Hormizd IV

Hormizd IV was king of kings of Sasanian Persia from 579 to 590.^[1] He was the son of Khosrow I. Tabari calls his mother a daughter of the elder khagan.^[2] In his reign the first great Göktürk–Persian war was fought. His general Bahram Chobin threw the army of the western Göktürks back across the Oxus.^[3]

The Göktürk mother

Tabari names Hormizd as Khosrow’s successor and says that his mother “was the daughter of the khagan and the khatun”.^[4] The high rank of his mother was surely the reason he succeeded.^[5] Tabari also calls Hormizd cunning and malicious, “in his nature like the Turks, from whom he descended through his mother”.^[6] Masʿudi gives her name in an uncertain form. An Armenian writer calls her Kaien.^[7] The Armenian writer is the history ascribed to Sebeos. It opens Hormizd’s reign with his mother: “His mother, called Kayēn, was the daughter of the great Khakʿan, king of the Tʿetals, and the wife of Khosrov his father”.^[8] Sebeos adds that Hormizd was distinguished through his father’s line and still more notable and ferocious through his mother’s. Sebeos also says that Hormizd wiped out the nobles and the ancient houses of Persia.^[8] In the history of the Persian kings by aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī, the khagan offers Khosrow his daughter, hoping that the king will have children by her. He sends her to Khosrow in procession “with countless riches of all that the Turks possessed”.^[9] Two of Khosrow’s old ministers in that history call Hormizd “the son of the Turkish woman”.^[10] The literature knows him by that byname.^[1]

Some scholars make her the daughter of Istemi, given to Khosrow to seal the pact on the Oxus about 560. They name her, probably, Kayan.^[11] In that case Hormizd was most probably her son. He ruled Persia for eleven years.^[12] In Tabari the marriage comes first. Khosrow had become the khagan’s kinsman by marriage before he marched against the Hephthalites. He asked the khagan to march against them too.^[13] Sebeos, Tabari and aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī all leave the khagan unnamed.

The war of 588

In the eleventh year of Hormizd, Tabari reports, Šāba, “the supreme king of the Turks”, marched against him with three hundred thousand men. Šāba reached Badhghis and Herat.^[14] At the same time the Roman emperor was in the Syrian desert, and the king of the Khazars was at Derbend.^[15] Counted from 30 June 578, Hormizd’s eleventh year runs from the summer of 588 to the summer of 589.^[16] Hormizd sent against Šāba the general Bahram, called Chobin, with twelve thousand picked men.^[17] After negotiation and fighting, Bahram killed Šāba with an arrow. Then he shut up Šāba’s son Parmūdha in a fortress. He sent Parmūdha as a prisoner to Hormizd, together with the treasure.^[18]

Some scholars name the Göktürk commander Bagha Khan and have Bahram defeat him decisively in April 588 at the Hyrcanian rock and pursue the army to the Oxus.^[19] Others date the defeat of Šāba to 589 at Herat.^[20] In Theophylact, the Turks had formerly exacted forty thousand gold pieces from the Persians as the price of quiet. They had grown so rich on Persian gold that they hammered out couches, tables, thrones and horse-trappings of gold.^[21] The Turks then broke the treaty and demanded more than the customary sum. The Persians chose war.^[22] After Hormizd’s victory the Turks paid tribute to Persia instead. Their golden couches, tables and thrones were carried off as booty.^[22] The war of 588–589 has also been seen as part of a concerted effort of the western Göktürks, the Romans and their Arab allies against Persia.^[23]

Fall

According to Theophylact, Bahram won great glory in the Göktürk war and sent the king enormous booty. The Romans then beat him in Albania, and Hormizd accused him of cowardice.^[24] The Persian romance of Bahram has the king send him a spindle and women’s clothes.^[24] Bahram rose in revolt. Hormizd was blinded, and Khosrow II took the throne.^[25]

By the Persian tradition, Hormizd was the grandson of a Göktürk khagan. He was also the king against whom the Göktürks fought their first great war with Persia.

References

^ a b Chavannes 1903, p. 242
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 264
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 324,359
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 252
^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 252
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 267
^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 264
^ a b Sebeos, ch. 10; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 14
^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 611
^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 639–640
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 278-279
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 279
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 167
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 269
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 269-270
^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 269
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 270-271
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 271-272
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 324
^ Golden 1992, p. 132
^ Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 80–81
^ a b Theophylact Simocatta; Whitby 1986, p. 81
^ Golden 1992, p. 133
^ a b Nöldeke 1879, p. 272
^ Chavannes 1903, p. 244

Sources

Literature

Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sasaniden. Aus der arabischen Chronik des Tabari übersetzt und mit ausführlichen Erläuterungen und Ergänzungen versehn (1879)
Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
R. W. Thomson (trans.), James Howard-Johnston (commentary), The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos (1999)
Hermann Zotenberg (ed., trans.), Histoire des rois des Perses par Abou Mansour ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Mohammad ibn Ismaʿil al-Thaʿalibi (1900)
Michael Whitby, Mary Whitby (trans.), The History of Theophylact Simocatta (1986)