VOL 5.8

When his message was brought to her, she said, "I have fallen in

with his wishes, so let him send what he has mentioned." Hence

he sent to her four thousand chests, with two men inside each

chest. Now Samarqand had four gates, with four thousand men by

each gate. He fixed as a sign of recognition between himself and

them the striking of camel bells, and gave orders regarding that to

the envoys he sent with them. When they got inside the city, he

had the camel bells struck; they sprang out [from the chests] and

seized control of the gates. Shamir led a frontal attack with his

troops and entered the city, killing its populace and seizing as

plunder everything within it . 368 He then marched onward to

China. He encountered the hosts of the Turks, put them to flight,

and went on to China, but found that Hassan b. Tubba' had preceeded

him by three years. According to what certain people have

mentioned, the two of them remained in China until they died,

their stay there extending to twenty-one years.

He related: Those who have asserted that they both remained in

China until they died have said that Tubba' built [a chain of]

lighthouses ( al-manar ) spanning the expanse between him and

them, and when any affair of moment occurred, they lit fire beacons

at night, and the news was thereby conveyed in a single

night. He laid down as a sign between him and them that, "If I

light two fires at my end, this signifies the death of Ya'fur, and if I

light three fires, that means the death of Tubba'; whereas, if a

single fire is kindled at their end, it means the death of Hassan,

and if two fires, the death of both of them." They kept to this

arrangement, until he lit two fires, and that signified the death of

Ya'fur, and then he lit three fires, and that signified the death of

Tubba'.

368. A Persian popular etymology derived the city's name (presumably after its

supposed rebuilding) from this legendary episode, Shamir hand "Shamir

destroyed, uprooted (it)," according to yamzah al-Isfahanl, 108.

Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

145

He related: According to the story generally agreed upon,

Shamir and Hassan returned via the road they had previously

taken when they had originally started out, until they came into

Tubba ,, s presence with the wealth they had obtained in China

plus various kinds of jewels, perfumes, and slave captives. Then

they all went back together to their own land, Tubba’ traveled

onward till he reached Mecca, where he lodged in the ravine of the

cook shops ( al-matabikh ). 369 Tubba' died in Yemen. None of the

kings of Yemen after him ever sallied forth from Yemen on raids

to any other land. His reign lasted for one hundred and twenty-one

years.

He related: It is said that Tubba' had become a convert to Judaism

because of the rabbis (al-ahbdr), a large group of whom had

gone from Yathrib to Mecca with him . 370 He related: They say

that Ka'b al-Ahbar's lore came from the surviving material those

rabbis had bequeathed; Ka'b al-Ahbar came from the Himyar 371

369. Tubba"s coming to Mecca and his designs against the Ka'bah are treated in

more detail by al-Tabari at I, 90 iff., pp. 164ft. below. In giving this story, also from Ibn Ishaq, the historian of Mecca al-Azraqi specifies that al-shi'b min al-matabikh got its name because Tubba' set up his own kitchens in the ravine of Mecca later called that of the early Umayyad governor of the city, 'Abdallih b. 'Amir b. Kurayz [Kitab akhbaz Makkah, I, 85).

370. We certainly know of the presence of Judaism in pre-lslamic Yathrib, the

Islamic Medina, notably from the story of the Prophet M uhamma d's relations

with the local Jewish tribes there after he had made the hijrah from Mecca to

Medina. These Jews must have emigrated from Palestine to setlements along the

Wad! al-Qura in western Arabia, Yathrib being the farthest south of these colo-

nies; the stimulus for this migration may well have been the fall of Jerusalem in

a . d . 70 or the aftermath of Bar Kokhba's revolt. i.e., after a . d . 1 3 5 . The term used for "rabbi" in early Arabic, habr/hibr, given the Arabic broken plural ahbdt, stems directly from Hebrew haber, and was already known in pre-lslamic Arabia. See C. C. Torrey, The Jewish Fovmdation of Islam, 34; A. Jeffery, The Foreign Vocabulary of the Qur’an, 49-50. Al-Khwarazmi, Mafdtlh al-vlum, 35, equates al-habr with the Muslim al-'alim.

How the town which became the Islamic Medina/al-Madmah had acquired its

earlier name of Yathrib (still appearing in Qur’an, XXXIII, 13) is uncertain, but the name is undoubtedly ancient. A cuneiform inscription from Harran mentions yaat-ri-bu as one of die towns in Arabia to which Nabu-na’id or Nabonidus of

Babylon (r. 556-539 b.c.) penetrated; in the Greek geographer Ptolemy we have

Iathrippa; and in Minaean inscriptions we find Ytrb. See Buhl, Das Leben

Muhammeds, 201 n. 1 > F. Rosenthal, introd. to Torrey, The Jewish Fo unda tion of Islam , repr. p. xi; El 2 , s.v. al-Madina. i. History to 1926 (W. M. Watt).

371. Abu Ishaq Ka'b al-Aljbar ("Ka'b of the rabbis") was a Yemeni convert from

Judaism to Islam, probably in 17/638 (thus in al-Tabari, I, 2514), dying in 32/652-

53 or shortly afterward. He was considered the greatest authority of his time on

Judaeo-Islamic traditions, the Isrd'iliyydt, and also on South Arabian lore. See EP,

s.w. Isra’iliyyat (G. Vajda) and Ka'b al-Ahbar (M. Schwitz).

146 Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

As for Ibn Ishaq's account, he has mentioned that the member of

the Tubba* dynasty who went to the Orient was Tubba' the Second

( al-akhar) } namely, Tubba* Tuban As'ad Abu Karib b. Malki

Karib b. Zayd b. 'Amr Dhi al-Adh'ar, who was the father of

Hassan 372 Ibn Humayd transmitted that information to us, saying

that he had it from Salamah. 373

[Kisra I Anusharwan]

Then there assumed the royal power Kisra Anusharwan, son of

Qubadh, son of Fayruz, son of Yazdajird (II), son of Bahram (V)

Jur. 374 When he became king, he wrote letters to the four

Fadhusbans, each of whom was governor over a region of the land

of Persia, and to their subordinate officials. 375 The text of his

letter to the Fadhusban of Azerbaijan is as follows:

372. This genealogy in Ibn Hisham, Shat al-nabi, ed. Wiistenfeld, 12 - ed. al-

Saqqa et alii, I, 20, tr. A. Guillaume, 6. As'ad Abu Karib is attested in the inscrip-

tions as reigning ca. a.d. 425.

373. Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad b. Humayd al-RazI (d. 248/862) was one of al-

Tabari's most important transmitters, in both his History and his Tafsir, especially

as a second-generation rawi for Ibn Ishaq, and it is very often Abu 'Abdallah

Salamah b. al-Fa<Jl al-Ansari (d. 191/806) who provides the link between the two

scholars. See Sezgin, GAS, I, 242; Rosenthal, The History of al-Tabari, an Anno-

tated Translation, I, General Introduction and From the Creation to the Flood,

17-19, 172 n. 26, 174 n. 49.

374. . Kisra, the Arabized form of MP Husraw (thus according to Gignoux) or

Khusroy, and NP Khusraw, Greek Chosroes, going back to Avestan haosrawah-,

"of good reputation," a name stemming from the Persian legendary past; in Fir-

dawsi, Kay Khusraw is the son of Siyawush and Farangls (for Wasfafrid), daughter

of Afrasiyab, who is the victorious leader of the host of Iran against Turan, and the vanquisher and slayer of Afrasiyab. See Justi, Namenbuch, 134-39; Bartholomae, Altiranisches Worterbuch, cols. 1737-38; Mayrhofer, Die althanischen Namen, no. 167; Gignoux, Noms propres sassanides, no. 465,- Yarshater, "Iranian National History," 375-76. Because the two prolonged reigns of Khusraw I Anusharwan (531-79) and Khusraw II Abarwez (590 and 591-628) made them especially well known to the Arabs, and because those monarchs' actions impinged very much on the history of the pre-Islamic Arabs and the beginnings of Islam, the assumption arose among the Arabs that Kisra was a generic term for all the Persian kings, and it actually acquired a broken plural, al-Akasirah. SeeNoldeke, trans. 151 n. 1. For the component Anusharwan, see n. 332 above.

375. The exalted title Padhuspan stems from a non-Persian form corresponding

to MP paygos, "land, region," + the suffix -pan. The Padhuspans of the four quarters of the Sasanid empire seem to have been the civil administration counterparts of the Ispahbadhs or provincial military commanders (on Khusraw Anusharwan's division of the supreme military command into four commands corresponding to the quarters of the empire, see al-Tabari, I, 894, p. 149 below), although the civil and military functions doubtless often overlapped in frontier regions. In some sources, notably al-Ya'qubi, Ta’rlkh, I, 260, the Padhusp&n is placed under the control of the Ispabadh. See Noldeke, trans. 15 1 n. 2, 445-46 Excursus 3; Christensen, Sassanides, 139, 265, 352, 519.

Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

147

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, 376

from the King Kisra, son of Qubadh, to Wari,

son of the Nakhlrjan, 377 Fadhusban of Azerbaijan and Armenia

and their territories, and Dunbawand and Tabaristan and their

adjacent territories, 378 and his subordinate officials,

greetings! The thing that most strikes fear

into the hearts of people is the feeling of deprivation felt

by those who fear the ending of their state of comfortable

living, the eruption of civil disorders, and the advent of

unpleasant things to the best of individuals, one after the

other of such individuals, in regard to their own persons,

their retainers, their personal wealth, or what is dearest to

them. We know of no cause for fear or absence of a thing

that brings more crushing ill-fortune for the generality of

people, nor one likely to bring about universal disaster,

than the absence of a righteous king. 379

376. It is hardly conceivable that the Sasanids should have used the exact form

of the Islamic basmalah; whether they used a corresponding formula at the open-

ing of their chancery documents, etc., is unknown, although Mr F. C. de Blois

points out that extant Pahlavi texts (known, of course, in Islamic-period manu-

scripts) often begin with the formula pad nam i yazadan "by the name of the

gods," or words to the same effect. He cites Saul Shaked, "Some Iranian Themes in Islamic Literature," 1 52-54, who is skeptical, however, that there was any Persian influence on Islam in this regard.

377. This appears both as a family name and as a title, but was perhaps originally

a patronymic. In al-Baladhuri, Futuh, 262, we have this same form, al-Nakhirjan,

as the name or title of the defender of al-Mada’in against the Arabs of 'Umar's

army. See Noldeke, trans. 152 n. 2. N. a of Noldeke's text suggests the possible

reading Zadhuyah for the son of the Nakhlrjan, which would make more sense

than the unusual Wari.

378. These would be the territories making up the "northern quarter" of the

realm, the arrangements made by Khusraw Anusharwan being variously defined in an Armenian source and in the later Islamic historians and geographers: see n. 385 below.

379. As Noldeke remarks, trans. 1 5 3 n. 2, the sententious and moralizing tone of

the document (this being merely its introduction) is not untypical of what we

know of Sasanid chancery documents.

148 Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

When Kisra had gained firm control of power, he took measures

to extirpate the religious beliefs of a hypocritical person from the

people of Fasa, called Zaradhusht, son of Khurrakan, 380 a new

faith which he had brought into existence within the Mazdaean

religion. A considerable number of people followed him in that

heretical innovation, and his movement became prominent on

account of this. Among those who carried out missionary work for

him among the masses was a certain man from M.dh.riyyah (?)

called Mazdaq, son of Bamdadh. 381 Among the things he ordained

for people, made attractive to them, and urged them to adopt, was

holding their possessions and their families in common. He proclaimed

that all this was part of the piety that is pleasing to God,

and that He will reward with the most handsome of recompenses,

and that, if that religious faith he commanded them to observe

and urged them to adopt were not to exist, the truly good way of

behavior, the one which is pleasing to God, would lie in the common

sharing or property. With those doctrines, he incited the

lower classes against the upper classes. Through him, all sorts of

vile persons became mixed up with the best elements of society,

criminals seeking to despoil them of their possessions found easy

ways to do this, tyrannical persons had their paths to tyranny

facilitated, and fornicators were able to indulge their lusts and get

their hands on high-born women to whom they would never have

[894] been able to aspire. Universal calamity overwhelmed the people

to an extent they had never before experienced. 382

380. Fasa was an important town and district of southeastern Fars. See Yaqut,

Buldan, IV, 260-61, • Le Strange, Lands, 290-, Schwarz, 97-100; Barthold, Historical Geography, 152-53; EP-, s.v. Fasa (L. Lockhart). That Zaradhusht came from Fasa is stated in the Denkard. See Noldeke, trans. 456; Crowe, "Kavad's Heresy and Mazdak's Revolt," 24.

381. The sources variously attribute Mazdak to this mysterious M.dh.riyya

(which Noldeke, trans. 154 n. 3, compared with Manadhir in Susiana and which

Christensen, Le r 'egne du roi Kawadh /"• 100, sought to interpret as Madharayya in Lower Iraq), to I§$akhr in Fars (al-Dinawari, al-Akhbar al-tiwal, 65), and to Nasa in Khurasan (al-Biruni, al-Athdr al-baqiyah, 209). See Noldeke, trans. 457 and n. 3,- Crone, "Kawad's Heresy and Mazdak's Revolt," 24.

382. The question of whether there were two Mazdakite revolts, one toward the

end of Kawad's reign and another one at Khusraw's accession or shortly after it, and the exact timing of the revolt(s) anyway, has been much discussed. Most recently, Crone has suggested that it is simplest to assume that a single revolt broke out on Khusraw's acession in 531, at a time when he was combating the rival succession claims of his elder brother Kawus and military control over the realm was obviously relaxed. Khusraw may have bought time by offering the Makdakites some degree of toleration, and he certainly brought the protracted, but by now rather desultory war with Justinian to an end. Once firmly in command of affairs, lamma istahkama lahu al-mulk, as al-Tabari, 1 , 893, puts it, he turned on the Mazdakites, massacred them and gradually restored order in the land. A terminus ad quern for this would be $ 40 / when Khusraw resumed the war with Byzantium. See Crone, 30-33-

Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

149

Hence Kisra forbade the people 383 to act in accordance with any

of the heretical innovations of Zaradusht, son of Kharrakan, and

Mazdaq, son of Bamdadh. He extirpated all their heresy, and he

killed a great number of their fervid adherents and did not allow

himself to be deflected from any of what he had forbidden the

people. [He further killed] a group of the Manichaeans, and made

firm for the Magians the religion they had always held.

Before Kisra became king, the office of Isbahbadh— that is, the

supreme commander of the armed forces — was held by one man,

who was responsible for this supreme command over all the

land . 384 Kisra now divided this office and rank between four Isbahbadhs, namely, the Isbahbadh of the East, comprising Khurasan

and its adjoining regions; the Isbahbadh of the West; the Isbahbadh

of Nlmruz, that is, the land of Yemen; and the Isbahbadh of Azerbaijan

and its adjoining regions, that is, the Khazar lands 385 He

383. The syntax here is somewhat unusual in that we have verb-object-subject

instead of the normal verb-subject-object, but one only derives sense if Kisra is

taken as the subject and al-nas as the object, as here and as in Noldeke's translation, "Da verbot nun Chosrau . .

384. This is the isbahbadh al-bilad/Eran-spabbed of al-Tabari, I, 885, p. 131

above.

385. The division of the realm into four quarters (probably in MP, kustag; Ara-

bic, rub', nabiya ), described by their geographical orientation, is attested to in the

Armenian geography ascribed to Moses Khorenac'i, which considers the various

places in the Persian lands according to a division of (1) K'usti Khorbaran, the

West; (a) K'usti Nemroy, the midday region, the South; (3} K'usti Khorasan, the

East; and K'usti Kapkoh, the direction of the Caucasus, the North. See Marquart,

EranSahr, 16-17, and for the exact delimitation in this work of the Quarter of the

South, see n. 969 below. The Islamic sources have similar information about these

divisions. Thus Ibn Khurradadhbih, Kitab al-masalik wa-al-mamalik, 118: Jibal

and its components, Rayy, Azerbaijan, Tabaristan, Dunbawand, and Qumis,- al-

Ya'qubi, Ta'rikh, I, 201-202: Tabaristan, Rayy, Jibal, and its components, and

Azerbaijan; al-Dinawari, al-Akbar al-fiwSI, 67: Isfahan, Qum, Jibal, Azerbaijan and Armenia, See Ndldeke, trans. 155 n. 2; and the discussion in Marquart, EranSahr, 94-95. The Khazar lands were never, of course, controled by the Sasanids (or any other rulers of Persia), and the mention of this Turkish people in a context as early as the first part of the sixth century is an anachronism anyway; see further n. 390 below.

Holders of Power after Ardashlr b. Babak

saw in this new arrangement a way of improving the good ordering

of his kingdom. He strengthened the fighting quality of the soldiers

with weapons and mounts . 386 He recovered lands belonging

to the kingdom of Persia, some of which had slipped out of the

hand of King Qubadh and into the control of other monarchs of the

nations, through various causes and reasons, including Sind, Bust,

al-Rukhkhaj, Zabulistan, Tukharistan, Dardistan, and Kabulistan . 387

He inflicted extensive slaughter among a people

called the Bariz, transported the remaining ones of them from

their land, and resettled them in various places of his kingdom.

