employed nomadic warfare methods is quite consistent with what we have seen so far about this people.

All the accounts (except the Georgian one) end with Pērōz swearing that he will not attack the Hephthalites again, and in the case of Procopius’ account, in a particularly humiliating way, with the Šāhān Šāh being forced to humiliate himself in front of the Hephthalite king. The detail in Procopius about the trick suggested to Pērōz by the mowbeds in the army is probably little more than an archaizing literary detail by Procopius, as it is taken directly from the episode narrated by Xenophon about Ismenias of Thebes, who threw his seal ring to the ground in order to have a pretext when he had to kneel in front of Artaxerxes. The humiliation suffered by the House of Sāsān and by Ērānšahr in this episode at the hands of the Hephthalites was historical, and of the same caliber of the one suffered by the Romans when Šābuhr I made the Roman augustus Valerian prisoner. But this was just the beginning of a long series of defeats of humiliations that would eventually put the very existence of the Sasanian Empire in jeopardy.

The only account that deviates completely from all this is the one in the K’art’lis C’xovreba, which is full of fantastic and legendary material. Practically, the only sure points that can be learnt from it is that the Iberian king Vakht’ang Gorgasali took part in this (and/or in any of the other two) campaign of Pērōz against the Hephthalites as a Sasanian vassal, and little else. But there is an interesting detail that I would like to point out: Pērōz is the last Sasanian king whose coinage is attested in Sindh. After him, the gold coinage in Sindh depicts local Hunnic leaders, of either Alkhan or Hephthalite extraction. So, perhaps to some degree there was indeed fighting in Sindh, or at least the Sasanians lost control of this territory to the Huns, either due to direct fighting in there or because of their defeats in the north of the Hindu Kush. Another point is the duration of Vakht’ang fight in the East: eight years according to this source. The first defeat of Pērōz against the Hephthalites is dated (as we have just seen) to 474 CE, and his final defeat and death happened in 484 CE, but Vakht’ang Gorgasali could not have taken part in this last campaign because by then he, together with the Armenians, had rebelled against Pērōz. So, that the campaigning in the East of the Iberian vassals on behalf of their Sasanian overlords took eight years is quite possible. As I have explained before in relation to the Armenian revolt of Vahan Mamikonian, it was standard Sasanian practice to employ Caucasian troops in Central Asia rather than in the West, for fear that they would make common cause with their Roman co-religionaries.

 

[Victor1234]

Excellent update as always! I particularly like the reversal of fortunes and the comparison with Valerian's humiliations. I have two questions:

Since you brought up Zeno the Isaurian, I've got some idea of the critical role that these Isaurians played for the Eastern Empire (an army recruiting ground much like Illyria became for the West?) but why did this region sort of sit idle in the sources (or did it?) for hundreds of years? It seems between incorporation into the Roman system in 74BCE, a pirate campaign by Pompey in 66BCE, and the apperance of Zeno, there's practically nothing about them. Why did they suddenly become important at this point in history?

For the second, it was fascinating to read that the Roman ambassador accompanied the campaign but was this standard practice? Did any Sasanian ambassadors go with the Eastern (or even Western) Emperors on campaigns too? Also, what was the rationale behind it? Surely, given the historical antagonisms between the two, they wouldn't want anyone from the other side around to watch their armies in action?

 

[Semper Victor]

Excellent update as always! I particularly like the reversal of fortunes and the comparison with Valerian's humiliations. I have two questions:

Since you brought up Zeno the Isaurian, I've got some idea of the critical role that these Isaurians played for the Eastern Empire (an army recruiting ground much like Illyria became for the West?) but why did this region sort of sit idle in the sources (or did it?) for hundreds of years? It seems between incorporation into the Roman system in 74BCE, a pirate campaign by Pompey in 66BCE, and the apperance of Zeno, there's practically nothing about them. Why did they suddenly become important at this point in history?

For the second, it was fascinating to read that the Roman ambassador accompanied the campaign but was this standard practice? Did any Sasanian ambassadors go with the Eastern (or even Western) Emperors on campaigns too? Also, what was the rationale behind it? Surely, given the historical antagonisms between the two, they wouldn't want anyone from the other side around to watch their armies in action?

The Isaurians are very present in Roman chronicles since the III c. CE onwards, as they repeatedly raided the neighboring cities and settlements in Lycaonia and Pamphylia. They became a considerable headache and finally forced Diocletian to post there a permanent garrison formed by two small "new model" legions, I and II Isauricae. Leo I tried to recruit more Isaurians into the Eastern Roman army to act as a counterpoint to the growing power of his magister militum Aspar who was of Alan origin (and whose soldiers were also mostly of "barbarian" origins). Zeno the Isaurian was actually a tribal Isaurian chief who acted as the commander of these Isaurian troops snd benefitted from the fall od Aspar (he and his son Ardaburius were finally murdered by order of emperor Leo I shortly before the latter's death in 475 CE). The rise of Zeno to the purple was the logical consequence of his loyalty to Leo I and to the fact that immediately after Aspar's demise he'd become the most important military commander in the eastern empire. There was also Leo I's brother Basiliscus (who tried to usurp the throne from Zeno) but he was thoroughly discredited because he'd led the disastrous campaign against the Vandals in North Africa a few years earlier.

As for the presence of the Roman ambassador Eusebius, I guess that it's more a consequence of the fact that the Sasanian king was with the army, and he needed to discuss affairs directly with him. Already in the 460s another Roman ambassador (a certain Constantius) had to travel all the way to Gorgan to meet the Shahan Shah in there.

 

[Barsoom]

Just read the Kim book on the Huns. It's a short but comprehensive and generally solid overview of the political history of various Hunnic polities. The author does have a tendency to overstate his case, though, which reaches quite laughable proportions in his final chapter (on Hunnic contributions to European civilization).