Iran in World History

Kalila and Dimna
, based on the Indian 
Pancatantra
which 
was introduced to Iran by one of Khosrow’s court physicians. These 

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41
tales, which feature two conniving jackals who act as advisors to the 
well-meaning but suggestible lion king, are thinly disguised political 
allegory. In one story the jackals grow jealous of the king’s budding 
friendship with a powerful bull; they poison the lion’s ears against his 
new companion, until he finally relents and kills his blameless friend in 
a fit of paranoia.
Apart from teaching the principles of justice and political savvy, 
“mirrors for princes” provided a model for the royal lifestyle, which 
included hunting and playing polo—an Iranian invention, which 
spread to India and then much later to England—as well as chess and 
backgammon. The legendary 
Deeds of Ardeshir
offers guidance on 
appropriate leisure activities, relating that when Ardeshir was still a 
youth it was “commanded that he should go to the hunt and polo[-
field] with his own children and courtiers. Ardeshir did this, [and] 
with the help of the gods, he proved to be triumphant and more adept 
than them all in polo, horsemanship, chess, and backgammon and all 
other knowledge.”
8
The advice genre extended to children as well: a 
Zoroastrian text on proper schooling lists forty-three principles for 
good students, including the exhortation that “on their way to and 
from school they should go by the most direct route, and not strike or 
abuse dogs, chickens, or cows along the way.”
9
Khosrow was succeeded in 579 by his son, Hormizd IV, amid 
ongoing conflicts with the Byzantines to the west and Central Asian 
Turks to the east. To the north another Turkic group, the Khazars, 
had begun raiding Sasanian territory, as had Arabs to the south: the 
empire was embattled on all sides. Hormizd initially placed his hope in 
a general named Bahram Chubin, a member of one of the seven pow-
erful Parthian families on whose support the Sasanians had depended 
since the beginning. The two quarreled, however, and Bahram rose in 
rebellion.
In response to this threat, in 590 Hormizd was overthrown and 
killed by two Parthian uncles (on his mother’s side), who put his son 
Khosrow II (also called Khosrow Parvez, “the Victorious”) on the 
throne. Khosrow II then had one of these same uncles killed; at this, 
the other rebelled and, with Parthian support, had Bahram Chubin 
enthroned in Khosrow’s place. Khosrow escaped to Byzantium, but 
was restored to power with Byzantine help a year later. Bahram Chubin 
fled east and was finally assassinated on Khosrow’s orders. His power 
at last confirmed, Khosrow II went on to reign for another thirty-seven 
years, but the Sasanians’ fragile dependence on Parthian support had 
been exposed.

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Khosrow’s early reign was crowned by a dramatic expansion into 
Byzantine territories. Taking advantage of internal disorder within the 
Roman Empire following the murder of Emperor Maurice in 602, the 
Sasanian armies moved in and captured much of the Levant and North 
Africa. In 614, Sasanian invaders captured Jerusalem and carted off 
the “True Cross” of Jesus Christ to Iran.
Finally under Emperor Heraclius, the Byzantine army, aided by 
Persian defectors, staged a successful counterattack. In 624, the Roman 
army managed to penetrate the Adur Gushnasp temple in Media which 
held one of the three holiest fires in Zoroastrianism. This humiliation 
drew the outrage of the Sasanian nobility and priesthood, who ceased 
to see Khosrow as an effective protector of the realm. He survived a 
few more years as a weak emperor, until a group of Parthian nobles 
(still pulling strings behind the scene) finally deposed him in 628 in 
favor of his son Kavad II.
Though not popularly remembered as a great ruler, Khosrow II 
was immortalized in later Persian literature such as the 
Book of Kings
and Nezami Ganjavi’s 
Khosrow and Shirin
, which recounts the emper-
or’s turbulent marriage to a Christian princess. Iran’s most legendary 
musician, Barbad, was employed at Khosrow’s court; he is credited 
with formalizing Iranian music, and some elements of his system sur-
vive in Iranian classical music today. Another composer of the time, 
the harpist Nakisa, was Barbad’s colleague and sometime collaborator.
It is said that Barbad was initially barred from court by a jealous 
rival. One night, however, during a drinking party in one of the royal 
gardens, music began wafting through the air that was so beautiful it 
seemed to be coming from heaven. Khosrow demanded to know the 
provenance of these lovely sounds; it turned out that they were pro-
duced by Barbad hiding in a tree. Barbad was hired on the spot, and 
his rival expelled from the king’s entourage.
Khosrow II was executed shortly after being deposed, along with 
all his male relatives who were potential heirs to the throne. This para-
noid gesture on Kavad’s part permanently crippled an already weak 
empire. Kavad himself died after a few months, paving the way for 
a tumultuous interregnum in which the throne was briefly seized by 
a Parthian general named Shahrbaraz, then by Khosrow’s daughter 
Borandokht, then by Shahrbaraz’s son, then Borandokht’s sister, and 
then by Borandokht a second time—all within the space of three years.
Not surprisingly, Borandokht’s second reign was cut short by her 
murder. Her successor, Yazdegerd III (reigned 632–651), proved to 
be the last of the Sasanians. Far off in Arabia, a prophetic figure 

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known as Muhammad had proclaimed a new religion, Islam. When 
news of the goings-on in Iran reached his ears, Muhammad report-
edly commented, “A nation that appoints a woman as its ruler shall 
never prosper.”
10
Iran 
was
a prosperous country, of course, which is why the Arabs in-
vaded it a few years after Muhammad’s death. Throughout the Sasanian 
Period, commercial traffic along the trans-Asian trade routes had con-
tinued to increase. The principal actors and beneficiaries of this traffic 
were the Sogdians of Central Asia, whose main city was Samarkand 
(in present-day Uzbekistan). Their language, an east Iranian dialect, 
became the lingua franca of the Silk Road as far as China, where Sogdian 
merchants established expatriate colonies in cities such as Dunhuang, 
Luoyang, and Chang’an (modern Xian). A large proportion of China’s 
foreign trade depended upon the Sogdians, whom the annals of the Tang 
dynasty describe as traders by nature: “They excel in commerce and 
love gain; once a man reaches the age of twenty, he goes off to the neigh-
boring realms; wherever there are profits to be made, they go.”
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From the time of Alexander’s conquests onward the Sogdians were 
rarely politically independent, but their distance from imperial centers in 
Iran allowed them a measure of self-determination. On the other hand, 
their proximity to the Central Asian steppes left them at the front line of 
defense against incursions from nomadic raiders. At times the Sogdian 
lands were under the de facto control of nomadic groups such as the 
Hephthalites and later waves of Turks. But the largely urban Sogdians also 
had a kind of symbiotic relationship with the nomads, who provided them 
with trade items such as leather and other animal products while receiv-
ing manufactured and luxury goods in return. Also, nomadic individuals 
or groups often chose to settle in the towns and integrate themselves into 
urban society, which resulted in their adaptation to Sogdian life.
Sogdians were thus purveyors of culture as well as goods. They 
were particularly prominent in the transmission of religions, includ-
ing Buddhism, Christianity, and Manichaeism. None of these religions 
appears to have become widespread in the Sogdian heartlands, where 
local Iranian cults continued to predominate (except in the southern 
regions adjacent to Bactria, which became largely Buddhist). Individual 
Sogdians, however, adopted these foreign faiths, probably as a way of