Heraclius

Heraclius was emperor of the eastern Romans from 610 to 641.^[1] In his war with Persia he renewed the alliance with the Göktürks that Justin II had made. In 627 a Göktürk army came through the Caucasus to fight beside him.^[2] The alliance contributed significantly to the Roman victory and to the collapse of the Sasanian state.^[1]

The war with Persia

Heraclius came to power in 608 at the head of a revolt against the emperor.^[3] The war with Persia had begun in 602, after the murder of the emperor Maurice.^[3] The Persians took Jerusalem in 614. In 619 Persian troops stood on the Bosporus.^[4] In 626 the Avars, the Slavs and the Persians besieged Constantinople itself and failed.^[5] By then Heraclius had made his alliance with the western Göktürks.^[5]

The alliance

The Armenian history of the Caucasian Albanians tells how it was made.^[6] Heraclius resolved to breach the Caucasus, which shut off the lands of the north-east. He meant to open the gates of Čoł, so as to let through the peoples beyond and conquer the Persian king by their means.^[7] He sent a capable noble named Andre north with promises of immense and countless treasure.^[7] The ruler who answered was the viceroy of the king of the north, second to him in kingship. He was called Jebu Xak’an.^[7] Jebu Xak’an replied that he would avenge the emperor on his enemies. He would come to his aid in person with his army.^[7] To confirm the treaty he sent back about a thousand picked horsemen and archers. They rode through the gates of Čoł and across Georgia to the emperor. They swore oaths with him, each by his own law.^[7] The translator sets the embassy in the summer of 626.^[8]

The plan has been described as a pincer: Heraclius was to strike Persia from the west, while the Göktürks under Börü Shad came down from the north through the Caucasus.^[9] In this version Heraclius promised Tong Yabgu gifts and plunder and probably land in the Caucasus. The arrival of Börü before Derbent in 627 opened the offensive.^[9] Theophanes has Heraclius, at Lazica on the eastern Black Sea, invite “the eastern Turks, who are called Chazars” to become his allies.^[10] Their commander Ziebel, second in rank after the khagan, broke through the Caspian Gates.^[11] Nikephoros has the emperor send gifts from Lazica to “the chieftain of the Turks”. The chieftain accepted them and promised to be his ally.^[12]

Before Tiflis

The northern army besieged Tiflis. Heraclius came up with all his forces and joined his ally. The two kings exchanged royal gifts and rejoiced to see each other.^[13] The meeting may have taken place in the Göktürk camp before the fortress of Narikala in 627.^[14] The yabgu rode up, dismounted, kissed the emperor’s shoulder and bowed.^[14] Theophanes has Ziebel run to meet the emperor, kiss his neck and do obeisance, while the Persians watched from the town.^[11] Heraclius embraced him and called him his son. He crowned him with his own diadem and promised him his daughter Eudoxia Epiphania.^[15] Nikephoros tells the scene at length. The chieftain dismounted and prostrated himself with all his host. The emperor let him come near on horseback, called him his son and set his own crown on his head.^[12] After a banquet Heraclius gave him the vessels of the table, an imperial robe and earrings set with pearls. He showed him a portrait of his daughter Eudokia and promised her to him in marriage if he helped against his enemies.^[16]

In Theophanes, “the entire army of the Turks” fell on their faces before the emperor. Ziebel presented his adolescent son and gave the emperor forty thousand picked men. Then he went back to his own land.^[11] From September the Turks marched with Heraclius into Persia. Facing the winter and constant Persian attacks, they slipped away little by little until all had gone home.^[17]

The siege dragged on. The defenders mocked the besiegers from the walls.^[18] Heraclius told his ally to go home with his army for that year and to come back when the hot months had passed.^[19] A man reared in a cool climate, he said, could not endure the summer in Asorestan, the land of the Persian capital on the Tigris.^[19] Tong Yabgu may have left his nephew and tens of thousands of troops before Tiflis and withdrawn to Suyab after two months.^[15] Heraclius marched on to Nineveh and won there. The Göktürks then returned, took Tiflis and plundered it.^[15] The Armenian history tells the fall as a second siege by the northern army alone. It lasted two months and ended with the storming of the city.^[20] The Georgian chronicle has Heraclius take the city himself. He left an officer named Jibghu to take the citadel while he marched on.^[21] On the northern front the Caucasus campaign had already opened the way into Transcaucasia with the taking of Derbent.^[22]

