Iran: Empire of the Mind (12 page)

Kavad I came to the throne in 488 at a time of crisis. The Hephtalites had sliced off a swathe of Persia’s eastern provinces, and the peasantry were in a miserable state through repeated famines, the exactions of the arrogant nobility, and the taxes required to make tribute payments. Provinces in the west and south-west were in revolt. Then, on top of all this, a version of the Manichaean heresy reappeared in a new, revolutionary form, demanding that since wealth and the desire for women caused all the trouble in the world, wealth should be distributed equally and women
should be held in common also (the latter is often thought to have been exaggerated by the sect’s enemies, but there is evidence that ‘shrines and inns’ were established where people could meet and make love freely).
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The movement has been named Mazdakism after its leader, Mazdak; though some have doubted how central to the phenomenon Mazdak actually was. Kavad himself was apparently converted to the new beliefs, seeing an opportunity to humble the nobles and the clergy. Granaries were thrown open to the people and land was redistributed, but the nobility and clergy managed to overcome Kavad, imprison him and replace him with his more malleable brother. The country (especially Mesopotamia, but also other parts) was in turmoil. At length Kavad was able to escape from prison and reimpose his authority with the help of the Hephtalites (in 498/499).

Al-Tabari gives a story
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that Kavad escaped through the intervention of his daughter, who went to the prison commander and allowed him to sleep with her, to persuade him to let her see her father. She stayed with Kavad for a day, and then left with a sturdy servant, who was carrying a rolled-up carpet. The commander asked about the carpet, but the girl told him it was the one she had slept on, and since she was having her period, she was going to wash, and then come back. The commander did not investigate the carpet further ‘lest he become polluted by it’ and let the girl go on her way. But instead of returning, once they were out of the prison, Kavad rolled out of the carpet and they all escaped to the Hephtalites. The superstitious taboo about the impurity of menstrual blood was to prove damaging to the nobles and clergy—there is a kind of cosmic justice to it.

In the remainder of Kavad’s reign and in that of his son and successor Khosraw (531-579) the two kings pushed through a number of important reforms that established the Sassanid Empire in something like its final shape. Both kings exploited the chaos caused by the Mazdakite revolution to diminish the power of the nobility and the clergy (this came across most clearly in Kavad’s later years, when Khosraw’s succession was in question—the clergy and nobility were forced to support Khosraw for fear that another of Kavad’s sons, a pro-Mazdakite, would become shah).
Perhaps most importantly, the taxation system was reformed, a poll tax was established, and a survey of taxable land was carried out, to ensure the taxation was equitable.
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The empire was divided into four sectors, each under the command of a military commander (
spahbod
), and supported by a chancery (
diwan
) that kept his troops supplied. In addition, a new clerical office was established—a Protector of the Poor, to reinforce the moral duty of the priesthood to look after the interests of the lowest strata of society; a duty they had presumably neglected before. The reforms created, or certainly greatly strengthened, a new class of dehqans, rural gentry who collected tax in the villages and were themselves small landowners. The dehqans also provided the battle-winning Persian cavalry that dominated the shah’s armies; but from now on they were paid and retained by the Shah instead of the great noble families. Identifying closely with the Shah’s interest, and providing administrators and courtiers as well as soldiers, the dehqan class became the prime means by which the traditions and culture of Sassanid Persia were preserved and transmitted onward in time after the Islamic conquest.

With these reforms well in train by the 520s,
³⁶
Kavad decided that Mazdak had outlived his usefulness. It seems a debate was organised in order to discredit his doctrines, at which not just the Zoroastrian clergy but also the Christians and Jews spoke out against Mazdak. According to the story told much later by by Ferdowsi, Kavad then turned Mazdak and his followers over to Khosraw, who had the charismatic communist’s people buried alive, planted head down in a walled orchard, with their feet only showing above the ground. Khosraw then invited Mazdak to view his garden, telling him:

You will find trees there that no-one has ever seen and no-one ever heard of even from the mouth of the ancient sages…

Mazdak went to the garden and opened the gate, but when he saw the kind of trees that were planted in Khosraw’s garden he gave a loud cry, and fainted. Khosraw had him hung by the feet from a gallows, and had him killed with volleys of arrows. Ferdowsi concluded:

If you are wise, do not follow the path of Mazdak. And so the nobles became secure in their possessions, and women, and children, and their rich treasures.
³⁷

This story may record some aspect of a contemporary memory, and we know that Ferdowsi worked from much earlier accounts of events. We cannot be sure how Mazdak died, but the revolution associated with him was an important episode. Another religious revolution—this time a failed one, or at least partially a failed one. It did not bring in a new order of shared property (let alone free love) but it did weaken the power of the great nobles and bring at least some benefits for the lower classes (though the main beneficiaries were the dehqans, and that may simply have meant that the peasants were delivered into the hands of people with the local focus to exploit them more efficiently). But if we look at it another way, it tells us some important things about the interplay of social and political interests, and the insurrection itself may appear in a different light. Mazdak and his adherents seem, at least initially, to have depended heavily on the authority of the king to get their revolution going. Even if he misjudged the forces that would be released, Kavad handled events cleverly. He was too important to the clergy and the nobles, by the time of his imprisonment, for them to simply kill him. He was the last thing standing between them and utter destruction. The revolution was an overdue reminder to them of the basis of their privileges and the importance of the monarchy in holding society together. Justice, even if not perfect (let alone egalitarian) had to be more than lip-service; and the principle of justice at least, in principle, gave everyone a legitimate expectation from the system, if not necessarily a right to be heard. The effect of the revolution, like most revolutions, was a broadening of the social bases of political power, releasing new reserves of human energy; and a reaffirmation and enhancement of the prestige and power of the monarchy, which now entered what later was regarded as its golden age.

