Eurasia on the Eve of the Arab Conquests
Reflections on the Roman, Iranian, and Göktürk Empires at the End of Antiquity
Rome
To judge by the grumblings of Rome’s own historians, there was no period of Roman history that was not considered decadent; nor was the Roman state ever really stable. Polybius and Sallust believed that the decline of Rome had begun immediately after the final destruction of Carthage.[1] Livy and Tacitus beheld in their own days a long descent from virtue and freedom, and Tacitus was sure that nothing was left of the old Roman morality.[2] Two centuries later we find Ammianus Marcellinus rehearsing similar criticisms about luxury, greed, idleness, pretence, and exaggerated devotion to the circus.[3] Commentary on Roman decadence may have become something of a literary cliché. There are so many low points, and so many apparent recoveries, between the founding of Rome in 753 bc and the fall of Constantinople in 1453 that determining the height of Roman power from which it declined, and the moment of its collapse, will always be subject to debate.[4]
But in the seventh century, the grumblings of conservative historians give way to more serious contemplations. The poetry of George of Pisidia emphasises the futility of human effort and the infinite sway of God over all creation.[5] Similar feelings of helplessness and loss of confidence can also be detected in the Armenian history attributed to Sebeos,[6] in the melancholy reflections of George of Choziba, and in those of Theodore of Syceon. Those texts also have much the same apocalyptic energy which we find at full blast in the earliest portions of the Qur’an.[7] Even if one did not expect the imminent end of the world, as Muhammad plainly did,[8] it was obvious that eight hundred years of Roman rule in the Near East hung in the balance as the armies of Khusro II advanced ever further westward in the early sixth century. Yet the decline had begun long before. This is how a Jewish merchant described it in the 630s:
‘…from the ocean, that is, from Scotland, Britain, Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Thrace…and all the way to Antioch, Syria, Persia, and all the east…and Egypt, Africa, and inner Africa…the frontiers of the Romans extended up to today; and the monuments of their emperors are visible in bronze and marble. For all nations were subjugated by the Romans at God’s command. But today we see the Roman state humbled.’[9]
This is a very different sentiment from the moralising of a Sallust or Tacitus. Instead of a half-imaginary decline of virtue, the Romans of the seventh century noted a real diminishment of power; and, to judge by contemporary apocalyptic texts, they felt that collapse might not be far off. The fact that such feelings are attributed to a merchant, and not a senator or other member of the elite, is surely significant also.
Iran
Contemporary sentiments within Iran, the other great sedentary power of Late Antiquity, were different. The Mazdakite troubles were over.[10] The long struggle with the menacing outer world of the steppe had begun to favour Iran. The death of Peroz in battle against the Hephthalite Huns was a distant memory. When the Gök Türk empire arose from within the Rouran khaghante in 552 and swallowed up the Hephthalite state, the regime of Khusro I was suddenly relieved of its most dangerous foe.[11] In the reign of Hurmazd IV, the Iranian state reached the height of its power, facing down a Roman and Turkish alliance on two fronts[12] — a credit, most probably, to the military and fiscal reforms of Hurmazd’s father Khusro and grandfather Kavad. The brief reign of the rebel Bahram Chobin had been ended with Roman assistance; and when Khusro II’s uncles Binduya and Bistam were slain, there was no further opposition to the House of Sasan.[13] At the opening of the seventh century the opportunity came to push the Iranian frontier further and further westward. As the earthly agents of Ahura Mazda established the rule of the Persian king upon the ruins of Roman power, many would have remembered the primordial unity of religious, ethnic, and political order described in Zoroastrian scripture.[14] Many would have contemplated the supremacy of the Iranian empire over all civilised peoples; and some believed, perhaps, that mankind’s final ordeals were imminent, and that the appearance of Astwaterta, the saviour who would lead the final defeat of Angra Mainyu, had drawn near.[15]
By the mid-620s, the Persian king Khusro II had conquered most of the Eastern Roman Empire. And a final push toward Constantinople had been planned. The armies of Iran and her nomadic allies were to besiege the city, and receive the emperor’s surrender. The Roman Senate had earlier sent a grovelling letter to the Persian government, urging Khusro to impose a client king over them and spare what was left of the empire.[16] But Khusro ignored it. When it seemed as though the Roman state might be extinguished forever, it would have been easy to imagine the vast Persian empire lasting for centuries, binding together the fringes of Europe with North Africa and the Levant with the Iranian plateau, and connecting them all with the world of the Asiatic steppe, and perhaps even with India and China. Instead of shifting ever further westward, the centre of the Christian world might have remained in the East under the patronage of the Sasanian king. Instead of dwindling and almost disappearing, the Zoroastrian religion might have remained the faith of a triumphant elite. Under the eyes of Persian viceroys and client kings, Arabia might have remained quiescent; and the preaching of Muhammad might have been confined to his local following. The sub-Roman world in western Europe might never have developed any political unity, and might have been as wild as the northern borderlands of China in the pre-modern era. And there would have been no impetus to cross the Atlantic and settle in the New World.[17]
None of this is what happened, of course. And there was no Persian Polybius to describe the sudden change of fortune. Nor was there a Sasanian Sallust to describe a slow collapse. For it came suddenly with the death of Khusro II in 628 on the night of 28 February — the result of a palace coup instigated at a distance by the Roman emperor Heraclius.[18] But there are hints that something had been wrong for some time. The Armenian writer Moses Daskhurantsi has left us a speech, attributed to the nobles at Khusro’s court, and it gives us a sense of the problem.
