Gurgan

Gurgan is the land at the south-eastern corner of the Caspian Sea, the Hyrcania of the Greeks.^[1] It lies between the Elburz and the Kopet mountains.^[2] For the Persian kings it was at all times a base against the peoples of the northern steppe.^[1] The Sasanian king Khosrow I ringed it with fortresses. The stone for his works at Sul was quarried there.^[3]^[4]

The frontier before the Göktürks

King Peroz built a town, Roshan-Peroz, between Gurgan and the gate of Sul.^[5]^[6] Lazarus names Gurgan as the place from which Peroz set out against the Hephthalites and to which the survivors fled. Priscus and Procopius name it too.^[7] The lie of the land may explain the choice. The frontier of western Khorasan was open to raids from the desert. From Gurgan the raids could be met.^[7] Several Sasanian kings are also said to have built walls against the nomads there.^[7]

Khosrow I’s fortresses

In Tabari’s account, Khosrow I built towns and castles, walls and many other works in the region of Sul. He used stone quarried in the region of Gurgan.^[3] The inhabitants were to take refuge in them from sudden attack.^[3] The khagan Sinjibu, “the boldest and mightiest of all the Turks”, then came against the region with a great army.^[8] He turned back when he heard how strong the fortifications at Sul were.^[4] Sinjibu has been identified with Istemi.^[9] Tabari adds that after the works were built, the enemies who lived over against Gurgan could no longer raid the land or take it.^[4]

Where Sul lay is disputed. Tabari himself sets the Sul beside the Alans, a people of the Caucasus.^[3]^[10] Tabari may have mixed up the works in Gurgan with those at the Caucasus, since nobody would quarry stone in Gurgan to build at the Caucasus.^[11] If so, Sinjibu’s target was the part of Khorasan that the fortifications of Gurgan protected.^[11]

Al-Thaʿalibi keeps the works apart. In his account Khosrow closed the passes and fortified the frontiers.^[12] He built fortresses of stone in Gurgan, the gate of Sul, five parasangs long and of marble, and the wall at Bab al-Abwab as a barrier against the Khazars.^[13] He also built more than a hundred citadels between his empire and the Caucasus. They were to protect Iran against its enemies, the Turks, the Khazars and the Rus.^[13] In al-Thaʿalibi’s division of the empire into four regions, Gurgan belonged to the second, with Media, Armenia, Adharbaijan and Tabaristan.^[14]

Istemi and the army of 588

One modern account has a Göktürk force cross the desert into Persian territory in 560. The force appears at Gurgan on the Caspian.^[15] Khosrow marched there with a great army and met Istemi in person. Istemi declared that he wanted no war.^[15] In that account the two kings fixed the frontier along the Oxus. They sealed a pact of non-aggression with the marriage of Istemi’s daughter to Khosrow.^[16]

The same account brings the Göktürks back in 588.^[17] After taking Herat and the cities of Bactria, the Göktürk army of that year marched on west. It reached Hyrcania, into which Istemi had once come.^[17]

Smbat Bagratuni in Vrkan

Under Khosrow II the Armenian Smbat Bagratuni became marzpan of Gurgan. The Armenian history attributed to Sebeos calls the province Vrkan.^[18] The king gave him Persian and Armenian troops. Smbat brought prosperity back to a land that had been ravaged.^[19] In the same province, Sebeos places a community deported from Armenia. It was settled on the edge of the great desert that stretches from T’urk’astan and Delhastan.^[19] Some scholars date Smbat’s appointment to 599 or 600 and his retirement, after eight years, to 606 or 607.^[2] Others put the appointment in 595.^[20]

Khosrow later sent Smbat east against the Kushans. Smbat called up his own Armenian troops from Vrkan, about two thousand horsemen.^[21] The kings of the Kushans called in the great khan. The war with the khan’s host followed.^[21] In the sources, Gurgan remains the fortified corner of Persia that faced the steppe, from Peroz to Khosrow II.

References

^ a b Nöldeke 1879, p. 17
^ a b Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 181
^ a b c d Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 158
^ a b c Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 160
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 123
^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 578
^ a b c Nöldeke 1879, p. 131
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 158–159
^ Chavannes 1903, p. 226–227
^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 157
^ a b Nöldeke 1879, p. 158
^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 610–611
^ a b aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 611
^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 609
^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 278
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 278–279
^ a b Yavuz 2025, p. 323–324
^ Sebeos; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 43–44
^ a b Sebeos; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 44
^ Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 44
^ a b Sebeos, ch. 28; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 50

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)
Hermann Zotenberg (ed., trans.), Histoire des rois des Perses par Abou Mansour ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Mohammad ibn Ismaʿil al-Thaʿalibi (1900)
R. W. Thomson (trans.), James Howard-Johnston (commentary), The Armenian History attributed to Sebeos (1999)
Édouard Chavannes, Documents sur les Tou-Kiue (Turcs) occidentaux (1903)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)