The ally

Who the ally was is argued.^[14] He may be Tong Yabgu, the ruler of the western Göktürks. In that case he met Heraclius in person, with Börü Shad in command of the army.^[14] Another proposal makes the Jebu Xak’an of the Armenian history and the Ziebel of Theophanes the same man, Tong Yabgu Khagan.^[23] A third explanation takes both forms, with the Georgian Jibgu, as the title Yabgu Khagan, borne by the ruler of the Khazars.^[24] The same account names Tong Yabgu elsewhere as Heraclius’s ally in Transcaucasia.^[1] A fourth explanation regards Ziebel as a Khazar leader. He depended on the western Göktürks but is not to be confused with them.^[25] It regards the Jibghu of the Georgian chronicle as the same man.^[26]

Two sources tell how the alliance ended for the northern ally. Nikephoros records that Heraclius sent his daughter Eudokia on her way to the lord of the Turks. He called her back when news came that the Turk had been killed.^[27] In the Armenian history Jebu Xak’an sends word to his son Šat that brigands have fallen upon him. Šat will never see his face again.^[28] The message belongs to 629 or 630.^[29]

The meeting came about thirty years after the first alliance between the two powers had apparently broken.^[9] It was probably the first time since the Huns that leaders of the Graeco-Roman and the Turkic world met in person.^[15]

626 The Roman offer

Heraclius wanted the Caucasus opened. Theophanes and Nikephoros place him in Lazica, on the eastern shore of the Black Sea, when he sought allies in the north. The Armenian History of the Albanians has him send a noble named Andre north with promises of immense treasure. Jebu Xak'an, the viceroy of the king of the north, accepted and sent about a thousand picked horse archers back with the envoy. They rode through the gates of Čoł past the Persian garrison, came down on the Kur, crossed Georgia and Egeria and swore oaths with the emperor face to face. The source takes them across the sea to the royal palace and names no place; the way between its stations is drawn.
626–627 Šat's raid

Soon after the treaty a first raid fell on Albania at Heraclius's command. Khosrow asked the raiders at whose command they had entered his country and offered them twice what the emperor could give. For that year they went home through the same gates. Then the king of the north sent the promised army under his nephew, called Šat after his princely rank. Šat raided Albania and part of Atrpatakan and camped on the Araxes. From there the raiders demanded that Khosrow give back the Roman lands, the prisoners and the wood of the Cross. Khosrow answered that their houses had long been allied through sons and daughters, and called the emperor a slave of his. The Armenian History of the Albanians dates Šat's raid to the beginning of Khosrow's thirty-seventh year; one reckoning reads this as the summer of 626, a second as the summer of 627.
627 Before Tiflis

Jebu Xak'an came himself with his son. The wall that the Persian kings had built between the Caucasus and the Caspian fell at the very outset, and the defenders of Partaw fled to the mountains of Arcax. The northern army then swept over Georgia and laid siege to Tiflis. Theophanes has Ziebel break through the Caspian gates into Adraigan and the emperor set out from Lazica to join him; the Georgian chronicle brings Heraclius by way of Atsqur in Upper Kartli. Before the town Ziebel kissed the emperor's neck while the Persians looked on, and Nikephoros has Heraclius set his own crown on the chieftain's head. Sahraplakan brought a thousand horsemen of the palace guard to relieve the city. The besiegers wore themselves out, and Heraclius sent his ally home for the summer. The townspeople hung a pumpkin drawn as Jebu Xak'an on the wall and drove a spear into it. One reckoning puts the meeting in 626, a second in 627, a third in 628.
Sept. 627 The march to Nineveh

Ziebel picked forty thousand men for the emperor and went back to his own land. From September Heraclius marched south with them. Sebeos traces the way through Shirak, across the Araxes at Vardanakert and through Gogovit and Her and Zarewand into Atrpatakan. The winter and the constant Persian attacks wore the northern allies down, Theophanes says, and they slipped away little by little until all had gone home. On 9 October the Roman army rested for a week in the land of Chamaetha, while the Persian general Razates reached Ganzak behind it. On 1 December Heraclius crossed the Great Zab and camped near Nineveh. On 12 December the armies met there, and Razates fell with nearly all his officers.
627–628 Dastagerd and Ctesiphon

After the battle Heraclius crossed the Great Zab. His officer George seized the four bridges of the Lesser Zab by night, and on 23 December the army crossed them and kept Christmas in the mansions of Iesdem. The emperor destroyed the palaces of Dezeridan and Rousa, crossed the bridge of the Tornas and spent New Year's Day in the palace of Beklal. Khosrow fled from Dastagerd to Ctesiphon and crossed the Tigris. Heraclius kept the Epiphany at Dastagerd and pulled down its palaces. On 7 January he marched on and camped twelve miles from the river Narbas, which lay twelve miles from Ctesiphon; its bridges were cut, and it had no ford. Sebeos has him camp outside Ctesiphon and burn the royal palaces around the city.
628 The return to Atrpatakan