‘How long shall we fear and tremble before this bloody king? How long shall our goods and chattels, our gold and silver be gathered into the royal treasury? How long shall our roads be shut off and blocked to the detriment of the prosperity of many kingdoms and countries? How long shall the souls quake in our bodies and be repressed by his terrible command? Did he not destroy and swallow up like the sea the very best of our comrades, the country’s leaders? Did not many of our brothers perish on countless occasions, in hundreds and thousands, by all manner of torments, some even by drowning, at his command? Did he not take men from their wives and fathers from their sons and send them to distant peoples as slaves and bondmen and conscripts against cruel foes?’[19]
The Iranian nobility had cooperated with Khusro’s war effort for nearly thirty years, and an entire generation had grown up without ever knowing peace between the two great powers. The noble houses of Iran had sacrificed their sons, and their private fortunes had supported the military. In the 620s they had expected Khusro’s generals to snuff out the Roman state once at for all, only to be disappointed. Any mention of trade in an ancient speech attributed to aristocrats must be taken seriously, and we should assign considerable weight to the claim that the war had depressed commerce. Perhaps it had once seemed that any price was worth the annexation of Iran’s great western foe; but now Khusro’s ministers and nobility had to face the fact that this was impossible, and they resolved to terminate both the war and the life and reign of Khusro.[20]
This would hardly have been possible without the emperor Heraclius’ bold counterattack through Armenia down into the region of the Persian capital at Ctesiphon. It brought Khusro’s regime under enormous political and military pressure. Heraclius’ propagandists made sure that the emperor got the credit. But the Romans, of course, had not acted alone.
The Turks
The Turks had arisen from humble beginnings within the Rouran khaghanate to became the foremost military power of the age. Their swift rise is a striking contrast with the long decline of Rome and the sudden implosion of the Sasanian state. The Rouran were overthrown and sent flying westward where they seem to have reappeared within the Roman field of view as the Avars.[21] The Hephthalites were destroyed in the late 550s. Turkish supremacy on the Inner Asian steppe was acknowledged by competition amongst rival Chinese states for a marriage alliance with them. In the event, the Northern Qi won out.[22] And so threatening was Turkish power that Khusro I was forced to abandon his war in Lazica in 557 and negotiate an armistice with Rome in order to deal with the new problem in the east. So it is no surprise that an inscription of the eighth-century khaghan Bilgä boasts of the glorious foundation of the Turkish empire in the sixth century:
‘When the blue sky and the dark earth below were fashioned, human being were created between the two. My ancestors, the khaghans Bumin and Istemi, rose above the sons of men. Having become the masters of the Turk people, they established and ruled its empire and fixed the law of the country. Many were their enemies in the four corners of the world, but, leading campaigns against them, they subjugated and pacified them, making them bow their heads and bend their knees. They pushed eastward to the forest of Qardarikhan and westward to the Iran Gate; thus far did the ream of the Turks reach. They were wise khaghans, they were valiant khaghans; all their officers were wise and valiant; all their nobles as well as common people were just. This was why they were able to rule an empire so great, and why, governing the empire, they could uphold the law.’[23]
Of course that inscription (the so-called Orkhon Inscription) goes on to complain about certain Turks who had sold out and adopted Chinese customs, as though written by the Gök Türk equivalent of Cato the Elder.[24] But these problems were unthinkable in the sixth century, and the nadir of Rome and Persia was the moment of Turkish supremacy. It was not even undermined by the struggles which divided the Turkish empire in 583. The problem was that the empire was simply so large that it could not be governed by a single ruler; and so it was divided into an eastern half centred on what is now Mongolia which made war on China in late sixth and early sevenths centuries, and a western one between the Black Sea and Lake Issykul which preoccupied itself with both Iran and Rome at the same time.[25] These two bodies were to have a profound influence on Rome and Persia generally, and especially on the course of the last war of Antiquity.
