I r a n i n Wo r l d H i s t o r y
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of his newly available financial resources, Khosrow invested heavily in
the improvement of roads and urban structures. He further reduced
corruption and interference from among the elite class by giving more
power to local landowners, called
dehgan
s, whom he found easier to
control.
Khosrow also increased salaries for the military, enabling him to
reorganize and strengthen his army. This enhanced military capac-
ity emboldened him to invade Byzantine territory in 540, breaking
a treaty of “eternal peace” he had signed with the Roman emperor
Justinian a mere eight years earlier. He had been encouraged in this
venture by overtures from the Germanic Goths, who had overrun the
western Roman Empire during the previous century and now flanked
Byzantium on the opposite side from the Persians.
Apart from his military campaigns and massive building projects,
Khosrow is known for his patronage of learning and the arts. During
his youth he studied philosophy under several Christian teachers. As
emperor he expanded the academy at Gondeshapur in Khuzestan; this
had started out a Nestorian Christian seminary, but under Khosrow’s
patronage it became the greatest institution of higher learning of
its time.
After the Byzantine emperor Justinian closed the neo-Platonist
academy at Athens in 529, a number of Greek academics took refuge
in the Sasanian lands, praising Khosrow as the very incarnation of
Plato’s Philosopher King. Some found employment at Gondeshapur,
where the curriculum included philosophy, astronomy, physics, lit-
erature, and medicine. Education at Gondeshapur drew on Greek,
Indian, Persian, and Mesopotamian scholarly traditions, and in some
ways it laid the foundation for modern universities. After the Arab
conquests in the seventh century, the school retained its prestige, and
many sons of the Muslim nouveaux riches received their education
from Christian, Jewish, or pagan professors.
Khosrow cultivated relations with India, from where the game
of chess was imported to Iran during his reign. His prime minister,
Bozorgmehr, who became the legendary model of the wise advisor,
wrote a treatise on the game, and in exchange invented backgammon
which was then sent to India. Bozorgmehr is associated with the rise
of “wisdom literature,” or “mirrors for princes,” which became highly
popular in the Islamic period.
An example of this literary genre is the book of animal fables
known as
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