Part 13 in a series.
Chosroes II
Chosroes I died in 579 and was succeeded by his son, Ormizd IV. He tolerated Christianity as Chosroes had, but the Zoroastrian priests did not fear him as they had his father. They joined with Bahram Chobin, a general who had been dismissed by Ormizd and now wanted revenge. Chobin assassinated the king in 589 so the conspirators could crown the prince, Chosroes II. But less than a year went by before Chobin decided he would rather be king himself.
Chosroes fled to Constantinople, ready to offer peace. Emperor Maurice was ready to welcome it; Rome was fighting off new nomads, the Avars, in the Balkans, and peace with Persia would allow him to move troops there. Maurice sent a Roman army east and ran Chobin off. Chosroes regained the throne and, in gratitude, kept his word and made peace. Chobin fled to the Turks. As a Persian general, he had won many victories against the Turks and slaughtered many of them; the Turks didn’t waste any time returning the favor.
In 602, things changed. A Roman army on the Danube under the brutal, uneducated Phocas became tired of fighting the Avars and rebelled. The soldiers declared Phocas Emperor, marched on Constantinople, and murdered Maurice and his sons. Chosroes, incensed and indebted to Maurice, prepared to avenge the Emperor.
Chosroes started by destroying Hira in order to protect his rear. Then he moved west and, with almost no difficulty, took all of northwestern Mesopotamia, the first Sassanid to do so. By the time he was driving through Asia Minor, it had become clear that Phocas’s brutality and ignorance led to incompetent leadership. With the Persians and the Avars closing in from each side, Constantinople revolted and killed Phocas, declaring General Heraclius his successor.
Chosroes, upon hearing the news, let his easy victories go to his head, and he threw revenge aside in favor of conquest. Though he had destroyed the Nestorian Christians at Hira, the Persians were more or less tolerant of the Christian heresies. For that reason, there was no difficulty in taking Antioch, Damascus, and Jerusalem—the last of which firmly incensed Constantinople. Not only was the supposed birthplace of Jesus occupied by pagans, but Chosroes II carried off the “True Cross,” which Christians believed to be the one Christ was crucified on.
That was in 615. The same year, Chosroes entered Egypt and spent the year turning it into a Persian province. Soon, all of Asia Minor was Persia’s, and Chosroes’s army was standing at Chalcedon, just one mile across the water from Constantinople. In just a few years, Chosroes II—now called Chosroes Parviz (“the Victorious”)—had nearly restored the realm of Darius. And to make matters worse, the Avars were nearly at the walls of Constantinople.
Emperor Heraclius did not give in; he kept fighting. He had the superior Roman navy at his disposal, and was willing to take a chance to end the war. He abandoned the city and sailed to Armenia, striking at Persia until Chosroes was forced to reluctantly abandon his siege and meet Heraclius in battle. In 627, they met at storied Nineveh. Heraclius nearly destroyed the Persian army, the remnants of which fled under cover of night. Heraclius then cut through Mesopotamia all the way to the walls of Ctesiphon.
Chosroes had regained and lost Darius’s empire. Persia was utterly disillusioned; the Persian aristocrats gave Chosroes a chance to make peace, but even with Ctesiphon under siege, he still wanted to fight. In 628, the aristocrats chose to accept the peace Heraclius offered by imprisoning and executing heir king. The peace was on Roman terms, giving up all of the conquered lands and returning the “True Cross,” which was restored to Jerusalem personally by the emperor. Yazdegird III became King of Persia.
Islam
At the height of his success, Chosroes II was ordered by letter to abandon his religion and accept and Arab as the prophet of the one true god. The letter was sent by the prophet himself: Mohammed. The prophet was uniting the Arab tribes with his new religion, Islam (“submission”). These people, the Muslims (“ones who surrender” to God’s will) had embraced a fervent belief that brought with it a sense of ultimate rightness and an instant reward in Paradise. With a common religion binding them, Arabia was growing strong. Persia, torn by war, was growing weak.
Mohammed died just after uniting Arabia, and was succeeded as leader of Islam by his father-in-law, Abu Bekr. His title was Khalifah (“successor”), or Caliph. He invited Yazdegird III and Heraclius to join Islam; when the invitations were disregarded, Abu Bekr went on the attack, striking at Rome and Persia simultaneously. The Romans and the Persians had just gone through decades of war; most recently, Rome had regained Judea, Syria, and Egypt from Persia. By 640, the Arabs held all three territories, which included Jerusalem. Rome would never take it back. Heraclius, weary and burned out by war, could not find the strength to fight the Arabs. He died in 641. His successors held Asia Minor and parts of Europe, but the Roman Empire was no more. After the western, European half had fallen, it only survived in the East; now it only survived in Greece and some of Eastern Europe at Constantinople; historians refer to this realm as the Byzantine Empire (the Greek name for Constantinople is Byzantium).
The Arabs quickly retook Hira, but met defeat at the Battle of the Bridge in 634 just as Yazdegird III was being crowned. A larger army was sent to Persia, and in 637 the armies fought at Kadisiya, fifty miles south of the ruins of Babylon. The battle raged for three days until a sandstorm blinded the Persian army. The Arabs quickly took Ctesiphon and went on to soundly defeat the Persians at Nehavend, near old Ecbatana, in 642. Yazdegird III fled and begged through the East for help, even from the Emperor of China. He was killed in 651. The entirety of his nineteen-year reign had been spent in battle.
It had been 25 years since Chosroes II had stood only a mile from Constantinople on the edge of a mighty and renewed Persian Empire. Now, that Empire was gone forever.
For now, the question of religion remained. The Muslims tolerated Zoroastrians and Christians, but forced hem to pay heavy taxes for not being Islamic (the Zoroastrians had done the same). This brought a wave of conversion to Islam; it was cheaper to be a Muslim in Persia (and in Syria and Egypt). The remaining Zoroastrians concentrated in Hormuz and eventually migrated to India. Their descendents today are the Parsees of India. The Jews of Mesopotamia also found themselves tolerated and taxed, and left in relative peace for the first time in nearly a thousand years.
But peace would not last in Islam. Like most religions, a crack was about to form.
To be continued.
An empty stage. Enter Nehemiah (played by Hugh Jackman). Music begins to play.
(Enter the dancing Jewesses!)
(Big finish; Nehemiah rips off his jacket to reveal a patterned shirt!)
