Introduction
It’s often forgotten how diverse the Persian Empire was. Mazdanites, Christians, Jews and other religions mixed openly during the time of the Sassanids. After the fall of the dynasty with the coming of Islam, the common view was that the lands of the empire was quickly Islamised with all but a handful converting to the new religion.
In my research, I was surprised to learn of a holdout of the old Persian ways, and even more surprised to find that it was Christian in faith. Beyond the Caucasus mountains, there was the Kingdom of Sarir, ruled by the Shah-al-Jabal (King of the Mountain). The Wikipedia entry for it offers relatively limited information – I’m sharing it here for your quick reference but you can find the full entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarir.
“Sarir was first documented as a political entity in the 6th century AD. The memory of its foundation was transmitted orally among the Caucasian Avars. According to one legend, the kingdom was established by a Persian general who was sent to control the Caucasus by a Sasanian king. This legend is corroborated by the names of local kings, which are normally of Persian or even Syrian etymology. Medieval Arab sources commonly associated Sarir with a throne gifted by Khosrow I or Yazdegerd III.
According to the 10th-century Arab geographer al-Masudi the king of Sarir was a descendant of the 5th century Sasanian king Bahram V. The first king allegedly arrived in Dagestan as an emissary of Yazdegerd III, bringing with him the Sasanian throne and the imperial treasure after the Sasanian empire had been defeated by the Arabs in the 7th century. To protect the throne he established a hereditary reign. The 9th century geographer al-Ya'qubi noted that the golden throne of Sarir was a gift of the 6th-century shah Khosrow I Anushirvan. The king of Sarir reportedly titled himself as sahib al-sarir ("master of the throne") as well as khaqan al-jabal ("khagan of the mountain") and wahrazan-shah (possibly "king of the Avars"), titles he had allegedly received from the Sasanian shah. These reports suggest that the kings of Sarir tried to back their authority by claiming a relationship with the Sasanians. During the Iranian Renaissance of the 10th and 11th centuries, it was common among both Muslim and Christian rulers of the Iranian world and its periphery to express their legitimacy in reference to the Sasanians.
Sarir bordered the Khazars to the north, the Durdzuks to the west and northwest, the Georgians and Derbent to the south. As the state was Christian, Arab historians erroneously viewed it as a dependency of the Byzantine Empire. The capital of Sarir was the city of Humraj, tentatively identified with the modern-day village Khunzakh. The king resided in a remote fortress at the top of a mountain.”
Beyond this, information is scant. From what I’ve gathered, in the 18th and 19th centuries as the Russian Empire annexed the Caucasus and destroyed much of the writings and antiques of this lost Kingdom of Sarir, refusing to countenance there being a Christian Kingdom in the East before the rise of the Third Rome in Muscovy. I thus set out to uncover what I could of this lost Kingdom of Sarir and the Persians who called it home. Please pardon any mistakes in this historiography as I’m not a trained historian and working within the budget of a post-graduate student.
Read on to discover the history of the House of Sarir and the lands rules by the Shah al-Jabal.
In my research, I was surprised to learn of a holdout of the old Persian ways, and even more surprised to find that it was Christian in faith. Beyond the Caucasus mountains, there was the Kingdom of Sarir, ruled by the Shah-al-Jabal (King of the Mountain). The Wikipedia entry for it offers relatively limited information – I’m sharing it here for your quick reference but you can find the full entry at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarir.
“Sarir was first documented as a political entity in the 6th century AD. The memory of its foundation was transmitted orally among the Caucasian Avars. According to one legend, the kingdom was established by a Persian general who was sent to control the Caucasus by a Sasanian king. This legend is corroborated by the names of local kings, which are normally of Persian or even Syrian etymology. Medieval Arab sources commonly associated Sarir with a throne gifted by Khosrow I or Yazdegerd III.
According to the 10th-century Arab geographer al-Masudi the king of Sarir was a descendant of the 5th century Sasanian king Bahram V. The first king allegedly arrived in Dagestan as an emissary of Yazdegerd III, bringing with him the Sasanian throne and the imperial treasure after the Sasanian empire had been defeated by the Arabs in the 7th century. To protect the throne he established a hereditary reign. The 9th century geographer al-Ya'qubi noted that the golden throne of Sarir was a gift of the 6th-century shah Khosrow I Anushirvan. The king of Sarir reportedly titled himself as sahib al-sarir ("master of the throne") as well as khaqan al-jabal ("khagan of the mountain") and wahrazan-shah (possibly "king of the Avars"), titles he had allegedly received from the Sasanian shah. These reports suggest that the kings of Sarir tried to back their authority by claiming a relationship with the Sasanians. During the Iranian Renaissance of the 10th and 11th centuries, it was common among both Muslim and Christian rulers of the Iranian world and its periphery to express their legitimacy in reference to the Sasanians.
Sarir bordered the Khazars to the north, the Durdzuks to the west and northwest, the Georgians and Derbent to the south. As the state was Christian, Arab historians erroneously viewed it as a dependency of the Byzantine Empire. The capital of Sarir was the city of Humraj, tentatively identified with the modern-day village Khunzakh. The king resided in a remote fortress at the top of a mountain.”
Beyond this, information is scant. From what I’ve gathered, in the 18th and 19th centuries as the Russian Empire annexed the Caucasus and destroyed much of the writings and antiques of this lost Kingdom of Sarir, refusing to countenance there being a Christian Kingdom in the East before the rise of the Third Rome in Muscovy. I thus set out to uncover what I could of this lost Kingdom of Sarir and the Persians who called it home. Please pardon any mistakes in this historiography as I’m not a trained historian and working within the budget of a post-graduate student.
Read on to discover the history of the House of Sarir and the lands rules by the Shah al-Jabal.

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