Sassanid Rise & Fall

Sassanid Rise & Fall

Many legends surround the origins of the Sassanid dynasty (226-650 AD) and the role of its eponymous founder in ancient Persia. One tradition relates that Sassan was a prince who married the daughter of the king of Persis and whose son, Papak, the father of Ardeshir I, overthrew his grandfather to claim the throne. According to Iranvisitor website, another tradition states that Sassan was a shepherd working for King Papak who was given the king’s daughter’s hand in marriage after the king had a dream that their son would grow up to rule the world. Still, another has Sassan as a high-ranking Zoroastrian priest in the city of Istakhr near Persepolis. It is, therefore, unclear what relation Ardeshir I (226-241 AD), the first Sassanid king, bore to the founder of the dynasty.

Expansion
On claiming the kingship of Fars after the death of his father, Ardeshir I quickly began to expand his territory by taking over the surrounding provinces like Isfahan, Kerman, Susiana and Mesene in quick succession.
This brought him into conflict with the Parthian suzerain king, Artabanus IV, and war began between the fading Parthians and the invigorated Sassanids. In 224, Artabanus was killed in the fighting and it was only left for Ardeshir to begin taking over the territories of the now-defunct Parthian Empire. Ardeshir moved west, intending to reunify the Persian Empire of the Achaemenids from whom he claimed direct descent. He successfully captured Mesopotamia and made Ctesiphon his winter capital, but his progress was eventually halted by the Romans at the Euphrates River. Like Darius before him, the rule of Ardeshir was occupied with protecting his borders from powerful enemies and putting down the internal strife that had resulted from the fall of the previous monarch.
The son of Ardeshir, Shapur I (241-272 AD), continued his father’s work in battling the Romans. In 244, Shapur signed a very advantageous peace treaty with the usurper Emperor Philip of Syria, but war resumed in 251 and Shapur conquered Armenia, invaded Syria and plundered Antioch.

Dynastic Struggles
The period between the death of Shapur I in 272 and the accession of Shapur II in 310, saw a series of dynastic struggles with the Romans, which culminated in the three sons of Hormizd II (302-309 AD) being respectively murdered, blinded and imprisoned.
The throne was reserved for an unborn child being carried by one of his wives. The child king Shapur II (310-379 AD) was therefore crowned in utero and born king.
Once the young Shapur II was old enough to rule, he began wars that both expanded and strengthened the empire. In the west, the Romans were pacified and Armenia was once again under Persian control. In the east, the Kushans had been defeated and Persian rule extended to the borders of China.

New Order
Further centralization occurred under Khosro I (531-579 AD), also known as Anurshirvan, the Just. Khosro was perhaps the greatest of the Sassanid kings, his rule ushering in the second period of Persian greatness under the Sassanids.
Through systematic taxation, town building, and military and bureaucratic reform, Khosro brought new order to the empire. With the Roman Emperor Justinian, Khosro struck a very profitable deal by which he received a large quantity of gold in return for peace, though he was, it would appear, genuinely in favor of ending the war which he considered to be senseless in any case.
Peace enabled the intellectual life of the empire to flourish and many learned men of different nationalities enjoyed the patronage of the king, who himself had a keen interest in history and philosophy.
By the time Khosro II (591-628 AD), grandson of Khosro I, had ascended the throne, war with the Romans (now Byzantium) had restarted. His army captured Syria and Beit-ul-Moqaddas.
Khosro also went on to campaign successfully in Egypt and these initial successes won him the title of Khosro Parviz (Khosro, the Victorious). It was during this period that the monumental reliefs at Taq-e Bostan were carved on such a confident scale.
However, Khosro II lacked the wisdom of his grandfather and his court was characterized by wastefulness and pomp. Though it is true that Firouzabad and Ctesiphon were magnificent cities and the arts were flourishing as never before, his despotism and indolence had aroused much opposition.
Toward the end of his reign, Byzantium retaliated under the emperor Heraclius and made deep inroads into Persian territory. Khosro II fled from the advancing armies without offering resistance and a subsequent palace revolt led to his imprisonment and murder at the hands of his son and heir Kavadh II.
Kavadh II died within months of ascending the throne after having put his father and 18 brothers to death. The fratricide in the royal family had by then reached such proportions that there were no men left to succeed the throne. This paved the way for two Sassanid princesses, Pouran-Dokht and Azarmi-Dokht, to rule the declining empire.
The last Sassanid king, Yazdegerd III (632-652 AD), was no more than a boy when he came to power and was dominated by his powerful advisers. It was now no longer the Romans who threatened his tightly organized armies. The Arab army pressed Yazdegerd III to flee northeast to what is now Turkmenistan. He was murdered in 652 while on the run.
The victories of Arabs at the decisive battles of Qadisiya and Nahavand in 642 signaled the end of the Sassanid dynasty and the beginning of Islam’s inroad into Persia.