The Sasanian state never made war in the west unless its eastern border were secure. The conquests of Ardashir I and his early successors benefited from the Xiongnu’s and the Xianbei’s preoccupations with China.[26] But in the 350s the migration of the Huns forced Shapur II to abandon his Roman war, in the midst of a siege at Nisibis, to deal with the threat.[27] Exiguous conflict with Rome throughout the fifth century is best explained by efforts to beat back the Huns, to retake lost territory, and to fortify the eastern frontier.[28] A huge expenditure of blood and treasure gave Iran the Gorgan Wall and the fortresses of the Caucasus passes — projects which issued in the death of Peroz in 484.[29] The Roman wars of Kavad and Khusro I were possible only when the Hephthalite Huns were quiescent, and the rise of the Turks forced Khusro I to abandon his efforts to outflank the Romans in Lazica.[30] The main problem was that Iran was so vulnerable to the various steppe powers that threatened it because there were gaps in the natural defences of the Caucausus and few natural defences in the east. And so the condition of the steppe always loomed large when it came to Iran’s strategic goals.
Khusro II’s declaration of war in 602 was no exception. At the opening of the seventh century, Tardu, the khaghan of the Western Turks, had resolved to reunite the two halves of the Turkish empire and began a war of conquest in the east in 601. This war miscarried dreadfully, and Tardu was humiliated. In an attempt to recover prestige and to shore up support, Tardu then attacked China which had lately been reunited under the native Sui Dynasty. This project failed also, and the Töles people threw off their obedience to Tardu and revolted. Conflict with China was halted, Tardu withdrew and died in the attempt to pacify his former subjects.[31] For more than a decade thereafter the steppe was in a state of confusion, and Khusro II was free advance westward and to keep what he conquered. But the Sasanian government had not seen the last of Turkish power.
A startling reminder of the threat from the steppe came in 615. At the instigation of some Hephthalite kings, a Turkish force stormed down through Armenia, destroyed the forces sent to oppose them, and reached as far as Rey and Esfahan without encountering further resistance. Sebeos says that the invading host was three hundred thousand men, which must be a significant exaggeration.[32] But, whatever the number of troops, there was considerable damage and plundering; and then the Turks swiftly returned to Inner Asia. The moment had been right for such a raid, since the bulk of the Iranian army had been deployed in the west, as far as Chalcedon and the Bosporus. The Turkish khaghan understandably took advantage of more relaxed security along the Iranian frontier. But the reason for the sudden retreat can only be inferred from Chinese sources. The new khaghan Shipi (called Ziebel by the Romans[33]) came to power in 615 and promptly withdrew all troops from the west for a major assault upon China. A surprise attack upon the Sui emperor while he was inspecting his army issued in a humiliating rout and a siege of the city of Yanmen, a strategic chokepoint between the valleys of Shanxi and the steppe. The emperor Yang managed to survive and escape, but this accident precipitated the fall of the Sui and inaugurated many years of Turkish involvement in the affairs of China.[34] There were important consequences for Iran also.
First, Khusro’s regime must have hesitated as to whether to proceed with the Roman war and how best to do so. After that humiliating invasion, there must have been considerable pressure to consolidate recent conquests and to secure the eastern border before resuming operations in the west. The letter from the Roman Senate, urging Khusro to appoint a client king and withdraw, was received in 615 and must have been factored into deliberations. I believe that further hesitance has been noticed in a surprising context: the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. That poems alludes somewhat obliquely to an appraisal of the finances of the Iranian empire in Khusro’s twenty-sixth regnal year: 615.[35] The distichs in question are part of a long speech of self-justification and apology put into the mouth of Khusro II at the end of his life after his destitution and arrest, looking back on the events of his reign. The Shahnameh makes no mention of the last war of Antiquity, but what else could this financial assessment have been for? The resolution to prolong the war must have entailed financial deliberations, and such a reckoning well fits the circumstances of the year 615 when the decision to proceed with the war was taken.
