Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/643

 EMPIRE.] PERSIA 615 avenged Jerusalem. Now we find him near the Caucasus, now in eastern Asia Minor, now again in Mesopotamia, never beaten, often victorious, but oftener perhaps out witting superior forces by adroit movements. In 626 Khosrau attempted a diversion by sending his best gene ral, Shahrbaraz, with a great force directly against Chal- cedon. It was an anxious summer in Constantinople, with the Avars behind and the Persians in front, and the emperor almost lost in the depths of Asia. But in the beginning of August the Avars drew off, the Persians, who had no ships, having failed to cross the Bosphorus and effect a junction with them. Heraclius replied by drawing the KHAZARS (q.v.) down into Persian territory, and in 627 he ventured to strike a blow at the heart of the monarchy. The feast of 6th January 628 he cele brated in Dastagerd, which was but some three days march from Ctesiphon, and had been Khosrau s usual residence for twenty -four years. Khosrau had fled in terror, and did not deem himself safe till he and his harem were over the bridge of Ctesiphon. The capital was, of course, too strong to be carried by the small forces that the Roman had been able to lead by a rapid march from the Caucasus, and Heraclius turned swiftly before any great army could be gathered against him, and cut his way through the enemy s country back to Ganjak over the Kurdish Alps amid the snows of February and March, an exploit almost unparalleled in the history of war. Meantime there was revolution in Ctesiphon. Khosrau s tyranny and greed had offended high and low ; his panic flight had made him contemptible ; and, to crown all, his legitimate heir Kavadh and most of his brothers were pining in prison to leave the heirship open to Mardanshah, son of Shirin, who, even in advanced years, had retained absolute command of her husband, in spite of his thousands Kidh of other wives. Certain nobles liberated Kavadh and pro claimed him king (25th February 628), and Khosrau, deserted by all, was dragged from his hiding-place and executed (29th February). Thus miserably perished a prince whose armies had covered almost the whole breadth of the Achaemenian empire. No hand was raised to help him, and the Christians, who had never forgiven the insult to the true cross, were the first to welcome the elevation of the parricide Kavadh, in which, indeed, one of their own number, Shamta, son of the farmer-general Yazdin, had a leading part. The first act of Kavadh II. Sh6r6e was to murder some eighteen brothers, his second to ask peace from the Romans. A truce was conceded, but Heraclius was too much master of the situation to agree to a final peace at once. Persian troops were recalled from Roman soil, but, when Heraclius, after a hasty reorganization of Mesopotamia, had gone on to Syria, he learned that the -Persian king was already dead after a reign of but six months, in which the chief occurrence was a terrible pestilence. iarchy. Ardashir III., son of Kavadh, was now crowned at the age of seven. An era of distress and trouble followed, in which children or women sat on the throne, and the nobles disputed with one another for the reality of power. The holy cross was sent back from Ctesiphon through the primate of the Nestorians ; and the feast of the Elevation of the Cross still commemorates the joyful day (14th September 629) when Heraclius solemnly re-erected it in Jerusalem. The Government at Ctesiphon was powerless ; the Khazars harried the empire ; and it was perhaps at this time that Khosrau, son of Kavadh, and grandson of Hormizd IV., who had been brought up among the Turks, sought to make himself king in Khorasan, but was slain after a few months. A more dangerous pretendant was the victorious general Shahrbaraz, who met with Hera clius in June 629 at Arabissus in Cappadocia, and prob- ,bly there obtained an approval of his enterprise from the 623-634. mperor, who naturally favoured the cause of disorder in Persia. Shahrbaraz took Ctesiphon with a small force aided by treason within ; Ardashir was put to death (27th April 630) ; and robbery, murder, and every terror raged in the royal city. But Shahrbaraz, too, fell on the 9th of June a victim to the envy of his peers and the spirit of legitimism. His body was dragged through the streets, and tradition speaks with grotesque irony of the man who sought to be king but could not, because he was not of the lawful house. B6ran, daughter of Khosrau II., now sat for a time on the throne (till about autumn 631), and appears to have closed the treaty of peace with Heraclius. The conditions are not recorded, but were probably the same as in the peace with Maurice ; at all events the Persians kept Nisibis. Boran was followed in Ctesiphon by her sister Azarmidokht, probably after a short interval in which a certain Per6z reigned. But in Nisibis the soldiery of the slain Shahrbaraz put forward Hormizd V., a grandson of Khosrau II., and he maintained himself in that quarter for a time (631-32). Azarmidokht was dethroned by Rustam, the powerful hereditary marshal of Khorasan, whose father s death she had procured. Our confused records of this age of disorder do not permit us to give a clear chrono logical or geographical view of all pretenders who arose in the capital and provinces ; but in Ctesiphon, we know, there reigned for a time a certain Ferrukhzadh (or Khor- rezAdh) Khosrau, apparently a child. 1 But another child, Yazdegerd III., son of Shahriydr, and so a grandson ofYazde- Khosrau II., was put forward by certain nobles in Persis, gei d III. and crowned in the fire-temple of Ardashir (second half of 632 or first half of 633). Soon Khosrau was slain and Yazdegerd acknowledged in the capital, and without much resistance in the provinces also. Fond hopes could now be entertained that the wounds of the monarchy might be healed under a legitimate prince unstained by descent from the parricide Sher6e, conse crated in the cradle of the monarchy, and upheld by the strong hand of Rustam. Some temporary recovery seems actually to have taken place ; but a new foe more danger ous than Julian or Heraclius was already knocking at the gates of the monarchy. That Yemen and some tracts in north Arabia had already been lost by Persia to the Moslems had scarcely been observed at Ctesiphon amidst so many greater disasters. But now the Moslems already hovered on the frontier. Mothanna, one of the boldest leaders of those Bedouins who since Dhu Kar had made frequent forays on Persian soil, accepted Islam, and had its strength at his back. These attacks became bolder and bolder. Presently Khalid, in all the prestige of his victory Moslem over the revolt of the Arabs against Islam (see vol. xvi. p. invasion. 562), appeared with a small force on the lower Euphrates to take the lead of these Bedouins. Persian troops and their Arab allies were repeatedly beaten in small engage ments, and soon a number of frontier -posts were in the hands of the Moslems. 2 The inhabitants of the western bank of the lower Euphrates, who were all Christians and had little attachment to Persia, submitted themselves and promised to supply the victors with intelligence. Soon the Arabs ventured to cross the river and plunder the villages west of the Tigris. 3 In the early summer of 63-1, however, Khalid was called away to Syria ; his successor, Abu Obaid of Taif, though strengthened by reinforce- 1 He appears beardless on his only known coin. By some accounts he was the only son of Khosrau II. who had escaped massacre. 2 The history of the conquest is here given mainly after Beladhori, whose short notices stand examination much better than Tabari and the historians who follow him. The chronology is in many points uncertain. 3 Baghdad, then such a village, was plundered on a fair tide.