Middle East and Egypt (6th–10th c.)Politics and state

Reign of Khosrow I Anushirvan

Khosrow I, remembered as Anushirvan (“of the immortal soul”) and “the Just”, completed his father’s reforms of taxation, administration and the army and made Iran again a match for Byzantium: he fought Justinian and Justin II, destroyed the Hephthalite empire with the help of the Turks and extended Persian rule to Yemen, while his court welcomed Greek, Syriac and Indian learning.

Date: 531–579year known · duration: ≈ 48 years
Place: Ctesiphontoday: Salman Pak, Baghdad Governorate, Iraq · Middle East and Egypt
Participants: Khosrow I Anushirvan, Sasanian Empire, Byzantine Empire, Justinian I, Justin II, First Turkic Khaganate, Hephthalites, Himyar
Threads: Middle East and Egypt (6th–10th c.)
Also known as: Khosrow Anushirvan; Chosroes I; Kisra; Nushirvan; Хосров Ануширван; Хосрой I; Кисра; Нуширван

Khosrow, the youngest son of Kavad I, came to the throne in 531 and soon made peace with Justinian: under the “Perpetual Peace” of 532 the emperor paid 11,000 pounds of gold. Having crushed a plot of his uncle Bawi and put to death his brothers and their sons, Khosrow carried through the reforms his father had begun. The land was surveyed and taxed at fixed rates according to the water it received and the number of its fruit trees, and a poll tax was levied on commoners aged 20 to 50; the army command was divided among four regional generals (spahbeds), and the lesser landed nobility, the dehqans, rose as paid cavalry and officials loyal to the crown.

In 540 Khosrow broke the peace and sacked Antioch, opening two decades of war, fought mostly over Lazica on the Black Sea, that ended with the Fifty-Year Peace of 562. In the east, allied with the newly risen Turks, he destroyed around 557–560 the empire of the Hephthalites, who had killed his grandfather Peroz, and in the 570s a small Persian expedition under Wahrez drove the Aksumites out of Yemen, which became a Persian dependency. In 572 Justin II renewed the war, and in the following year Khosrow took the great fortress of Dara. He died in 579, while peace was being negotiated, and was succeeded by his son Hormizd IV.

Khosrow presented himself as a philosopher king. According to Agathias, seven Neoplatonist philosophers from Athens, among them Damascius and Simplicius, came to his court soon after his accession; disappointed, they went home, and a clause of his peace with Justinian allowed them to return and hold to their beliefs unmolested. Works were translated into Middle Persian from Greek, Syriac and Sanskrit — the physician Borzuya brought back from India the fables of the Panchatantra, known later through their Arabic version as Kalila wa-Dimna — and a Middle Persian treatise of about 620 tells how an Indian king sent Khosrow the game of chess. Near Ctesiphon he built a new city for the captives from Antioch, and the great vault of the Taq-e Kasra palace there is traditionally ascribed to him, although its date is debated. Persian and Arabic literature made “Anushirvan the Just” the model of a wise ruler, and his name, in the Arabic form Kisra, came to stand for the Persian kings in general.

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Consequences

Embassies of Maniakh and Zemarchus: the Turks ally with Byzantium568 – between 570 and 571 · Central and Northern Asiathe Turks turned to Byzantium after Khosrow I rejected the Sogdian silk trade, burning the silk and, by Menander’s account, poisoning Turkic envoys

Includes

Sack of Antioch by Khosrow IJune 540 · Middle East and Egypt

Related events

Reign of Bahram V Gurbetween 420 and 421 – 438 · Middle East and EgyptBahram Gur and Khosrow Anushirvan became the two Sasanian kings most celebrated in later Persian poetry and legend
Peroz I killed in battle with the Hephthalites484 · Central and Northern AsiaKhosrow avenged his grandfather Peroz by destroying the Hephthalite empire together with the Turks
Suppression of the Mazdakitesbetween 524 and 529 · Middle East and EgyptKhosrow, credited with the massacre, completed the reforms made possible by the weakening of the nobility
Corpus Juris Civilis7 April 529 – 16 November 534 · Balkans and Anatoliathe Neoplatonists who came to Khosrow’s court had left Athens after Justinian’s laws of 529 barred pagans from teaching
The Turks and Sasanians destroy the Hephthalite Empire (Battle of Gol-Zarriun)between 557 and 567 · Central and Northern AsiaKhosrow I allied with the Turks against the Hephthalites
Revolt of Bahram Chobin and the restoration of Khosrow II589–591 · Middle East and Egyptthe struggle between the crown and the great houses waged by Kavad and Khosrow I culminated in the revolt of the Mihranid Bahram