Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/642

 614 PERSIA [SASANIAN 589-623. a victory that he is said to have made the Turks pay instead of receiving tribute. Bahrain was next sent into the lands south of the Caucasus to strike a great blow at Rome (589), but here he was utterly defeated, and Hor- mizcl was foolish enough to dismiss him with disgrace. The general, who was head of the great house of Mihran, replied by open revolt, feeling, no doubt, that he could reckon on the discontent of the nobles and the other armies. The troops in Mesopotamia which had&quot; been driven back on Xisibis by the Romans and were afraid of punishment did in fact mutiny and open communication with Bahram, who marched against the capital and reached the Great Zab. An army sent forth against him also mutinied, but declared for Hormizd s son, Khosrau, who was on bad terms with his father. Next, part of the troops rose in Ctesiphon, whither Hormizd had hurried from Media. Bindoe, Khosrau s maternal uncle, was in prison there, and his brother Bistam (Vistahm) set him free by force. Hormizd was deposed and soon after put to death, and Khosrau, who had probably consented to a crime he could not prevent, was proclaimed king (summer 590). Civil Khosrau II. Parvez, &quot;the conqueror,&quot; had now to deal war. w ith B a h r a m) who sought the crown, or at least the regency, for himself. But the pusillanimous king could not inspire his troops with courage to face the experienced general ; he was deserted in the first shock of battle, and fled to Circesium to cast himself on the aid of the emperor Maurice, who undertook to restore Khosrau, but, able prince as he was, missed the great opportunity of securing an adequate equivalent for the service. Himself a man of obscure descent, he seems to have been flattered by the idea of posing as &quot; father &quot; of a legitimate king of ancient stock. The enterprise was not very difficult, for though Bahram had seized the crown and begun to coin in his own name the nobles would not submit to one of their own peers, and the people were still stricter legitimists than they had been under the Arsacids. In their view the royal majesty (farrahi kaydnik] was innate in the house of Ardashir, and none outside of it could be king. Bahram had to put down an insurrection in Ctesiphon itself, and Bindoe escaped and took up his nephew s cause. In the beginning of 591 a Roman host drew near, and Khosrau caused the gates of Martyropolis l and Dara to be opened to them. He was now joined by the Persian army of Nisibis, and Persian and some Armenian grandees came in to him day by day. The other armies took the same side. In Atropatene Bistc4m, Bindoe s brother, gathered a host against Bahram, while the united Persian and Roman forces advanced along the left bank of the Tigris and smote him in a decisive battle near the Zab (summer 591). Seleucia, Ctesiphon, and New Antioch had already been taken by troops sent through the Mesopotamian desert. Khosrau Thus Khosrau was restored, and peace with Rome followed of course. The Romans ceased to pay tribute, but only recovered their old frontier, Nisibis still remaining Per sian. Bahram fled to the Turks and was honourably re ceived, but was murdered not long afterwards. Khosrau was still so insecure that he asked a bodyguard of 1000 Romans, and now he set himself to remove all dangerous persons, especially Bindoe and the other conspirators who had overthrown his father and set himself on the throne. Bistam was not so easily reached. When he saw himself condemned he made himself king in Media, and held out for almost six years with the help of the remnants of Bahrain s forces and in alliance with Turks and Delamites. He fell by treachery probably in 595 or 59 G. To a land already weakened by long wars all these 1 This town had been betrayed to the Persians, and the Romans had lain before it for some time. disorders were ruinous. Nor was Khosrau II. the king fit for such times. A weak coarse-minded man, at once boastful and timid, avaricious and fond of luxury and splendour, he was at best a very ordinary Oriental despot. He found the treasury empty and left it full, while the empire was impoverished by wars. And in these he won no glory ; his victories were those of his generals. To the Christians he long extended protection and favour, and even built them churches ; for he fancied that not only the Christian empire but St Sergius himself, the chief saint of the Roman Syrians and Arabs, had a share in his restoration, and he was much under the influence of a Christian wife, Shirin, and of some other Christians, such as his physician Gabriel. 2 But in later years his disposition toward the Christians was altogether reversed. When Maurice fell by treason and the hideous tyrant Phocas seized the throne (November G02) Khosrau felt himself called to avenge his &quot; father &quot; and protect Maurice s supposed son, Theodosius, who had fled to the Persian court. Narses too, the commandant of Edessa, called for help against Phocas. Khosrau accordingly imprisoned the ambassadors who came to announce the new accession, and a war began, early in 604, which for twenty years laid the Roman lands open to such ravages as had never before been known ; so helpless was the empire under the bad rule of Phocas and through the pressure of Avars and other barbarians. Khosrau was present at the taking of Dara (604), 3 but had no personal share in the war after that event. After a few years the Persian armies were seen as far west as Chalcedon over against Constantinople. Yet the real weakness of the Sasanian realm was strikingly exposed in these very years (604-G10) in the battle of Dhu KAr, a small affair in itself, but very significant. Khosrau had abolished the kingdom of Hira and put King No man to death, thus ridding himself of a troublesome vassal, but at the same time losing a very useful means of influencing and checking the desert tribes. And soon after No man s fall the tribe of Bakr ibn WAil actually defeated a regular army at Dim Kar near the Euphrates, but a few days journey from Ctesiphon, and maintained themselves on the soil in spite of the Persians. Arabic vanity greatly exaggerated this success, and the result was a notable increase of self-confidence on the part of the Arabs, by which the Moslems ultimately benefited when they came to attack Persia. The Romans still had the worst of the war when in October 610 Phocas gave place to the valiant Heraclius. The new emperor, hard pressed on all sides, vainly asked for peace. In 613 Damascus was taken, and the country round it, on which the Persians had never before set foot, was ravaged in a way of which countless ruins bear wit ness to this day. In June 14 Jerusalem fell, and, to the horror of all Christendom, the &quot;precious and life-giving cross &quot; went into captivity. Next Egypt was conquered, and Asia Minor swept as far as Chalcedon. Heraclius was Cam not able to strike a counter blow till 622, when an ex pedition towards Armenia and the Pontine territories from .]? the Gulf of Issus restored respect for the Roman arms. His great campaigns began in the following year and carried him deep into the Persian country, often quite cut off from his base, in a way that could not have succeeded with any leader who was not a great politician as well as a great general. In the first year of these campaigns he destroyed one of the holiest of Persian shrines, the fire -temple of Ganjak, near Lake Urmiyah, and so 2 Shirin and the king even took part in the quarrels of Nestorians and Monophysites, and foolishly took the side of the latter, who were the minority and less Persian in sympathy. There are good contem porary Syriac records of all this which in part are still unused. 3 Land, Anted. Syr., i. 15.