Second, that Turkish invasion probably influenced the decision not simply to press on with further conquests but to annex the Roman state altogether. Capturing the Roman capital would have restored the prestige of Khusro’s regime after that humiliation, and so I suspect that plans to besiege Constantinople took shape in 615 or shortly thereafter, at which point overtures were made the Avars also. But the invasion of 615 had also proved that the Iranian government could not count on the steppe remaining quiet forever. The Roman empire, however diminished or humiliated, would have been a constant distraction to Iran, if it were allowed to survive. Worse, it would have been a potential ally to Iran’s Asiatic foes. And so the government of Khusro must have determined in 615 that the political union of all sedentary peoples would be required to resist the might of the Turks.[36] This was a radical departure from policy established in the fifth century when the Huns were such an imposing threat to Iran and Rome alike. Mutual defence, cooperation, tolerance had been ordained by Yazdgard I despite the objections of hawks in his government. Khusro too surely had advisers who opposed his resolve to annex the Roman state, but he ignored them[37] — a miscalculation more immediately disastrous than Rome’s infamous decision destroy Carthage. 615 was the year that good fortune in war turned to overreach, exhaustion, and failure. But instead of a long, painful decline, the curtain came down swiftly within a single generation.
Third, it was probably the damage done by the Turks in 615 that persuaded the emperor Heraclius to bring them into the war on the Roman side. In the winter of 627, the news coming to Khusro from every front was grim.[38] The temple of Adur-Gushnasp was a pile of rubble, the general Shahin dead, Shahr-Baraz defeated. The great siege of Constantinople, in which the Avars had participated, had come to nothing. Then came the dreadful intelligence of the emperor Heraclius’ alliance with the Western Turks. Before any reaction was possible, the Turks had smashed through the Caspian Gates into Iberia, ravaging the countryside of Azarbaijan, Albania, and Iberia. The emperor Heraclius joined his new allies below the walls of Tiflis, and before an assembly of soldiers, met Shipi, the yabghu khaghan, uncle and deputy to Tong, the supreme khaghan. Shipi performed an act of obeisance to Heraclius, the emperor reciprocated, called the Shipi his son, and placed his own crown upon his head. Feasting and a marriage between Heraclius’ daughter and Shipi confirmed the alliance.[39]
The alliance achieved its aim. The bulk of Turkish forces remained to occupy and ravage northern Iran, and a smaller contingent accompanied Heraclius and his army into the region of Ctesiphon. The Sasanian state was threatened with total destruction. Armenian historian Moses Daskhurantsi claims to preserve the letter to this effect sent to Khusro by the supreme khaghan Tong:
‘If you will not retreat from the king of the Romans and surrender to him all the lands and cities which you have taken by force and return all the prisoners of his country now in your hands, together with the wood of the Cross which all Christian nations worship and honour; if you will not recall your troops from his territory, the king of the north, the lord of the whole world, your king and the king of kings, says to you: “I shall turn against you, governor of Asorestan, and shall repay you twofold for each evil deed committed against him. I shall swoop upon your lands with my sword as you descended upon his with yours. I shall not spare you, nor shall I delay to do to you what I have said I shall do”.’[40]
Notably, the supreme khagahn refers to himself as the ‘king of kings’, but Khusro is merely the governor of Assyria, or Asorestan in Armenian. Such threatening language could have come from no other person than ‘the king of the north’ and ‘the lord of the whole world’, and the swift collapse of Khusro’s regime would have been impossible without Turkish intervention. When the Orthodox Church commemorates the emperor Heraclius’ return of the True Cross to Jerusalem, most of the credit should go to Tong and Shipi.
