Šāba

Šāba is the king of the Turks whom the Persian and Arabic historians send against Hormizd IV in the eleventh year of his reign. Bahram Chobin kills him with an arrow.^[1] The Chinese histories do not know the name. The war is the Göktürk–Persian war of 588. Who led the Göktürk army in it is an open question.

The account of Tabari

Tabari tells the reign of Hormizd from two traditions. The second gives the Turkish war.^[2] Enemies pressed Persia from every side. The country was called a sieve with many holes and was said to be enclosed as the string encloses the two ends of a bow.^[1] The king of the Khazars marched on Derbent, and two Arab chiefs raided the Sawād from the Euphrates. From the east Šāba, the supreme king of the Turks, advanced with three hundred thousand men as far as Bādghīs and Herat.^[1] He sent word to Hormizd and the Persian nobles that he was coming. They were to repair the bridges over the streams and rivers so that he could pass into their land, and to build bridges where there were none. They were to do the same on the road from Persia to the land of the Romans, since he meant to march through to it.^[1]

Hormizd took counsel and resolved to fight the Turkish king. He sent against him a man of Rayy, Bahram son of Bahram Gushnasp, called Chobin. Bahram had chosen the twelve thousand soldiers himself, all men of mature age and not one a youth. Another account has Hormizd muster seventy thousand.^[1] Bahram advanced by forced marches until he was past Herat and Bādghīs. Šāba knew nothing of him until he had made a fortified camp close by.^[1] The two sides negotiated and fought, and Bahram killed Šāba with an arrow.^[1] The Persians counted it among the three famous shots of their history. The other two were the shot of Ārash in the war of Manuchihr and Afrasiyab and the shot of Sōkhrā in the earlier Turkish war.^[1]

Bahram took the enemy’s camp and held it. Then Šāba’s son Parmūdha, “who was his father’s equal”, came up. Bahram attacked him, beat him and shut him up in one of his fortresses. He pressed him until he surrendered. He sent him as a prisoner to Hormizd, with the treasure of the fortress. By the account, this was money, jewels, vessels, weapons and gear to the load of two hundred and fifty thousand camels.^[1] Hormizd thanked him. Then Bahram began to fear the king’s violence, and so did his troops. The sequel is the revolt that ended Hormizd’s reign and put his son Khosrow on the throne.^[1] Hormizd’s first, incomplete year is counted from 30 June 578. The eleventh year therefore runs from the middle of 588 to the middle of 589.^[2]

The name

SābaArabicTabari
SāwaPersianTabari
ŠābaArabic
昭武Chinese

The manuscripts write the name with varying diacritical points. The Arabic texts read it Sāba, the Persian texts Sāwa.^[2] The translation of Tabari takes it, after Abel-Rémusat, for the Chinese Zhaowu, 昭武. The official Chinese reports of the period give this family name to several princes of the small states on the Oxus.^[2] Those states were more or less dependent on the Turkish khagan. The same judgement holds that the khagan can hardly be identical with this Šāba. It also holds that it is very doubtful whether Šāba was a Turk in the strict sense. It sets aside the Armenian notices as of little value for the eastern peoples. It notes that Theophylact too names the Turks at this point.^[2] The son’s name, Parmūdha, stands fairly firm in the tradition. Dinawari writes Yel-tegin instead. The translation takes that for an adjustment to the Turkish names current in his own day.^[2]

Identifications

There are three theories about who Šāba was.

The first makes Šāba Bagha Khan, Ishbara’s brother and a lesser khan of the west. He led the Göktürk army across the Oxus and was beaten at the Hyrcanian rock in April 588. He was reportedly killed on the Oxus.^[3] The equation of the Chinese Baga Khan with the Persian Šāba is old. It is a hypothesis.

The second makes him a son of Tardush. Some scholars have the Göktürk army led by Tardush’s son Šāba, “the greatest king of the Turks”, and defeated by Bahram at Herat in 589.^[4] The same scholars report the identification of this son with a younger son of Tardush known from the Bukharan tradition and from the Chinese sources. It does not settle it.^[4]

The third denies him to the Göktürks altogether. In that case he is a prince of the Oxus states bearing the dynastic name Zhaowu, a vassal of the khagan rather than the khagan himself.^[2]

The three theories share the event. A Turkish-led army came over the Oxus into Khurasan in 588. Bahram beat it, and its king died in the field.^[1] The Chinese chapters name every khan of the Göktürks in these years. They name no campaign into Persia and no khan who fell there.^[5] That silence is why the identity remains open. It is also why Turkic Atlas tells it as a question under the western khaganate and under the war.

References

^ a b c d e f g h i j k Tabari
^ a b c d e f g Nöldeke 1879
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 323-325
^ a b Golden 1992
^ Sui Shu (Book of Sui), juan 84

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)
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)