Reign of Bahram V Gur

Bahram, a son of Yazdegerd I born around 400, grew up at the court of the Lakhmid kings of al-Hira. Since the death of Shapur II the nobles and priests had grown used to making and unmaking kings, and when Yazdegerd died in 420 they tried to keep his sons from the throne: his eldest son Shapur, who had hurried from Armenia to Ctesiphon, was murdered, and Khosrow, a son of Bahram IV, was proclaimed king. Bahram marched on Ctesiphon with the army of the Lakhmid king al-Mundhir and won the throne; according to the legend told in the Shahnameh, he offered to take the crown from between two lions, and Khosrow declined the trial.

The persecution of Christians, begun at the end of Yazdegerd’s reign after attacks on fire temples, continued. When Christian fugitives fled to Roman territory and Theodosius II refused to hand them over, war broke out in 421: the Romans ravaged Arzanene and besieged Nisibis, and the Persians besieged Theodosiopolis for thirty days. The peace of 422 restored the pre-war situation; both sides promised freedom of religion in their lands and agreed not to receive each other’s Arab defectors. Meanwhile invaders from the east — probably the Kidarites — crossed the Oxus, took Merv and raided as far as Ray. Bahram prayed at the fire temple of Adur Gushnasp, gathered troops in Armenia, crossed the mountains south of the Caspian and routed the invaders near Merv, killing their king; one of his generals pursued them into Transoxiana, by 427 the war was over, and a pillar set up on the Oxus marked the frontier. Who the invaders were is disputed: they are usually identified as the Kidarites, some scholars take them for Hephthalites, and others doubt that they were Kidarites, who would rather have retreated south towards Balkh, and think of the Chionites or of a people subject to the Rouran. In Armenia King Artashes IV, whom Bahram had installed in 422, was deposed in 428 (or 429), and the country became a Sasanian province under a governor (marzban).

Bahram died in 438, and how is unknown: Ferdowsi says he died in his sleep, while other stories have him vanish in a cave or sink in a swamp while hunting. His passion for hunting the onager (gur) gave him his by-name, and his hunts, feasts and loves became favourite subjects of Persian poetry, above all Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and Nizami’s Haft Peykar (The Seven Beauties). The sources date his reign to 420 or 421 – 438; some reference works end it in 440.