They submitted to him as his servants, and he utilized them in his

military campaigns 388 He gave orders for another people, called

the Sul, to be made captives, and they were brought before him.

386. For Khusraw's military reforms, see al-Tabari, 1 , 963-65, pp. 262-63, andn.

633 below.

387. Bust, al-Rukhkhaj (classical Arachosia), Zabulistan, Kabulistan, and Dard-

istan (the pre-Islamic region of Gandhara, this name properly read in Noldeke's

text, whereas in his translation, 156, he had read it, with justifiable doubt, as

"Dihistan") were all in the southeastern or eastern part of what is now

Afghanistan, while Tukharistan (older Bactria) was in its northern part. It is possi-

ble that the success in the mid-s6os of the Western Turks against the Hephthalites

north of the Oxus, with the resultant fragmentation of the northern Hephthalite

kingdom, enabled the Persian king to extend Sasanid control toward the Oxus and

into Bactria (cf. al-Tabari, I, 899, p. 160 below). But Marquart, in his EranSahr, 32- 33, was dubious that Persian armies ever penetrated south of the Hindu Kush into eastern Afghanistan at this time, where the southern Hephthalite kingdom was to persist for a considerable time further, and hardly credible that they should have reached Sind. Later, however, in his "Das Reich Zabul und der Gott Zun vom 6.-9.

Jahrhundert," 257 n. 2, he apparently accepted that Khusraw did actually conquer

the Hephthalite lands south of the Hindu Kush as far as the borders of India. See

Noldeke, trans. 156 n. 1,* Ghirshman, Les Chionites-Hephtalites, 94; Widengren,

"Xosrau AnoSurvan, les Hephtalites et les peuples turcs," 69-74 (a penetrating

critique of the information in the various sources and the traditions they repre-

sent); Frye, "The Political History of Iran under the Sasanians," 156. For the re-

gions mentioned above, see EP, s.w. Bust ( J. Sourdel-Thomine), Dardistan (A. S.

Bazmee Ansari), Kabulistan (C. E. Bosworth), al-Ru khkh adj (idem), Zabulistan

(idem, forthcoming).

388. The mountain people of the Jabal Bariz in the southeastern part of Kirman

province seem to have supplied infantry for the Achaemenid armies, and were

always regarded as a bellicose and predatory race. In early Islamic times, various of the ruling dynasties of Persia launched punitive expeditions against these

Kufichls. See Bosworth, "The Kufichis or Qufs in Persian History," 9-17; EP

Suppl., s.v. Bariz, Djabal (idem).

Holders of Power after Ardashlr b. Babak 1 5 1

He commanded that they should be killed, except for eighty of

their boldest warriors, whom he spared and had settled at

Shahram Fayruz, where he could call upon them for his military

campaigns. 389 There was also a people called the Abkhaz, and

other ones of the B.n.j.r, Balanjar, and al-Lan, who came together

in a coalition to raid his lands. 390 They made an incursion into

Armenia in order to raid and despoil its people. Their route thither

was at that moment easy and unimpeded, and Kisra closed his

eyes to their activities until, when they had firmly established

themselves in his territories, he dispatched against them contingents

of troops, who fought with them, and exterminated them

apart for ten thousand of them, whom they took prisoner and then

settled in Azerbaijan and the neighboring regions. 391

389. For the $ul and Shahram Fayruz, see al-Tabari, 1 , 874, pp. 112-13 andn. 190

above.

390. The Abkhaz were, and still are, a people living on the eastern shores of the

Black Sea to the northwest of Georgia and on the southern slopes of the north-

western prolongation of the Caucasus range; under Soviet Russian rule there was

an Abkhazian ASSR within the Georgian SSR, now part of the independent Geor-

gian Republic. The lands of the Abkhaz were invaded by the Byzantine armies of

Justinian and the people converted to Christianity; subsequently, their history was

closely linked with the oher Christian peoples of the Georgians and Alans. See

Marquart, OsteuropSische und ostasiatische Streifzuge, 175-78; EP, s.v. Abkhaz

(W. Barthold- V. Minorsky). However, Marquart read al-Tabari's Abkhaz as al-

Khazai, without any discussion of the questions involved. If this were correct, it

would be an early mention of the appearance of this Turkish people in the steppes

north of the Caucasus; cf. D. M. Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazaxs, 23.

But whether it is possible to speak of the Khazars, in what was at this time then-

prehistory, as a separate Turkish people or just part of the Inner Asian Turk empire, is impossible to decide. See Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, D, 335-36; P. B. Golden, Khazar Studies, I, 49-50.

The Alans originally lived north of the Caucasus, but as a result of pressure from

the Huns, were pushed into the central Caucasus. At the time of Khusraw

Anusharwan they must have been still pagan, and were not converted to

Christianity till the early tenth century. Their modem descendants are the Ossetians. See Marquart, EranSahr, 65, 95, 105-06; idem, Streifzuge, 164-72; EP, s.v. Alan (Barthold-Minorsky), Marquart, op. cit., 16, also in Addenda et emendanda, p. dxci, took B.n.j.r for Bulghar, adducing the Pahlavi form Burgar for this Turkish people of the middle Volga basin and South Russian steppe; see EP, s.v. Bulghar (I. Hrbek). The Balanjar are here a people, but subsequently they gave their name to what became a weil-known city of the Turkish Khazars, in eastern Caucasia to the north of Darband or Bab al-Abwab. See Noldeke, 1 57 n. 3; Marquart, op. cit., 16-18; EP, s.v. Balandjar (D. M. Dunlop).

391. On this Caucasian campaign of Khusraw, see Christensen, Sassanides,

369-70; Hannestad, "Les relations de Byzance avec la Transcaucasie et l'Asie

Centrale aux s € et 6 e si&cles," 444-5 6; Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars, 22-23; Frye, "The Political History of Iran under the Sasanians," 155-56.

152, Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

King Fayruz had previously erected in the regions of the Sul and

al-Lan buildings of stone, with the intention of strengthening his

lands against the encroachments there of those nations. Moreover,

King Qubadh, son of Fayruz, had begun the construction,

after his father, of a great number of building works in those regions,

until, when Kisra achieved the royal power, he gave orders

for the construction in the region of the Sul, with stone hewn in

the vicinity of Jurjan, of towns, castles, fortified mounds, and

many other buildings, which would serve as a protection for the

people of his lands, where they might seek refuge from the enemy

in the event of a sudden attack. 392

The Khaqan Sinjibu was the most implacable, the most

courageous, the most powerful, and the most plentifully endowed

with troops of all the Turks. It was he who attacked W.r.z (?) the

king of the Hephthalites, showing no fear of the numerousness or

the fierce fighting qualities of the Hepththalites, and then killed

their king W.r.z and the greater part of his troops, seizing their

possessions as plunder and occupying their lands, with the exception

of the part of them that Kisra had conquered. 393 Khaqan won

392. See al-Tabari, I, 874, pp. 1 12-13 and n. 290 above.

393. The episode briefly noted here reflects the fact that the Hepththalites were

at this time squeezed between the growing might of the Sasanids under Khusraw

Anusharwan and that of the Western Turks of Ishtemi or Istemi (see n. 394 below) and, subsequently, his son Tardu (Qaghan by 576). In the years from 560 to 563 the Qaghan of the Western Turks invaded Transoxania, seized Chach (the later Tashkent) and defeated the Hephthalites near Bukhara. The Hepththalite state in Transoxania thus came to an end, although minor Hephthalite principalities continued in Sogdia and the upper Oxus lands, with the main focus of the surviving Hepththalite power now in eastern and southeastern Afghanistan south of the Paropamisus mountains and the Hindu Kush, and in northwestern India. As a share of the spoils from operations contemporary with those of the Turks, Khusraw now received Bactria, but was to lose it to the Turks shortly afterward.