We speak now of the Arab Conquest of Iran with an air of inevitability. But it was only by accident that it was not a Turkish Conquest. In the brief reign of the general Shahr-Baraz. Late 629, or very early in 630, that a sudden Turkish incursion into Armenia inflicted a humiliating defeat. Security was evidently still lax in the north, and the defences were undoubtedly still in ruins. Ten thousand Arab auxiliaries were dispatched to crush the Turks and ‘to scatter them like dust on the wind’.[41] But they were deceived by a feigned retreat, lured into an ambush, and cut in pieces. In the words of Moses Daskhurantsi, the Turks has once again punished the arrogance of the Persians, and ‘every warrior, and every man who wore a sword at his side, realised that the authority of kings and the power of generals was as naught before them’.[42] This humiliation may have contributed to the swift downfall and execution of Shahr-Baraz, depending on how we date his brief reign.[43] However this may be, though, Iran was very nearly made tributary to the Turks just as she had once been to the Hephthalites. But the Sasanian state managed to hobble on, of course, because the Turks suddenly withdrew again. The forces of the Tang emperor Taizong had overwhelmed the Turks in Inner Asia, and received their surrender in the spring of 630. Turkish power was engulfed by civil war, the invaders of Armenia hastened to take part in the struggle, and Iran was spared further aggression from the north.[44]
The Turkish attacks on Iran were long remembered. They were commemorated in a somewhat garbled form in the annals of the Tang dynasty.
‘In the late Sui dynasty (581–618), yabghu khaghan of the Western Turks attacked and ruined [Iran], and killed the king Khusro. Then his son Shiruya became king. The Turkish yabghu khaghan one of his lieutenants (as a kind of resident to the Iranian court), to superintend and control Shiruya. When Shiruya died, the Iranians were unwilling to remain subject to the Turks any longer, so they put the daughter of Khusro on the throne. The Turks killed her too.’[45]
The Tang annals have deformed the chronology by placing the momentous events of 628 and afterward in the time of the Sui, which is too early. This must have arisen from confusion between those events and the earlier invasion in 615. Moreover, Khusro (as we know) died in a palace coup, not at the hands of the Turks. Shiruya’s immediate successor was his son Ardashir, not one of Khusro’s daughters. But, those errors aside, it seems that, just as the propaganda of Heraclius had downplayed the role of the Turks, they themselves exaggerated it. They went as far as to claim direct involvement in Iranian affairs, ruling through a governor-general, and murdering unwanted rulers. I see no reason to doubt that the Turks really made such boasts, though they are surely false. Since the Turkish claims are aware of a queen, they could not have been advanced sooner than 630 or 631, the respective years in which Buran and Azarmidukht reigned and died.[46] And so the false memory of Turkish supremacy must have arisen after Taizong had smashed the eastern khaghanate — consolation, perhaps, after that humiliation.
I began with the theme of decline, and I shall end with it. The conquest of the Persian empire and the Roman Near East was achieved by the followers of Muhammad, not by those of Tong and Shipi. There is a real sense in which the last struggle between Rome and Persia marks the end of an age for the main belligerents, and a new beginning for the Arabs. But this was not the case for the Turks, whose heyday was still to come. The Arabs had a glorious moment of triumph, but it was only a moment. Local Iranian dynasties asserted their independence from Baghdad, and the Caliphate quickly ceased to be ‘Arabian’. It is true that, in the eighth century, the Gök Türk Empire broke up into its constituent tribes, but one of these — the Oghuz — was to have a glorious future. From the Oghuz were descended both the Seljuks who conquered Iran in the eleventh century, and the Ottomans who captured Constantinople in 1453. Mehmet the Conqueror succeed where Khusro and the Caliphs had failed. And a possible descendant of Tong and Shipi possessed the ruins of Baghdad and Ctesiphon, and all the holy places of Mecca and Jerusalem, ruling from the city of Constantine as both Emperor of the Romans and Commander of the Faithful until 1923 — when the last vestiges of the old world were finally swept away.
[1] Polybius, VI.57; Sallust, Cat., 10.1–5.
[2] Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Pr. 9–10; Tacitus, Annales, I.ii–iv, for instance.
[3] Ammianus, Res Gestae, XVI.4; XXVIII.4.
[4] Bowersock, G. W., ‘The Dissolution of the Roman Empire’ in Yoffee, N. / Cowgill, G. L. (eds), The Collapse of Ancient States and Civilizations, The University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 1988, p. 165–175.
[5] For a good example, see George’s Hexaemeron, l. 369–378, and others discussed in Howard-Johnston, J., Witnesses to a World Crisis, 2010, p. 29; 35.
[6] Especially Sebeos, p. 72.
