Khorasan

Khorasan was the eastern quarter of Sasanian Persia, and its name means the east.^[1] Khosrow I divided the office of spahbedh, the commander of the army, among four men. The first of them was the spahbedh of the East, “that is, Khorasan and its neighbourhood”.^[2] In al-Thaʿalibi’s account of the same division, the first region embraced Khorasan and the lands beside it, Tokharistan, Zabulistan and Sistan.^[3] The name survives as that of a province of Iran, in which Nishapur lies.^[4]^[5]

The frontier towards the steppe

Tabari’s account of King Peroz has him march into Khorasan against Akhshunwar, king of the Hephthalites.^[6] On the way he came to a tower that Bahram Gur had built as the boundary between Khorasan and the lands of the Turks.^[7] The Turks of this narrative are Akhshunwar’s people. Some scholars hold that the frontier of western Khorasan towards the desert lay open to raids by nature. They add that Gurgan was the base from which they could be met.^[8]

Under Khosrow I, Tabari’s khagan Sinjibu came against the fortified frontier. He turned back before the gate of Sul.^[9] His target may have been the part of Khorasan that the walls of Gurgan protected. In that case Tabari has confused those walls with works at the Caucasus.^[10]

Bahram Chobin and the Göktürks

In the eleventh year of Hormizd IV, by one tradition in Tabari, Šāba, “the over-king of the Turks”, advanced with three hundred thousand warriors as far as Badghis and Herat.^[11] The Persian general Bahram Chobin marched beyond Herat and Badghis. In the war of 588 and 589 he killed Šāba with an arrow.^[12]^[13] The Armenian history attributed to Sebeos calls Bahram “prince of the eastern regions of the country of Persia”.^[14] The regions of the east are what the name Khorasan means.^[15]

The victory turned Bahram against his king.^[16] The Persian and Arabic accounts have him march on Hormizd from Khorasan straight after his victory over the Turks.^[17] In al-Thaʿalibi Bahram first made peace with the khagan, the son of Barmūdha. He gave him back his country and concluded a pact of friendship with him.^[18] Then he moved into Khorasan. He openly raised the standard of revolt and ceased to recognise Hormizd as his sovereign.^[18]

Bahram’s flight

Bahram lost the struggle for the throne to Hormizd’s son, Khosrow II.^[19] Tabari has him flee to Khorasan and from there to the Turks.^[20] In al-Thaʿalibi, Khosrow stayed in his camp until he knew for certain that Bahram had taken the road to Khorasan.^[21] Bahram went on as far as Nishapur and halted there.^[22] Few men were left to him. The people were not well disposed.^[22] He crossed into Transoxiana and asked the khagan, the son of Barmūdha, for protection.^[22] At the khagan’s court he was murdered at Khosrow’s instigation.^[23]

The khan’s host

Under Khosrow II the Armenian Smbat Bagratuni commanded against the Kushans in the east, in a war that drew in the great khan.^[24] He camped at Apr Shahr in the province of Tos. With three hundred men he took quarters in the walled village of Khrokht.^[24] Apr Shahr lay near Nishapur.^[25] The kings of the Kushans called in the great khan. His host crossed the Oxus and surrounded the village.^[26] Khrokht has been called a fortified village in Khorasan.^[27] The host beat the Persian relief force. It raided as far as the borders of Rayy and Isfahan, until the khan’s order called it home.^[28] In the sources of the sixth and seventh centuries, Khorasan is the Persian side of the frontier with the Göktürks.

References

^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 155
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 155
^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 609
^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 17
^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 156
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 123
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 128
^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 131
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 159–160
^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 158
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 269
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 271
^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 269
^ Sebeos, ch. 10; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 15
^ Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 181
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 272–273
^ Nöldeke 1879, p. 272
^ a b aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 658
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 273, 286–287
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 287
^ aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 670
^ a b c aṯ-Ṯaʿālibī; Zotenberg 1900, p. 674
^ Tabari; Nöldeke 1879, p. 289
^ a b Sebeos, ch. 28; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 50
^ Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 50
^ Sebeos, ch. 28; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 50–51
^ Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 185
^ Sebeos, ch. 28; Howard-Johnston 1999, p. 51

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)