The name W.r.z (text, W.z.r) is probably to be connected with the Avestan name

Varaza-, Middle Persian Waraz, Warazan, frequent also in compound names in

both Persian and Armenian, and meaning "boar, wild boar," especially as Ghirshman, Les Chionites-Hephtalites, 22-23, records an undated Hephthalite coin mentioning VRZ; whether this coin was issued by the W.r.z mentioned here is impossible to tell. See on the name Noldeke, trans. 240 n. i ; Justi, Namenbuch,

348-50; Mayrhofer, Die altiranischen Namen, no. 355; Gignoux, Noms propres

sassanides, nos. 940-44; Widengren, "Xosrau AnoSurvan, les Hephtalites et les

peuples turcs," 93 n. 4; and for the compound name Shahrbaraz/Shahrwaraz, n. 749 below. Among the titles of the petty princes of Khurasan at the time of the Arab invasions are mentioned Baraz-bandah in Gharchistan, ’.b.raz in Nasa, and Barazin in Herat, Bushanj, and Badhghis, according to Ibn Khurradadhbih, al-Masalik wa- al-mamalik, 39-40. The last king of the northern Hepththalites, the one defeated and killed by the Western Turks, appears in the contemporary Greek sources as Katoulphos. See Christensen, Sassanides, 501; Ghirshman, Les Chionites- Hephtalites, 23, 94-95; Moravcsik, Byzantinotuzcica, II, 156; Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes, 82-83,- Litvinsky, "The Hephthalite Empire," 143-44.

Holders of Power after Ardashlr b. Babak 153

over the Abkhaz, the B.n.j.r and the Balanjar to his side, and they

vouchsafed him their obedience. They informed him that the

kings of Persia had always sought to ward them off by paying

tribute, thereby securing safety from their raids on their (sc., the

Persians') lands. Khaqan now advanced with 1 10,000 warriors until

he reached the fringes of the land of the §ul. He sent a message

to Kisra, uttering threats and using peremptory language against

him, to the effect that Kisra must send to him treasure and to the

Abkhaz, the B.n.j.r, and the Balanjar the tribute money the Persian

kings had customarily paid before Kisra came to power. (He further

threatened] that, if Kisra did not expedite the forwarding of all

that he asked, he would enter his land and attack it. Kisra paid no

heed to his menaces and did not offer Khaqan a single item of what

he had demanded, since he had strongly fortified the region of the

gates of the §ul and had blocked the ways and the tracks through

defiles that the Khaqan Sinjibu would have to follow in order to

reach him. He also knew the strength of his defensive forces in the

frontier region of Armenia: five thousand warriors, cavalrymen,

and infantry. The Khaqan Sinjibu got word of Kisra's fortifying of

the frontier regions of the §ul, hence returned to his own land with

all his troops and with his intentions frustrated. Those of the

enemy who were massed against Jurjan were likewise, because of

the fortifications Kisra had built in its neighborhood, unable to

mount any raids on it and to conquer it. 394

394. Sinjibu is to be identified with the Turkish ruler mentioned by such Byzan-

tine historians as Menander Protector (on whom see Moravcsik, Byzantinotuzcica, 1, 422-26) in their accounts of the diplomatic and commercial exchanges between the Greeks and the Western Turks from 563 onward as Sizaboulos, Silziboulos, etc.

The reigning Western Turkish Qaghan at this time was Ishtemi or Istemi, the

IStmi or Stmi of the Orkhon inscriptions and the Stembischagan of Greek sources.

Marquart, EranSahr, 216-17, identified him with Silziboulos, but this is lin-

guistically difficult, and it is more likely that Silziboulos/Sinjibu, and his son

Turkhath, mentioned by Menander, were lesser Turkish rulers in the southern,

Transoxanian part of the extensive Turk empire. It has not so far been possible to

recover the (presumably) Turkish original form of Silziboulos/Sinjibu, • it seems to be rendered in the Chinese annals as Shi-li 6ao-wu. Marquart's analysis of the first element Silz- as connected with the Sir , the Seres of the Byzantine historian

Jordanes, who located this people as living east of the Caspian Sea, and whose

name seems to be enshrined in that of the Syr Darya river, is convincing, but his

equation of the second element with Yabghu, the Turkish title of the leader hold-

ing the rank just below that of the Qaghan ( EranSahr , loc. cit. and 247), is less so.

This war between Khusraw and the Turks — who, after the defeat of the

Hephthalites (see above), must have become uneasy neighbors in the Oxus

region — is to be placed in the late 560s. See Noldeke, trans. 158 n. 2, 159 n. i;

Grousset, The Empire of the Steppes, 82-83; Moravcsik, Byzantinoturcica, II, 275- 76, 29 1; H. W. Haussig, "Die Quellen viber die zentralasiatische Herkunft der europaischen Awaren," 31-32; Sinor, "The Establishment and Dissolution of the Turk Empire," 302-305; Sinor, "The Turk Empire. 1. The First Turk Empire (55 3— 682)," 332-33.

The Khaqan's advance to "the fringes of the land of $ul" (here, then, Arabic al-

Sul would correspond to the Armenian name for Darband, C'or) is taken by

Dunlop, The History of the Jewish Khazars, 24-25, as relating to Bab al-Abwab

(the habs "gates" being the mouths of the river valleys running down from the

mountains to the sea) or Darband, which commanded a particularly constricted

point on the narrow route between the western Caspian shore and the easternmost

spurs of the Caucasus. This would imply that the Western Turks were already

operating in the South Russian steppes and the Kuban steppes north of the

Caucasus, in the latter region perhaps through the agency of the tribal chief of the

Khazars (if, again, as in al-Tabari, I, 895, p. 151 above, one reads al-Khazar for

Abkhaz ). To Khusraw Anusharwan is traditionally ascribed the building of the

famous Wall of Darband, said to have been seven farsakhs long, to keep out the

northern barbarians as part of his general plan of fortifying the Caucasus region and thereby protecting Caucasian Albania or Arran and also Azerbaijan (impressive remains of fortifications are in fact still visible at Darband). However, many romantic and legendary elements were subsequently added to the story, e.g., in al- Baladhuri, Futuh, 195-96; Qudamah b. Ja'far, Kitab al-kharaj, 259-61, • Yaqut, Buldan, I, 304, s.v. Bab al-Abwab. See Minorsky, A History of Sharvan and Dotband, 14, 86-88, 144; Dunlop, op. cit., 24-26; El 1 ' s.v. Derbend (W. Barthold); EP-, s.v. Bab al-Abwab (D. M. Dunlop).

154

Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

The people had recognized Kisra Anusharwan's excellent judgment,

knowledge, intelligence, bravery, and resolution, combined

with his mildness and clemency toward them . 395 When he was

crowned, the great men of state and the nobles came into his

presence, and with all their might and eloquence called down

395. Noldeke, trans. 160 n. 2, notes that a new report on Khusraw's reign begins

here, one which stems, on the basis of parallel reports in other sources, both

Christian and Muslim, from Ibn al-Muqaffa'.

The image of Khusraw as a just, beneficent monarch, solicitous for the interests

of rich and poor alike, while vigorous and powerful enough to defend the borders of his realm against the Greeks in the west and the Hepththalites and Turks in the

east, and to extend Persian authority into lands as distant as Yemen, all contributed to the picture of an ideal ruler. Already, the Prophet Muhammad is said to have praised him as a just king, although the prevalent Islamic image of the Kisras, meaning the Sasanid kings in general, came to be one of regarding them as examples of supreme royal pride and pomp. Nevertheless, for Khusraw Anusharwan

Holders of Power after Ardashir b. fiabak

155

blessings on his head. When they had concluded their speeches, he

stood up and delivered an oration. He began by mentioning God's

favors on His people when He had created them, and his own

dependency on God for regulating their affairs and the provision of

foodstuffs and the means of life for them. He left nothing [which

ought to have been said] out of his oration. Then he told the people

what they had suffered [through the spreading of Mazdak's teachings];

 namely, the loss of their possessions, the destruction of theching

religion and the damage to their position regarding their children

and their means of life. He further informed them that he was

looking into ways and means of putting all that right and rendering

affairs strong again, and urged the people to aid him in this.

Next, he ordered the heads of the leaders of the Mazdakites to be

chopped off and their possessions to be shared out among the poor

and needy. 396 He killed a large number of those people who had

specifically, the image of him in the Islamic sources was in general positive, as can be discerned from anecdotes about him in adab works like die Kitab al-taj and the Kitab al-mahasin wa 'l-addad of Ps.-al-Jahi?, and the Maizuban-namah of Sa'd al- Din Waramini, as also in die "Mirrors for Princes" such as Kay Kawus b. Iskandar's Qabus-namah and Ni?am al-Mulk's Siyasat-namah ; often, he is linked with his supremely wise (semilegendary) vizier Buzurgmihr.