[7] Vita S. Georgii Chozebitae, c. 18 (p. 117: l. 12 to 118: l. 6); Vita S. Theodori, v. II, 127.14–20; 134.20–34 (on these sources, see Howard-Johnston, J., Witnesses to a World Crisis, p. 167–171); Life of George, p. 475–477. For discussion of eschatological expectation at the time, see Shoemaker, S. J., The Apocalypse of Empire: Imperial Eschatology in Late Antiquity and Early Islam, 2018, p. 74–79 and Reinink, G. J., “Heraclius, the New Alexander: Apocalyptic Prophecies in the Reign of Heraclius,” in Reinink, G. J. / Stolte, R. H., The Reign of Heraclius (610– 641): Crisis and Confrontation, 2002, p. 81–94.
[8] For apocalypticism and the imminent Day of Judgement in the Qur’an, see surahs 10:61; 35:18; 44:41–42; 53:36–39; 67:13–14; 81:1–14; 82:1–19; and 99.
[9] Doctrina Jacobi, III.10. My translation.
[10] Here are some of the more prominent analyses of Mazdaksim: Jackson Bonner, M. R., Al-Dinawari’s Kitab al-Akhbar al-Tiwal, p. 86–90; de Blois, F., “A New Look at Mazdak,” in Bernheimer, T. / Silverstein, A (eds), Late Antiquity: Eastern Perspectives, 2012, p. 1–24; Wiesehöfer, J., “Kawad, Khusro I and the Mazdakites: A New Proposal,” in Gignoux, P. / Jullien, C. / Jullien, F. (eds), Trésor d’Orient: Mélanges offerts à Rika Gyselen, 2009, p. 391–409; Crone, P., “Kavad’s Heresy and Mazdak’s Revolt,” Iran, v. 29, 1991, p. 21–42; Gaube, H., “Mazdak: Historical Reality or Invention,” Studia Iranica 11, 1982, p. 111–122; Klíma, O., Beiträge zur Geschichte des Mazdakismus, 1977; Pigulevskaja, N. V., Les Villes de l’état iranien aux époques parthe et sassanide: contribution à l’histoire sociale de la basse antiquité, 1964, p. 105, 206; Klíma, O., Mazdak: Geschichte einer sozialen Bewegung im sasanidischen Persien, 1957; Altheim, F. / Stiehl, R., Ein Asiatischer Staat: Feudalismus unter den Sasanidischen und ihren Nachbarn, 1954; and Christensen, A., Le Règne du roi Kawadh I et le communisme mazdakite, 1925.
[11] Bonner, M., The Last Empire of Iran, 2020, p. 212–218.
[12] Howard-Johnston, J., “The Sasanian Strategic Dilemma,” Commutatio et Contentio: Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and Early Islamic Near East in Memory of Zeev Rubin, ed. Börm, H. / Wiesehöfer, J., 2010, p. 37–70.
[13] Bonner, M., The Last Empire of Iran, 2020, p. 268–271.
[14] Rose, J., Zoroastrianism: An Introduction, 2011; Skjærvø, P. O., An Introduction to Zoroastrianism, 2005; Boyce, Zoroastrians, p. 181–191; 192–228.
[15] Payne, R., “Cosmology the Expansion of the Iranian Empire, 502–628 CE,” Past and Present, no. 220, 2013, p. 3–33.
[16] Chronicon Paschale, p. 706–709.
[17] I explored some of these counterfactuals in Bonner, M., “Lessons from the Last Empire of Iran,” Quillette, 31 July, 2020 (retrieved from https://quillette.com/2020/07/31/lessons-from-the-last-empire-of-iran/).
[18] Howard-Johnston, J., “Al-Tabari on the Last Great War of Antiquity” in Howard- Johnston, J. (ed.), East Rome, Sasanian Persia and the End of Antiquity: Historio- graphical and Historical Studies, Aldershot, 2006, p. 1–22; Howard-Johnston, J., “Pride and Fall: Khusro II and his Regime, 626–628,” in Gnoil, G., Academia Na- zionale dei Lincei, 2004, p. 93–113.
[19] Moses Daskhurantsi, II.12, p. 89–90 (Dowsett’s translation).
[20] Howard-Johnston, J., “The Sasanians’ Strategic Dilemma,” p. 66.
[21] Golden, P., An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples, Harrassowitz, 1992, p. 76–79.
[22] Liu, M.-T., Die Chinesischen Nachrichten zur Geschichte der Ost-Türken (T’u-küe), 1. Texte, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 1958, p. 11.
