Middle East and Egypt (1st–5th c.)Politics and state

Reign of Shapur II

Placed on the throne as an infant in 309, Shapur II ruled Iran for seventy years, the longest reign in Sasanian history. He fought Rome on and off for a quarter of a century to undo the Peace of Nisibis and in 363 recovered Nisibis and the lands beyond the Tigris; in the east he forced the Chionites into an alliance, and at home he persecuted the Christians — as Christian sources explain, because he suspected them of siding with the now Christian Roman emperors.

Date: 309–379year known · duration: ≈ 70 years
Place: Ctesiphontoday: Salman Pak, Baghdad Governorate, Iraq · Middle East and Egypt
Participants: Shapur II, Sasanian Empire, Roman Empire, Constantius II, Chionites (Xionites), Shemon bar Sabbae
Threads: Middle East and Egypt (1st–5th c.)
Also known as: Shapur the Great; Шапур Великий; Persecution of Christians under Shapur II; Гонения на христиан при Шапуре II

Shapur’s elder brothers were set aside, and the nobles and priests who ruled in his name kept power until he came of age at sixteen, in 325. His first war was against the Arabs who had raided Pars during his minority: he crossed the Persian Gulf into eastern Arabia, and later tradition gave him the name Dhu’l-Aktaf, “the man of the shoulders”, for piercing the shoulders of captives (Theodor Nöldeke took it for an epithet meaning “broad-shouldered”). Against the nomads he built a wall near al-Hira.

From 337 Shapur fought to regain the provinces beyond the Tigris ceded under the Peace of Nisibis and to detach Armenia, now Christian and allied with Rome. He besieged Nisibis three times (338, 346 and 350) without success and fought an indecisive battle at Singara in 344. An invasion of nomads on his eastern frontier made him break off the war; after years of fighting he forced the Chionites and their king Grumbates into an alliance, and in 359 they joined him at the siege of Amida. After Julian’s failed invasion in 363, Jovian ceded Nisibis, Singara and the lands beyond the Tigris and abandoned Armenia, which Shapur invaded; Rome restored King Pap there in 370, and a truce held until shortly before Shapur’s death in 379. He left the empire larger and stronger than he had found it.

At first Shapur was not especially hostile to his Christian subjects, but after Constantine’s conversion, as Christian sources explain, he came to see them as potential agents of Rome; Constantine even wrote to him on their behalf. Around 340, needing money for the war, he imposed a double tax on the Christians. Shemon bar Sabbae, bishop of Seleucia-Ctesiphon, refused to collect it and was executed with many of his clergy — the date is given variously, from 339–341 to 344–345. Christian chronicles count some forty years of persecution, which lasted until Shapur’s death; Sozomen, writing in the 5th century, puts the number of martyrs whose names were known at more than 16,000. Under Shapur the collection of the Avesta was completed, and heresy and apostasy from Zoroastrianism were punished.

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Connections

Includes

Shapur II’s war with the Chionitesc. 350 – 358 · Central and Northern Asiaa war on Shapur II’s eastern frontier
Siege of Amida359 · Middle East and Egypt
Julian’s Persian expedition and the Peace of 3635 March 363 – July 363 · Middle East and Egypt

Related events

Kartir’s inscriptions and the rise of the Zoroastrian priesthoodbetween 274 and 293 · Middle East and Egyptthe persecutions were often instigated by the Zoroastrian priesthood, whose power Kartir had built up in the 3rd century
Peace of Nisibisbetween 298 and 299 · Middle East and EgyptShapur’s chief aim in his wars with Rome was to overturn the peace of 298/299
Armenia adopts Christianitybetween 301 and 314 · Middle East and EgyptArmenia’s conversion bound it more closely to Rome — one of the provocations for the war of 337
Edict of MilanFebruary 313 · Western and Central EuropeChristian sources explain the persecution by Rome’s turn to Christianity, which made Persian Christians suspect
Campaigns of Samudragupta and the Allahabad pillar prashastibetween 330 and 353 – between 370 and 376 · South Asiasome scholars take the “shahanushahi” of the Allahabad inscription for the Sasanian king of kings

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