Even if there is truth in this picture— and certainly, the Sasanid empire reached

its apogee during his reign — it did not prevent Khusraw from being also a skillful exponent of Realpolitik, ready to use violence and terror to achieve his aims, and some of the later anecdotes about him stress his cunning and duplicity in dealing with opponents. The Christians of Persia had to endure some bouts of persecution during his time (although nothing as severe as that under Shabur n), usually linked with resumption of Byzantine-Persian warfare. The Catholicos Mar Aba, a former Zoroastrian, survived imprisonment in Azerbaijan but died of the hardships he had suffered after Khusraw released him in 5 5 2 . Clearly, the emperor must always have been careful to retain the support of the Zoroastrian priesthood. Yet, to be set against a natural feeling on the part of the Sasanid authorities that Persian Christians must inevitably have a prime loyalty, through religion, to their co- religionists in the west, many of the Persian Christians seem, in fact, to have felt a strong attachment to their native land, Persia, and their own ethnos as Persians, and this counterbalanced any feelings of religious solidarity with the Greeks, especially as Byzantium stood for Chalcedonian orthodoxy as against the dominant Nestorianism and, to a lesser extent, Monophysitism, in the Persia empire. At least one high commander in the Persian army is known to have been a Christian.

See for a detailed consideration of these attitudes, and the tensions between ethnos and faith which must often have been at work within the Persian Christian community, Asmussen, "Christians in Iran," 933-35, and Brock, "Christians in the

Sasanian Empire," 10-17.

At all events, there was, on the whole, during Khusraw's reign, some amelioration of the Christians' lot. According to John of Ephesus, the king allowed the

Monophysites to organize themselves within the realm and to choose a Catholicos

156 Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

confiscated other people's possessions, and restored these possessions

to their original owners. He commanded that every child

concerning whom there was dispute before him about his or her

origin should be attributed to that person in whose family the

child was, when the real father was not known, and that the child

should be given a [legal] share in the estate of the man to whom

the child was now attributed, provided that the latter acknowledged

the child. In regard to every woman who had been forced to

give herself unwillingly to a man, that man was to be held to

account and compelled to pay the bride price to her so that her

family was thereby satisfied. Then the woman was to be given the

choice between remaining with him or marrying someone else,

except that if she had an original husband, she was to be restored

to him. He further commanded that every man who had caused

harm to another person in regard to his possessions, or who had

committed an act of oppression against another person, should

make full restitution and then be punished in a manner appropriate

to the enormity of his offense. He decreed that, where those

responsible for the upbringing of the children of leading families

had died, he himself would be responsible for them. He married

the girls among them to their social equals and provided them

with their bridal outfit and necessities out of the state treasury,-

and he gave the youths in marriage to wives from noble families,

of their own. The peace treaty of 561 with Justinian promised freedom of worship

for Christians in Persia, and for Zoroastrians in the Byzantine lands, provided that

there was no proselytism between the two faiths (but the inference is that apostasy

from Zoroastrianism had been tolerated till then). A certain amount of intellectual

freedom and a spirit of enquiry seem to have characterized Khusraw's court, and

this was an innovation among the Sasanids. Some sources attribute to the emperor

himself an interest in philosophical ideas and in the tenets of other faiths. There

was indeed a movement for the translation of scientific, medical, and other works

from languages like Greek and Sanskrit into Middle Persian. Translations from

Sanskrit are especially attributed to the monarch's physician Burzoy. See Noldeke, trans. 160 n. 3; Labourt, Le Christianisme dans 1 ’empire perse, 177-90;

Christensen, Sassanides, 372-73, 374-440; Frye, "The Political History of Iran

under the Sasanians," 161-62; Asmussen, "Christians in Iran," 946; Wiesehofer,

Ancient Persia, 216-19; EP-, s.v. Kisra (M. J. Morony), and Tardjama. 2. Transla-

tions from Greek and Syriac (D. Gutas), 3. Translations from Middle Persian

(Pahlawi) (F. C. de Blois).

396. According to Noldeke, trans. 163 n. 1, other, later sources state that he

merely banished the leaders of the Mazdakites from his land. And among these

sources, Eutychius says that the confiscated goods and property were made into a

charitable foundation for the common benefit.

Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

157

presented them with money for dowries, awarded them sufficient

riches, and ordained that they should be members of his court so

that he might call upon them for filling various of his state offices.

He gave the wives of his [dead] father the choice between staying

with his own wives and sharing in their maintenance and provision,

and enjoying the same income as these last, or alternatively,

he would seek out for them husbands of the same social standing

as themselves. 397

He further ordained the digging of canals and the excavation of

subterranean irrigation conduits ( al-quni ), and provision of loans

for the owners of agricultural lands and support for them. He

likewise ordered the rebuilding of every wooden bridge or bridge of

boats [jisr] that had been destroyed and of every masonry bridge

( qantazah ) that had been smashed, and further ordered that every

village that had fallen into ruin should be restored to a better state

of prosperity than previously. He made enquiries about the

cavalrymen of the army ( al-asawirah ), and those lacking in in

resources he brought up to standard by allocating to them horses

and equipment, and earmarked for them adequate financial al-

lowances. He assigned overseers for the fire temples and provided

good roads for the people. Along the highways he built castles and

towers. He selected [good] administrators, tax officials, and governors,

and gave the persons appointed to these functions stringent

orders. He set himself to peruse the conduct, the writings, and the

legal decisions of Ardashir, and took them as a model to imitate,

urging the people to do likewise.

Once he had a firm grip on the royal power and all the lands

were under his control, and some years after he had been reigning,

he marched against Antioch, where were stationed leading commanders

of Qaysar's army, and conquered it. He then gave orders

that a plan should be made for him of the city of Antioch exactly

to scale (literally, "according to its extent"), with the number of

its houses, streets, and everything contained in it, and orders that

a [new city] should be built for him exactly like Antioch but situated

at the side of al-Mada’in. The city known as al-Rumiyyah was

built exactly on the plan of Antioch. He thereupon had the inhabitants

of Antioch transported and settled in the new city ; when

397. That is, the state of widowhood was, according to Persian custom, to be

avoided as far as possible.

158

Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

they entered the city's gate, the denizens of each house went to

the new house so exactly resembling their former one in Antioch

that it was as if they had never left the city . 398 Kisra now attacked

the town of Heraclea and conquered it, followed by Alexandria

and the lands extending up to it. He left behind a detachment of

398. The attack on Antioch was part of the resumed war of 540-43. Khusraw

had made peace with the Byzantines in 532, just after his accession, thus ending

the war that had begun toward the end of Kawad's reign (see n. 362 above): the

Persians had evacuated several fortresses in Lazica and the Byzantines had agreed

to pay a very substantial annual tribute in return for "eternal peace," since the

empire was being hard pressed by external enemies in the West; see Greatrex,

Rome and Persia at War, 502-53 2, 2 1 3-24. The resumption of war resulted from a general Byzantine resentment at the inferior position which the paying of tribute

implied, and from the sheer inability to keep up these payments at a time when the empire was being threatened on so many fronts, with military defense expenditure causing a disastrous drain on the Byzantine treasury. A considerable effort had been made in the early years of Justinian's reign (527-32) to continue the earlier work of Anastasius. Thus he improved Daras/Dara or Anastasiopolis, founded by Anastasius in 505 at a strategic point some 25 km/15 miles southeast of Mardin and facing the Persian bastion of Nisibin, which lay further to its southeast (see on it Yaqut, Buldan, II, 424; Le Strange, Lands, 96-97 ; Elr, s.v. Dara (M. Weiskopf ); Whitby, "Procopius' Description of Dara" ( Buildings II, 1-3)/ 737 -8 3, who describes and elucidates those of its buildings and defensive walls still visible), making it the single most important point in the Byzantine defensive system in Upper Mesopotamia. Justinian also strengthened the forward fortified points at such places as Circesium, Martyropolis, and Theodosiopolis. However, the "eternal peace" may have involved some restrictions on Byzantine frontier construction, and the emperor had in any case become involved in the defense of his western provinces. Hence when Khusraw marched against Antioch through the more weakly defended, more southerly middle Euphrates region, he found a city with deficiencies in its defenses, in part because of an earthquake some years previously. In June 540 he sacked it, a disastrous setback for the Greeks, in the course of which the overstretched Byzantine army was revealed as lacking the

manpower really to protect this and other cities of northern Mesopotamia and

northern Syria until troop reinforcements couild be brought up from further west

and the military position in Mesopotamia stabilized. See Cameron, Procopius and

the Sixth Century, 163-65,- Whitby, "Procopius and the Development of Roman

Defenses in Upper Mesopotamia," 726-29.