[23] Sinor, D., “The Establishment and Dissolution of the Turk Empire” in Sinor, D. (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, Cambridge, 1990, p. 297. I have altered some of the spellings to conform with my own. For some analysis, see Hoyland, R., In God’s Path, 2015, p. 18–20.
[24] Ross, E. D. / Thomsen, V., “The Orkhon Inscriptions: Being a Translation of Professor Vilhelm Thomsen's Final Danish Rendering,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1930,
p. 861–876.
[25] Barfield, T. J., The Perilous Frontier, p. 132–143; Grousset, R., The Empire of the Steppes, p. 82.
[26] Bonner, M., The Last Empire of Iran, 2020, p. 40–42.
[27] Bonner, M., The Last Empire of Iran, 2020, p. 74–78.
[28] Bonner, M., The Last Empire of Iran, 2020, p. 93–120.
[29] Sauer, E. / Nokandeh, J., / Pitskhelauri, K. / Rekavandi, H. O., “Innovation and Stagnation: Military Infrastructure and the Shifting Balance of Power Between Rome and Persia,” in Sauer, E. (ed.), Sasanian Persia: Between Rome and the Steppes of Eurasia, 2017, p. 241–267. On the Gurgan Wall in general, see Sauer, E. W. / Rekavandi, H. O. / Wilkinson, T. J. / Nokandeh, J., Persia’s Imperial Power in Late Antiquity: The Great Wall of Gorgan and Frontier Landscapes of Sasanian Iran, Oxbow, 2013.
[30] Bonner, M., The Last Empire of Iran, 2020, p. 151–214.
[31] Barfield, T., The Perilous Frontier, p. 136–138; Wright, A. F., The Sui Dynasty, p. 188.
[32] Sebeos, 101–102. Sebeos calls the Hephthalites kings ‘Kushans’. For analysis see Thomson, R. W. / Howard-Johnston, J., The Armenian History Attributed to Sebeos, part 2: Historical Commentary, p. 186.
[33] Theophanes, Chronographia, p. 316; De la Vaissière, E., “Ziebel Qaghan Identified,” in Zuckerman, C. (ed.), Constructing the Seventh Century, Travaux et mémoires 17, 2013, p. 741–748.
[34] Xiong, V. C., Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty: His Life, Times, and Legacy, 2006, p. 63–66; Wright, A. F., The Sui Dynasty, p. 195.
[35] Ferdowsi, Khusraw-i Parviz, l. 234–238; Howard-Johnston, J., Witnesses to a World Crisis, p. 352.
[36] Howard-Johnston, J., Witnesses to a World Crisis, p. 440.
[37] Bonner, M., The Last Empire of Iran, 2020, p. 290–291.
[38] Bonner, M., The Last Empire of Iran, 2020, p. 294–304.
[39] Theophanes, Chronographia, p. 316; Moses Daskhurantsi, p. 82–85; Nicephorus, Breviarium, 12; Howard-Johnston, “The Sasanian’ Strategic Dilemma,” p. 65; Howard-Johnston, “Heraclius’ Persian Campaigns,” p. 24.
[40] Moses Daskhurantsi, p. 88. Dowsett’s translation.
[41] Moses Daskhurantsi, p. 104–105; Hoyland, R., In God’s Path, p. 32.
[42] Moses Daskhurantsi, p. 106.
[43] Bonner, M., The Last Empire of Iran, 2020, p. 315–316. The chronology of this period is difficult to determine. Shahr-Baraz was definitely the highest authority in the empire of Iran at the end of the 620s, and he is credited with the return of the True Cross; but he was not crowned until 27 April in the year 630 (Greatrex, G. / Lieu, S. N. C., The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars, p. 227–228).
[44] Barfield, T. D., The Perilous Frontier, p. 142–145.
[45] I am referring to the Xin Tang Shu, the New Book of Tang, which I cannot read, but there is a serviceable translation of the relevant part of it in Tashakori, A., Iran in Chinese Dynastic Histories, p. 100–105, and also in Chavannes, E., Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux. Recueillis et commentés par Édouard Chavannes, 1900, p. 171. I have modified Tashakori’s translation slightly, and replaced Chinese renderings of Middle Persian names with their more usual modern equivalents wherever possible.
[46] Bonner, M., The Last Empire of Iran, 2020, p. 313–318.