From there Heraclius went on to Siazouros and through February burnt the villages and towns of the district. In March he spent seven days at the village of Barzan. There, Theophanes says, a Persian officer came over to him with word that Khosrow's eldest son was ready to rise against his father. Khosrow was deposed by that son, Kavadh, whom Theophanes calls Siroes, and put to death in February 628. The new king made peace with the emperor. Sebeos brings Heraclius back to Atrpatakan. The way from Barzan to Ganzak is drawn after a lost dispatch of the emperor, sent from the camp near Ganzak on 15 March.
628–629 The fall of Tiflis

In the Armenian History of the Albanians the storm from the north came down a second time. Jebu Xak'an returned with his son Šat and laid siege to Tiflis, which no longer had brave defenders. After two months his men climbed on one another, topped the wall and killed all they found. The Persian governor and a Georgian prince were blinded for having drawn the king as a blind man, then strangled and flayed. Jebu Xak'an went home with the treasure and sent Šat with the army to the land of the Albanians. The Georgian chronicle tells it differently: Heraclius took the town after its prince Stephanos fell in a sortie, and his officer Jibghu took the citadel while the emperor marched on by way of Gardaban. One reckoning puts the fall in the spring of 629, a second soon after the accession of Kavadh in 628.
629–630 Šat in Albania

Šat's bands fell on every canton of Albania on the same day. The catholicos of Albania, hunted through the mountains of Arcax, came at last with the nobles and their gifts to Šat's camp north of Partaw. There Šat swore by the life of his father Jebu Xak'an that the raiding would stop. His father, he said, had received the three kingdoms of the Albanians, the Lpʿinkʿ and Čoł as his royal patrimony for ever. In the second year of the Persian king Artashir the prince of the north taxed the craftsmen, the merchants and the fishers of the Kur and the Araxes after the Persian cadastre. He sent Čorpan Tarxan ahead into Armenia with about three thousand men, and a Persian army of ten thousand was destroyed on the shore of Lake Sevan. The northern army halted in the passes of Armenia, Georgia and Albania. There a message came from Jebu Xak'an to Šat: “Brigands have fallen upon me, and you shall never see my face again.”

Place named in a source (position as commonly identified)
Position disputed or approximate
Extent of a realm, inferred; border uncertain (soft edge)
Caucasian Albania and Iberia, fought over in the war (hatched)
Movement named in a source (route drawn)
Route between the stations a source names (way inferred)
Route after a modern reconstruction

The Caucasus campaign of the western Göktürks and Rome and the march of Heraclius into Persia, 626–630, in eight time slices. Modern map on a base of Natural Earth, after the Armenian History of the Albanians, Theophanes, Nikephoros, Sebeos and the Georgian chronicle. The stations are those the sources name; the way between them is drawn. The realms are drawn as areas: the Göktürks after the Turkic Atlas map of the civil war, Persia and Byzantium after Cliopatria (Seshat, CC BY 4.0); no source describes their borders in these years, which stand as soft edges.

References

^ a b c Golden 1992, p. 135
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 359-361
^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 359
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 359-360
^ a b Golden 1992, p. 112
^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi
^ a b c d e Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 87
^ Dowsett 1961, p. 86
^ a b c Yavuz 2025, p. 361
^ Theophanes the Confessor; Scott 1997, p. 446
^ a b c Theophanes the Confessor; Scott 1997, p. 447
^ a b Nikephoros; Mango 1990, p. 55
^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 85
^ a b c d Yavuz 2025, p. 368
^ a b c d Yavuz 2025, p. 370
^ Nikephoros; Mango 1990, p. 55, 57
^ Theophanes the Confessor; Scott 1997, p. 448
^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 85-86
^ a b Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 86
^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 94–95
^ Kartlis Tskhovreba; Brosset 1849, p. 226–228
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 455
^ Marquart 1903, p. 394
^ Golden 1992, p. 236
^ Chavannes 1903, p. 256
^ Chavannes 1903, p. 255
^ Nikephoros; Mango 1990, p. 67
^ Movsēs Dasxurancʿi; Dowsett 1961, p. 106
^ Dowsett 1961, p. 104

Sources

Movsēs Dasxurancʿi
Theophanes the Confessor (after Theophylact Simocatta)
Nikephoros
Kartlis Tskhovreba

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
Josef Marquart, Osteuropäische und ostasiatische Streifzüge (1903)
Charles J. F. Dowsett (trans.), The History of the Caucasian Albanians by Movsēs Dasxuranci (1961)
Cyril Mango, Roger Scott (trans.), The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and Near Eastern History AD 284–813 (1997)
Cyril Mango (ed., trans.), Nikephoros, Patriarch of Constantinople: Short History (1990)
Marie-Félicité Brosset (trans.), Histoire de la Géorgie depuis l'antiquité jusqu'au XIXe siècle, vol. I (1849)