Meanwhile, Justinian had to agree to a truce on the basis of the Greeks paying an

indemnity and arrears of tribute. The new city for the dispossessed citizens of

Antioch on the Orontes was called by the Persian emperor Weh Andiyog Khosroy, "Khusraw [has built this] better than Antioch," and was popularly known by the Persians as Rumagan "town of the Greeks" = al-Rumiyyah; it formed part of the urban complex of al-Mada’in. See Noldeke, trans., 165 nn. 2-4; Bury, A History of the Later Roman Empire from Arcadius to Irene, I, 420-27; idem, History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian, I, 91-1x2; Christensen, Sassanides, 386-87; Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire, II, 486- 92; Frye, "The Political History of Iran under the Sasanians," 154-55; Shahid, Byzantium and the Arabs in the Sixth Century, I/i, 209-36.

Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

159

his troops in the land of the Romans after Qaysar had submitted to

him and had paid him ransom money. 399

He returned home from Rum and then took the field against the

Khazars, and sought revenge on them for the damage they had

wrought on him by afflicting his subjects. 400 Next, he turned his

atention to Aden. He blocked up part of the sea there which lay

between two mountains and is adjacent to the land of Abyssinia

(al-Habashah), with large ships, rocks, iron columns, and chains,

and he killed the great men of state of that land. 401 He then re-

turned to al-Mada’in, having brought under his control all those

regions of the land of Rum and Armenia that are situated on this

side of Heraclea plus the whole area between his capital and the

sea, 402 in the region of Aden. He appointed al-Mundhir b. al-

Nu'man as king over the Arabs and loaded him with honors. 403

Then he took up residence in his own kingdom at al-Mada’in, and

399. The truce was denounced by Justinian because of Persian operations in $41

in the Black Sea region of Lazica, which was adjacent to Byzantine defense points

in eastern Pontus and which had been recently Christianized, and because of what

were regarded as unjustified exactions of Khusraw from the people of the Byzantine fortified points and towns in Upper Mesopotamia during the previous year, leading to Persian invasions of Upper Mesopotamia in $42, of Armenia in S43, and of Upper Mesopotamia again in 344. In the course of this last campaign, Edessa was strenuously besieged by the Persians (see on this event, J. B. Segal, Edessa, ‘The Blessed City', 105, 113, 158-60). There does not, however, seem to have been at any of these times a Persian advance into southern Anatolia as far as Heracleia (the Hiraqlah of later Islamic historians and geographers, modem Eregli, see on it Yaqut, Bulddn, V, 398-99; Le Strange, Lands, 149; EP, s.v. Eregli ( J. H. Mordtmann-F. Taeschner), which, according to the contemporary church historian Evagrius Scholasticus, was not sacked by die Persians till much later, in the time of Justin II (r. 565-78). The mention of Alexandria (in Egypt!) must be a confusion with the Persian invasion of Egypt under Khusraw II Abarwez some seventy years later in the imperial reign of Heraclius (see al-Tabari, 1, 1002, pp. 318-19 below). But as al- Tabari says here, Edessa had been forced to pay an indemnity to the Persians after the final siege, and the peace or five years' truce of 545 beween Khusraw and Justinian involved the handing over by the Greeks of a substantial indemnity. See Bury, A History of the Later Roman Empire from Arcadius to Irene, I, 427-40; idem, History of the Later Roman Empire from the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of fustinian, I, 91-112; Stein, Histoire du Bas-Empire, n, 492-502; Frye, "The Political History," 155-56; Lang, "Iran, Armenia and Georgia," 521.

400. Presumably a repetition of the notice by al-Tabari at I, 895, p. 1 5 1 above, of

the emperor's Caucasian expedition.

401. An anticipatory mention of the South Arabian expedition, see al-Tabari, I,

947ff., pp. 238ff. below.

402. Following the text's n. f, with the correct reading of the Sprenger ms. al-

bahr for the text's al-Bahrayn.

403. See al-Tabari, I, 899-900, p. 161 below.

i6o

Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

turned his attention once more to affairs needing his personal

care. After this, he led an expedition against the Hepththalites,

seeking revenge for his grandfather Fayraz. Previously, Anusharwan

had married Khaqan's daughter, so he now wrote to him

before setting off on the expedition, informing him of his intentions

and enjoining him to march against the Hephthalites.

Anusharwan came up against them, killed their king, and extirpated

the whole of his family. He penetrated to Balkh and what

lies beyond it and quartered his troops in Farghanah. He then

returned home from Khurasan. 404 When he got back to al-

Mada’in, a deputation came to him seeking help against the

Abyssinians. So he sent back with them one of his commanders

heading an army of the men of Daylam and adjacent regions; they

killed the Abyssinian Masruq in Yemen and remained there. 405

Thus Kisra enjoyed an unbroken run of victories and conquests;

all the nations were in awe of him; and numerous delegations

from the Turks, the Chinese, the Khazars, and similar [distant]

nations thronged his court. He lavished generosity on scholars. He

reigned for forty- eight years. The birth of the Prophet fell within

404. In the account of these events at I, 895, p. 152 above, it is the Khaqan of the

Turks who kills the Hephthalite king W.r.z/Waraz. The name of the Turkish

princess whom Khusraw is said here to have married (the future mother of his

successor Hormizd IV) is given by al-Mas'udi, Mura/, H, 211 =* § 632 as the un-

Turkish-looking Faqum (thus vocalized by Pellat; the reading is dubious, but an

Armenian author has Kaien, according to Noldeke, trans. 264 n. 4). Although an

Arabic geographer like Ibn Khurradadhbih, al-Masalik wa-al-mamalik, 30, says

that Khusraw supposedly constructed the town of Farghanah, it seems most un-

likely that Sasanid power ever extended into the Farghanah valley of Central Asia.

Marquart, EranSahr, 219-20, endeavored to make sense of this piece of informa-

tion by relating it to a Wadi Farghanah south of Baghlan in the southern part of

Tukharistan, mentioned in the accounts of the Arab invasions of northern

Afghanistan; but this seems very forced. See also Noldeke, trans. 167 nn. 2-3.

405. See al-Tabari, I, 948-50, 952-57, pp. 238-42, 244-50 below, for the story of

the expedition to Yemen. The Daylamls, mountaineers from the region of Daylam

in the Elburz Mountains at the southwestern corner of the Caspian Sea, were often

employed as mercenary infantrymen and alpine troops by the Sasanids, and Pro-

copius mentions Dolomitae in Khusraw's operations in Georgia and Lazica. See

EP-, s.v. Daylam (V. Minorsky). Khusraw's recourse to marginal peoples like the

Daylamls seems to have arisen from an increasing shortage of military manpower

from the traditional Persian sources, i.e., the indigenous mailed cavalrymen of the

aswar class (on whom see n. 258 above), during his reign, and part of what Zeev

Rubin has called the "barbarization" of the Persian army at this time, a parallel to

what happened in the Roman world. See Rubin, "The Reforms of Khusro Anushirwan," 284-85.

Holders of Power after Ardashlr b. Babak 161

the latter part of Anusharwan's reign. 406 Hisham [Ibn al-Kalbi] has

related that Anusharwan's reign was (only) forty-seven years. He

also related that 'Abdallah b. 'Abd al-Muttalib, the Messenger of

God's father, was bom during his reign [in the twenty-fourth year

of this, and that he died] in the forty-second year of his

dominion. 407

Hisham also related: When Anusharwan's position became assured,

 he sent a message to al-Mundhir b. al-Nu'man the Elder (al-

Akbar), whose mother was Ma’ al-Sama’, a woman of al-Namir

[tribe], and appointed him as king over al-HIrah and the lands over

which the House of al-Harith b. *Amr Akil al-Murar 408 used to

rule, and al-Mundhir remained in this office continuously until he

died. 409 He also related: Anusharwan led an expedition against the

406. This based on the traditional dating of the Prophet's birth to ca. 570. See al-

Tabari, I, 900, pp. 163-64 and nn. 414, 640 below.

407. The words between the parentheses supplied by NOldeke, trans. 168, from

other, parallel texts as necessary to complete the text where there is an obvious

omission.

408. How Hujr, the essential founder of Kindi greatness in Najd at this time (see

p. 122 and n. 312 above) and grandfather of al-Harith (on whom, see Olinder, The

Kings of Kinda, 31-69), gained the nickname akil al-murdr, "eater of bitter herbs,"

is unclear, although the Arabic sources give two not very convincing explanations

(see Olinder, op. cit., 42; Robin, "Le royaume hujride," 3). But Arabic murSr is

virtually identical with Akkadian mux&m, "bitter lettuce," and possibly connected with irru, "a medical plant of the Cucurbilaceae family, possibly the colocynth" (see The Assyrian Dictionary of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, Letter M, Part n, 218, Letters I-J, 182-83). R- Campbell Thompson

thought that irru was Papaver, probably rhoeas L., the poppy [A Dictionary of

Assyrian Botany, 223-29). We are clearly dealing with bitter herbs used as a medicament, and possibly, in the light of Campbell Thompson's definition of irru, with a pain-killing or narcotic drug.

