Herat

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

Herat lies on the Hari Rud, where the river leaves the mountains of central Afghanistan for the plain. It was the chief city of eastern Khurasan. With Balkh, Talakan and Badhghis, it was one of the cities that the Göktürks took in 588. Haraiwa, the Herat district, stands among the satrapies of Darius I, with Khwarazm, Sogdia and the Saka. A thousand years later it was the farthest point of the first great Göktürk–Persian war.^[1] Strabo calls Aria, the country of Herat, as fertile as Margiana. He adds that its wine was still richer and kept perfectly for three generations in casks without pitch.^[2] Badhghis, the district beside the city, is one of the places proposed for Badiyan, the seat of the Hephthalite kings in the Chinese records. Another proposal puts Badiyan in Badakhshan on the upper Oxus. A third puts it at the Huo of Xuanzang near Kunduz (Hephthalites).^[3]

The war of 588

Tabari has the earliest narrative.^[4] He writes that under Hormizd IV, “as others report, Šāba, the over-king of the Türk, marched against him with three hundred thousand warriors in the eleventh year of his reign and advanced as far as Badhghis and Herat”.^[5] At the same time the Roman emperor moved with eighty thousand into the Syrian desert. The king of the Khazars came with a great army to Derbend, and two Arab chiefs settled on the Euphrates. Persia was surrounded like a sieve with many holes, or, as it was also said, as the string holds the two ends of the bow.^[5] Šāba sent word to Hormizd and the Persian grandees that he was coming with his troops. They were to repair the bridges over the streams and rivers so that he could cross into their land. They were to build bridges where there were none, and to do the same on the roads by which he meant to march through their land to the Romans.^[5] Hormizd took counsel, and it was decided to march against the king of the Göktürks. He sent a man of Ray, Bahram son of Bahram-Gushnasp, called Chobin. Bahram had chosen twelve thousand soldiers himself, all mature men and not a youth among them. Another account has seventy thousand mustered from the rolls.^[5] Bahram advanced by forced marches “until he was beyond Herat and Badhghis”. Šāba noticed nothing until Bahram had pitched a fortified camp close by.^[5] After negotiations and fighting between the two sides, Bahram killed Šāba with an arrow-shot, one of the three famous shots of the Persian realm. He took the enemy camp.^[5] When Šāba’s son Parmudha came up, Bahram attacked him and beat him too. He shut Parmudha in one of his castles.^[5] Bahram forced him to surrender and sent him captive to Hormizd, with the treasure of the castle: two hundred and fifty thousand camel-loads of money, jewels, vessels, weapons and gear, by the account.^[5]

The detail needs placing and qualifying.^[4] Badhghis, already in the Avesta, is a district not far from Herat.^[4] The eleventh year of Hormizd, counted from 30 June 578, is right for 588.^[4] The Roman campaign and the Arab chiefs are exaggerated or fictitious.^[4] The name Šāba, or Sāwa in Persian, is identical, by an old equation, with the Chao-wu that the Chinese histories give as the family name of several princes of the small states on the Oxus. These states were more or less dependent on the Göktürk khagan.^[4] Whether Tabari’s Šāba was a Göktürk in the strict sense is therefore very doubtful. Theophylact, however, names the Göktürks in this war too.^[4] One account, from the same tradition, has the Göktürk army led by Tardush’s son “Šāba, the greatest king of the Turks”. It has Bahram Chobin defeat him at Herat in 589, and it cites Tabari, Masʿudi and Theophylact.^[1] The other tells the war differently. Bagha, as a lesser khan, crossed the Oxus in 588. He took Balkh, Herat, Talakan and Badhghis and went on west into Hyrcania. He was beaten at the Hyrcanian rock in April 588 and, reportedly, killed on the Oxus.^[6] The twelve thousand against three hundred thousand are the epic’s figures, and the arrow is a topos.^[7] In 589 Bahram marched east to retake Herat. There he appears to have taken the golden throne of the Göktürk khan. He then reached Bukhara.^[7]

Between two empires

The Persian hold on the cities of Bactria did not last. The cities came back to the Göktürks after the second war of 606 and 607, in which a Göktürk army reached Ray and Isfahan and was withdrawn.^[7] A Sasanian general then beat the Göktürks’ Hephthalite vassals near Balkh.^[7] Bactria was recovered eight years later under Tong Yabgu. In 625 he campaigned to the Indus and set his son over the yabgu state of Tokharistan.^[7] The border can be marked as Xuanzang found it in 630.^[8] Balkh was not the western limit of the Göktürks. Talakan in Gharjistan still belonged to them, and only at Merv did the Persian empire begin. Herat therefore lay on the Göktürk side of the line.^[8] The city passes out of Göktürk history. The Samanids governed Herat for the Abbasids from about 819, and the Timurid Husayn Bayqara made it his centre in the fifteenth century.^[1]

Assessment

Herat marks the reach of the Göktürks in the south-west. Tabari names it as the end of the Göktürk advance, the point beyond which Bahram had to march to find them. Whether the khan’s throne was lost there or at the Hyrcanian rock, Herat is where the Persian tradition put the Göktürk defeat. The tradition is all there is. The Göktürks left no account of the war.

References

^ a b c Golden 1992
^ Laufer 1919, p. 223
^ Herrmann 1925, p. 572–576; 43–45; Markwart 1938, p. 572–576; 43–45
^ a b c d e f g Nöldeke 1879
^ a b c d e f g h Tabari
^ Yavuz 2025, p. 323-325
^ a b c d e Yavuz 2025
^ a b Chavannes 1903

Sources

Literature

Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
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)
Berthold Laufer, Sino-Iranica. Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran (1919)
Albert Herrmann, Die Hephthaliten und ihre Beziehungen zu China (1925)
Josef Markwart, Wehrot und Arang. Untersuchungen zur mythischen und geschichtlichen Landeskunde von Ostiran (1938)