Khosraw Anushirvan

After his succession in 531 Khosraw continued with his father’s reforms, and completed the destruction of the Mazdakites.
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His court became a centre for learning, attracting in particular some of the Greek neo-Platonists whose school of philosophy had been closed down in Athens by
the emperor Justinian. But as Gibbon commented, these were Platonists ‘whom Plato himself would have blushed to acknowledge’:

The disappointment of the philosophers provoked them to overlook the real virtues of the Persians; and they were scandalized, more deeply perhaps than became their profession, with the plurality of wives and concubines, the incestuous marriages, and the custom of exposing dead bodies to the dogs and vultures, instead of hiding them in the earth, or consuming them with fire. Their repentance was expressed by a precipitate return, and they loudly declared that they had rather die on the border of the empire, than enjoy the wealth and favour of the Barbarian. From this journey, however, they derived a benefit which reflects the purest lustre on the character of Chosroes [Khosraw]. He required, that the seven sages who had visited the court of Persia, should be exempted from the penal laws which Justinian enacted against his pagan subjects; and this privilege, expressly stipulated in a treaty of peace, was guarded by the vigilance of a powerful mediator.
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Khosraw encouraged the translation of texts from the Greek, Indian and Syriac languages, and it was apparently in his reign that the game of chess was introduced from India (and probably somewhat amended). He instigated the compilation of a history of Persia, and an astronomical almanac. He upheld the position of Zoroastrianism in the country, but himself took a more rationalist approach, based on his reading of philosophy and of writings from other religions, and through his reputation for wisdom and justice Khosraw later acquired the title Anushirvan (Khosraw of the Immortal Soul). In the west (partly through his contact with the neo-Platonists) he was known by some as the philosopher-king. The Arabs, as they recorded later, knew him as ‘The Just’. He established a magnificent court, and built the palace at Ctesiphon, the great
iwan
arch of which can still be seen today, along with spreading gardens and precincts that have since disappeared. The reign of Khusraw, for its intellectual achievements, for its exemplification of the Sassanid idea of kingship, was the pinnacle of Sassanid rule, and in later centuries became almost the Platonic form of what monarchy should be, even after the Sassanids themselves had long since disappeared.

Khosraw was also successful in war, defeating the Hephtalites, and the Turks, who had been instrumental in weakening the Hephtalites at an earlier stage and were now pressing on the Empire’s northern and north-eastern
borders. Khosraw also fought a series of wars with the East Romans (hereafter usually called the Byzantines) in which he was generally successful (following up the successes of his father and his father’s
spahbod
Azarethes in defeating the great Byzantine general Belisarius at Nisibis and Callinicum in 530 and 531). The Byzantines renewed treaties according to which the Persians, in return for large cash sums, would prevent enemies invading Asia Minor through the Caucasus. Finally, Khosraw retook the strategic town of Dara in 572 and was able again to send his troops raiding into Syria as far as Antioch. The Byzantines made further truces, buying the Persians off with large sums of gold.
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On Khosraw’s death in 579, his son Hormuzd IV took the throne. Hormuzd seems to have done his best to maintain the balance established by his father, supporting the dehqans against the nobility and defending the rights of the lower classes; and to have resisted attempts by the clergy to reassert themselves. But he resorted to executions to do so, and was remembered accordingly by the Zoroastrians as a cruel and unjust king. In this situation one of the generals, Bahram Chubin, who had achieved successes in war in the east, marched on Ctesiphon after being criticised by Hormuzd for a less than brilliant performance in war in the west. Bahram Chubin was a descendant of the old Parthian Arsacid line, through the great family of the Mehran. With the help of other nobles, he deposed, blinded and later killed Hormuzd, putting Hormuzd’s son, Khosraw II in power (in about 589/590). But then Bahram declared himself king, restoring the Arsacid dynasty. This was too much for the majority of the political class, who held strongly to the dynastic principle and supported the right of Khosraw II to rule. After a reverse that forced him to flee to the west, Khosraw II returned with the support of the Byzantine emperor, Maurice, and ejected Bahram, who fled to the territory of the Turks (Turan) and was murdered there.

Khosraw Parvez

Surviving various further disputes and rebellions among the nobility with Armenian and Byzantine help, Khosraw was able to establish his supremacy again by 600, and took the title Khosraw
Parvez
—The
Victorious. The title was to prove apposite, but Khosraw II did not have the vision or the moral greatness of his namesake, his grandfather. He may have been implicated in the murder of his father, and his life was studded with incidents of cruelty and vindictiveness, intensifying as he grew older (though his pro-Christian position and the unfortunate outcome of his reign may have prejudiced later Zoroastrian writers against him). He did everything to excess. He burdened his subjects with increasingly heavy taxation, accumulating enormous wealth. Although he was remembered afterwards for the great story of his love for Shirin, he had an enormous harem of wives, concubines, dancers, musicians and other entertainers. When he went hunting he did so in a huge park stuffed with game of all kinds. At court he sat on a splendid throne, under a dome across which celestial spheres moved by a hidden mechanism, as in a planetarium.