409. Concerning Khusraw's apppointment (or more probably, confirmation, see

pp. 140-41 and n. 362 above) of al-Mundhir DI as his deputy on the fringes of Iraq and in northern and eastern Arabia, al-Tabari records, at I, 958, p. 253 below, this time from Ibn Ishaq, that, after the peace treaty of 531 with Justinian, the Persian emperor appointed the Lakhmid as ruler over all the Arabian lands as far as Bahrayn, liman, Yamamah, al-Ta’if, and Hijaz. See Smith, "Events in Arabia in the Sixth Century a.d.," 442, and al-Tabari, I, 958, pp. 252-53 below). The rivalry of the houses of Lakhm and Kindah was thus bound to be intensified.

As well as Kindah's rivaling with Lakhm over control of Najd, the lands of

Bahrayn and Hajar in eastern Arabia were controled at this time by a subordinate

branch of Kindah under Mu'awiyah al-Jawn ("the dark colored one"), brother of

*Amr al-Maq$ur and son of Hujr, which persisted there under Mu'awiyah's descendants until die time of the Prophet (see Olinder, " Al al-Gaun of the Family of Akil al-Murar," 208-29). As noted at p. 122 n. 312 above, it certainly seems that there was a Kindi "kingdom," or rather, an assemblage of tribes ruled by a Kindi chief

i6i

Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

Burjan, then turned back and built [the town of] al-Bab and the

Caspian Gates (al-Abwab) 410

[The History of al-Hirah]

Hisham related : 411 There reigned as king over the Arabs, as

appointee of the Persian kings after al-Aswad b. al-Mundhir, his

centered on Najd and under the suzerainty of the Kings of Himyar, a subordination explicit in two South Arabian inscriptions (Ry 445 and 446) from Ma’sal al-Jumh, 240 km/150 miles west-south-west of modem al-Riyad and dating from the midfifth century and 631 Himyarite era/A.D. 521-52, respectively. (De Blois is followed here for beginning the Sabaean or Himyarite era in April 1 10 b.c. rather than 1 1 5 b.c., i.e., converting the South Arabian era to the Christian one by subtracting no years and not 115 years, the figure which has long been followed ever since Hal6vy propounded it a century and a quarter ago, since the disparity of only no years— a "short chronology" — causes fewer problems that that of 1 1 5 years. See de Blois, "The Date of the 'Martyrs of Nagran,' " 1 r9-io, and also Robin, who follows de Blois in this, in his L’Arabie antique de Karib'il d Mahomet, 33, 15 1, and his "Le royaume hujride," 69 1; cf. also EP, s.v. Ta’rikh. I, Dates and Eras in the Islamic World, 1. In the Sense of Date, Dating, etc. [deBlois].] The two inscriptions name Kindah and Ma'add as among the Arab auxiliaries and allies of the kings of Himyar

(see Robin, "Le royaume hujride," 675-95). Dating from some three decades after the second Ma’sal al-Jumh inscriptions, the inscription of the well of Murayghan,

situated to the north of Najran and east of what is now now 'Asir (Ry 506), records that the men of Kindah and Khindif fought in the army of the Abyssinian viceroy Abrahah when this last governor marched against the Lakhmid al-Mundhir Ill's son 'Amr (the later 'Amr III; see al-Tabari, I, 900, p. 163 and n. 424 below) and his Bedouin allies. The main force under Abrahah himself engaged the Ma'add in a battle at Huluban or Halaban, not far to the south of Ma’sal al-Jumh (the name vocalized as Huluban in al-Bakri, Mu'jam ma ista'jam, I, 491, and Halaban in Yaqut, Buldan, II, 281-82; see on the place Thilo, Die Ortsnamen in der alt- arabischen Poesie, 5 3: a wadi arising in the Arwa chain and running into the Wadi Rika’, cf. his Map D). The Ma'add were decisively defeated and forced to give hostages, while another force, which included men of the tribes of Sa'd and Murad, operated in the territory of the Banu 'Amir b. Sa'sa'ah and defeated the 'Amir at Turabah, some 100 km/60 miles to the east-southeast of al-Ta’if. Al-Mundhir then had to sue for peace from Abrahah and send hostages to Yemen. The inscription dates these events to 662 Himyarite era/A.D. 552-53. Much has been written on the inscription and the events it describes. Among all this, see Beeston, "Notes on the Mureighan Inscription," 389-92; Smith, "Events in South Arabia in the 6th Century a.d.," 435-37; M. J. Kister, "The Campaign of Huluban. A New Light on the Expedition of Abraha," 425-36.

410. That is, against the Bulghars of the Middle Volga; this must be a legendary

touch, unless it is a reminiscence of the events already noted in al-Tabari, I, 895—

96, pp. 151-53 above. On Bab al-Abwab or Darband, see pp. 151, 153 and nn. 390, 394 above.

4 1 1 . A continuation of Ibn al-Kalbi's narrative interrupted in al-Tabari, I, 892, p.

146 above.

Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak 163

brother al-Mundhir b. al-Mundhir b. al-Nu'man, whose mother

was Hirr bt. al-Nu'man, and who reigned for seven years. After

him there reigned al-Nu'man b. al-Aswad b. al-Mundhir, whose

mother was Umm al-Malik bt. 'Amr b. Hujr, the sister of al-Harith

b. 'Amr al-Kindi, who reigned for four years. Then there was appointed

 in his stead Abu Ya'fur b. 'Alqamah b. Malik b. 'Adi b. al-

Dhumayl b. Thawr b. Asas b. Rab 412 b. Numarah b. Lakhm, who

reigned for three years. Then there reigned al-Mundhir b. Imri’ al-

Qays al-Bad’, i.e., Dhu al-Qamayn. Hisham related: He was only

thus called on account of two plaits made from his hair. 413 His

mother was Ma’ al-Sama’, that is, Mariyah bt. 'Awf b. Jusham b.

Hilal b. Rabi’ah b. Zayd Manat b. 'Amir al-pahyan b. Sa'd b. al-

Khazraj b. Taym Allah b. al-Namir b. Qasit. He reigned for a total

of forty-nine years. Then there reigned his son 'Amr b. al-

Mundhir, whose mother was Hind bt. al-Harith b. ' Amr b. Hujr

Akil al-Murar and who reigned for ten years. 414 He related: After

'Amr b. Hind had been reigning for eight years and eight months,

the Messenger of God was bom ; that was in the time of -

412. Reading uncertain.

413. An unconvincing explanation for an appellation already well known as a

by-name that was generally applied to Alexander the Great in Arabic lore, includ-

ing in the Qur’an; see n. 443 below. Its origin, if ever known, must have been

forgotten by Ibn al-Kalbi's time.

414. Ibn al-Kalbi's filiation of the Lakhmid kings has come down to us in two

slightly different versions, the one given here by al-Tabari (and in part, in various

other places in his History ) and the other utilized by Hamzah al-I$fahani, Ta’rikh, 83-97, for his section on the Lakhmids. Sidney Smith thought that Ibn al-Kalbl derived information here from a Sasanid register of years, "used with remarkable fidelity." The two versions are compared, together with others in the Arabic historical sources, and a harmonization attempted, by Rothstein, Lahmiden, 5 off.; see now Smith, "Events in Arabia in the 6th Century a.d.," 429-30^

The accession of 'Amr HI b. al-Mundhir HI, also called 'Amr b. Hind after his

mother, the Kindi princess, should be placed in $54, with what was apparently a

smooth succession to his father, and the duration of his reign was sixteen years (as

in Rothstein's table, 53, following the figure of sixteen in IJamzah al-I§fahani, op.

cit. 94, pace the one given here by al-Tabari of ten years. This would place 'Amr's

death — as a result of being assassinated by the poet 'Amr b. Kulthum — in 569 or in 570, the traditional but impossible date given for the "Year of the Elephant" at Mecca. See for 'Amr's reign (he had a reputation for firm rule and cruel behavior, seen in the celebrated affair of the "letter of al-Mutalammis," see n. 774 below), Noldeke, trans. 170 n. 1, 172 n. i ; Rothstein, op. cit., 94-102; EP, s.v. 'Amr b. Hin d (A.J. Wensinck). See for the chronological difficulties involved in placing the Prophet Muhammad's birth in the eighth year of 'Amr's reign, Smith, op. cit., 434.

1 64 Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak

Anusharwan and the "Year of the Elephant" in which al-Ashram Abu

Yaksum led an attack on the Ka'bah. 415

[The History of Yemen]

Mention of the Rest of the Story of Tubha ' in the

Days of Qubadh and the Time of Anusharwan and the

Persians' Dispatch of an Army to Yemen in Order to

Combat the Abyssinians, and the Reason for This Last . 416

There related to us Ibn Humayd — Salamah — Muhammad b. Ishaq,

who said: When Tubba' II (al-Akhar), that is, Tuban As'ad

Abu Karib, came back from the East, he traveled via Medina. 417

When he had passed by it at the beginning of his expedition (i.e.,

on his outward journey), he had not aroused any feelings of disquiet

among its people, but had left behind there in their midst

one of his sons, who had [subsequently] been treacherously slain.

415. See on this attack, al-Tabari, I, 936-46, pp. 222-35 below. The patronymic

Abu Yaksum refers to the Abyssinian viceroy of South Arabia, Abrahah, also

known as al-Ashram "the man with his nose-tip cut off," whose son Yaksum was

to succeed him as governor in South Arabia. See al-Tabari, I, 93 1, p. 2 1 3, below, for the alleged occasion of this mutilation, and I, 945, pp. 235-36 below, for Yaksum's reign. The actual name Yaksum must stem from the toponym Aksum, the capital of the first Abyssinian kingdom, which lasted up to this sixth century

416. Noldeke omitted from his translation the section beginning here at 1 , 901 1 .

1, as far as 917 1. 17.

417. The following section, up to I, 917 1 . 17, depends on the parallel account of

Ibn Ishaq, in essence only moderately different from that of Ibn al-Kalbi, but it

must be taken as a later growth of legendary history of a type similar to that in the

Alexander Romance, which may have influenced it. The section is reproduced

substantially by Ibn Ishaq in the Siiat al-nabi of Ibn Hisham, ed. Wiistenfeld, i2ff.

- ed. al-Saqqa et al. I, i9ff., trans., 6ff.,- cf. Ibn Hisham, Kitab al-tijan, 297-300, and F. Krenkow, "The Two Oldest Books on Arabic Folklore," 227-28.

Abu Karib As'ad himself was, however, a fully historical person, leaving aside

the legendary accretions, the ’bkrb ’s'd of the Himyaritic inscriptions. In the first

half of the fourth century he expanded his territories from southwestern and southern Arabia into central Arabia. He inflated the royal title of the founder Shamir Yur'ish from that of "lord of Saba, Dhu Raydan, Hadramawt and Ymnt" to include "and of their Arabs (i.e., Bedouins) in Twd m and Tihamah," and succeeding Tubba' kings also used this fuller title (in Classical Arabic, tawd means "mountain"; for al-Hamdani, $ifat jaziiat al-Aiab, 371, al-Tawd denoted the mountain range of the Sarat, which divided Yemen between its coastland, tihamah, and its inland plateau, najd). His fame ensured the later growth around him of a fantastic romance and epic similar to that of, and, as noted above, conceivably inspired by, that of Alexander the Great. See EP-, s.v. Tubba' (A. F. L. Beeston).

Holders of Power after Ardashir b. Babak 165

Hence he now came to the town with the intention of reducing it

to ruins, extirpating its people and cutting down its date palms.

When they heard of his plans, this tribe {hayy) of the Ansar banded

together against him in order to defend themselves. Their chief at

that time was 'Amr b. al-Tallah, one of the Banu al-Najjar, and

then of the Banu 'Amr b. Mabdhxil. 418 They sallied forth to attack

Tubba'. When Tubba' had encamped [with his troops] by the Medinans,

one of the latter from the Banu 'Adi b. al-Najjar, called

Ahmar, had killed one of Tubba"s followers whom he had found

cutting down the date clusters of a tree that belonged to him. He

had therefore struck him with his reaping hook and killed him,

saying, “The fruit belongs to the one who nurtures it and makes it

grow!" After killing him, he had thrown the corpse into a wellknown

local well called Dhat Tuman (?); this naturally increased

Tubba"s rage against them, and the two sides became engaged in

making war and fighting other. He related: The An§ar assert that

they used to fight Tubba' by day but treat him as a guest each

night. Tubba' was amazed at this and used to say, “By God, these

people of ours are generous of heart!"

While he was engaged thus, there came to him two rabbis from

the Jews of the Banu Qurayzah, learned scholars with firmly

grounded knowledge, who had heard about Tubba"s intention of

destroying the town and its people. 419 They told him, "O King,

don't do it, for if you persist in carrying out your plan, something

will intervene to prevent you, and we fear that you will bring

down on yourself speedy retribution." He said to them, "How can

418. This is an anachronism, in that the designation of An$ar "Helpers" was

only given to his supporters in Medina by the Prophet after his hijtah of 622, and an inaccuracy in that it was not, of course, a tribal name. The Arabs inhabiting

Yathrib, as it was mainly called in pre-Islamic times |see n. 370 above}, were from the Banu Qaylah bt. Halik, with its two branches of the Aws and the Khazraj. Al- Najjar were a clan of the Khazraj, and the ’Amr b. Mabdhul part of their subclan Mazin. The 'Adi mentioned below were another subclan. See Ibn al-Kalbi-Caskel- Strenziok, Jamhaiat al-nasab, I, Tables 176-77, 185, n, 31, 34-35, 347: Robertson Smith, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia, 256; Montgomery Watt, Muhammad at Medina, genealogical table at 154.

419. Qurayzah were one of the three main Jewish tribes in Medina, confederates

of the Aws; they nevertheless suffered the massacre of their menfolk and the

enslavement of their women and children by Muhammad in 6/627 after the siege

of Medina by Quraysh and their allies. See Buhl, Das Leben Muhammeds, 273-77; Watt, Muhammad at Medina, 193ft.; EP-, s.v. Kuray?a (W. M. Watt).

1 66

Holders of Power after Ardashlr b. Babak

that be?" They replied, "It is the place to which a prophet, who

will arise out of the tribe of Quraysh at the end of time, will

migrate, and it will be his home and resting place." After having

heard these words, Tubba' desisted from what he had intended to

do regarding Medina, perceiving that the two rabbis had special

knowledge and being amazed at what he had heard from them. He

departed from Medina, took them with him to Yemen, and embraced

their religion. The names of the two rabbis were Ka'b and

Asad, both from the Banu Qurayzah and paternal cousins of each

other . 420 They were the most knowledgeable persons of their age,

as Ibn Humayd has mentioned to me — Salamah — Ibn Ishaq —

Yazid b. 'Amr — Aban b. Abi 'Ayyash — Anas b. Malik— shaykhs

from his people (sc., of Medina) who went back to the Jahiliyyah.

A certain poet of the Ansar, one Khalid 421 b. 'Abd al-'Uzza b.

Ghaziyyah b. 'Amr b. 'Abd b. 'Awf b. Ghanm b. Malik b. al-Najjar,

recited these verses about the warfare between the Medinans and

Tubba', vaunting 'Amr b. al-Tallah and mentioning his merits and

his resolute defense:

Has he relinquished youthful folly, or has its remembrance

ceased? Or has he obtained his fill of pleasure?

Or have you remembered youth? And what a memory of youth

or of its times you have ! 422

For indeed, it was a young man's war (literally, the war of a

beast which sheds its two teeth next to the incisors at its

fourth or later year, ruba’i, or of a young man similarly

shedding teeth, raba'I), whose like brings to a youth

experience and esteem . 423

420 The names of the two rabbis as given here come from the Ibn Ishaq version of this story, from an uncertain source; but Michael Lecker has recently pointed out that the late-period historian of Medina Nur al-Dln 'All b. Ahmad al-Samhudi (d. 9x1/1506) cites an alternative tradition from the second/eighth-century historian of Medina Ibn Zabalah that the names of the two men were Suhayt/Sukhayt and Munabbih, from the Medinan Jewish tribe of Hadl, who were actually clients of the more powerful Qurayzah. See al-Samhudi, Wafa’ al-wafa, I, 190; Lecker, "The Conversion of Himyar to Judaism and the Jewish Banu Hadl of Medina," 134-35.

421. The Cairo text, II, 106, has for this name khal "the maternal uncle of. . . ."

422. An alternative translation of the second sentence in the line might be "And

what is it that you remember? Youth or the passing of the whole span of life?"

423. Following Addenda et emendanda, p. dxci, Thorbecke's reading ata,

"brings to," for the text's ata, "comes." One might also render the last word

'ibaidh as "a moral example."