The Arab Conquest Of Persia: The Fall Of A Superpower

In the 7th century, Sasanian Persia found itself on the brink of collapse. The Arab tribes, until recently divided and exhausted by internal strife, were now united by a new faith, Islam. Along with it came the desire for great conquests in the name of Allah. In southern Mesopotamia, at the Battle of Al-Qadisiyya, two forces met. On one side, the Arab commander Saud ibn Abi Waqas, one of the closest companions of the Prophet Muhammad. On the other, the Persian spabed Rostum Farrukhzad. It was here that the fate of an ancient civilization was decided. Persia had survived centuries of wars, withstood the pressure of Rome and Byzantium. But could it resist a new force that had emerged from the desert? The Sasanian Empire fielded an army almost twice as large, tens of thousands of infantry and cavalry. At the front they placed war elephants, about four dozen living battering rams capable of breaking any formation. Opposing them stood the smaller but extraordinarily mobile army of the Rashidun Caliphate. The first strike, the Persian left flank advanced, and the right wing of the Muslims began to retreat. The center committed reserves to battle. A cavalry maneuver stabilized the battle line. A new assault. Now the imperial elephants entered the fight. Under their pressure, the left wing of the Caliphate army began to waver. Yet the fearsome war machine failed to break warriors whose discipline was stronger than iron. The Muslims withstood the blow and launched a counter-attack, pushing the Persians back to their original positions. Another wave. Both armies rushed forward simultaneously. A frontal clash. Dust. The roar of voices and the ringing of steel. It was at this moment that something happened which forever changed the course of history. The Persian commander Rustum Farrukhzad died under mysterious circumstances. Having lost him, the giant army lost its order. The Sasanians began a panicked retreat. This defeat did not merely end the battle. It redrew the map of the world. In the Middle East, where the first civilizations emerged, Persian empires had existed for centuries. The first and most famous was the Achaemenid Empire, founded by Cyrus the Great. At the height of its power, during the reign of Darius I, it became the largest state of the ancient world. But the Achaemenid Empire could not withstand Alexander the Great. The legendary commander conquered its vast territories and annexed them to his dominions. After Alexander's death, Persia was ruled by his successors. The Hellenistic era ended with an uprising of the Iranian elites. First, they reconquered part of the lands and created the Parthian Empire. Then Mithridates I and his successors greatly expanded it and returned most of the territory of modern Iran under the rule of Persian rulers. The Parthian Empire controlled important sections of the Silk Road, and its kings fought Rome for centuries. But eventually the state fell because of civil war. Ardashir I rebelled against the last Parthian ruler, founded the Sasanian Empire, and conquered Parthia. The Sasanians restored Persia's ancient greatness. They expanded the borders of the state and fought the Byzantines for decades, their main rivals for influence in the Middle East. At the beginning of the 7th century, the Sasanian Empire seemed to be the superpower of its age. Its capital, Ctesiphon, was a center of wealth and power, and its army one of the strongest in the world. The official religion of the Sasanians, Zoroastrianism, united the entire empire from Mesopotamia to Central Asia. It was this religious unity that made the state a monolith. But soon, Islam undermined this order. In the first half of the 7th century, while the Sasanian Empire exhausted itself in endless war with Byzantium, on the western Arabian Peninsula, the prophet Muhammad created the first Islamic state, with its capital in Medina. The Persians began losing battles to the Byzantines, and losing previously conquered lands. In Egypt, Asia Minor, and Western Asia. Driven to the limit by the prolonged war, influential Persian families organized a palace coup and executed the king of kings, Khosrow II Parviz, who had originally begun this conflict. Among the conspirators were the commander Rostam Farrukhzad and the influential aristocrat Piruz Khosrow, as well as the son and heir of the murdered ruler, Kavadh II. The new king of kings ordered the execution of 18 of his brothers, whom he considered potential rivals. At the same time, Kavadh II concluded peace with the Byzantine emperor. But he did not rule for long. That same year, Kavadh II died of plague, and the empire descended into a bloody civil war. Central authority weakened, kings of kings rapidly replaced one another on the throne, and powerful Persian families effectively tore the state into two hostile camps. The Parthian faction consisted of descendants of the old Parthian nobility, who retained influence even after the rise of the Sassanians. They wanted strong regional authority and autonomy for local rulers. Their leader was Rostam Farrukhzad, who relied above all on military strength. Opposing them was the Persian faction, which included the new elite of Persia from the Sassanian heartland. They wanted a centralized empire and a strong monarch on the throne. Their leader was Peruz Khosrow, an experienced master of court intrigue. During the four years of civil war, Persia was ruled by more than a dozen sovereigns. The state was seriously weakened by economic crisis. Constant changes of rulers, weak central authority, and the struggle of influential families made the empire extremely unstable. Eventually, the factions reached a compromise and placed a child on the throne, the eight-year-old Yazdegerd III, grandson of the late Khosrow II and the last Sassanian king of kings. Until adolescence, Yazdegerd had no real power and ruled only nominally. Instead, the empire was governed by powerful generals and influential aristocrats who had survived the civil war and retained their positions. While Persia weakened, Muhammad became not only a religious leader but also a capable commander. He conquered new lands and captured his native city, Mecca, which later became the holiest city of Islam. When the prophet died, his companions created the first caliphate in history, the Rashidun Caliphate. Its ruler became Abu Bakr, Muhammad's father-in-law. The followers of Islam rapidly spread the new faith, and the Rashidun Caliphate conquered more and more territories. Meanwhile, the Persians and Byzantines, drained by years of war against each other, gradually lost their frontier lands. The Muslim conquest of Persia began just a year after Muhammad's death. Nevertheless, the main campaigns were led by another companion of the prophet, Umar, who after the death of Abu Bakr, became the second caliph. The first great and at the same time decisive defeat of the Persians was the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah. Here, the close companion of the prophet Muhammad, the Arab commander Saud ibn Abi Waqqas, faced the Persian Later, the image of Rostam entered the Iranian national epic, the Shahnameh. The data on the size of the armies differs greatly. Medieval chroniclers wrote of hundreds of thousands of warriors. Nonetheless, modern historians are more restrained. The Sasanian army was probably twice the size of Muslim one, approximately 60,000 against 30,000. A significant advantage, but not hopeless for the Arabs. According to the most likely version, the Persians fielded 45,000 infantry and 15,000 heavy cavalry. Their main striking force consisted of four dozen war elephants. The forces of the modest, about 23,000 infantrymen and 7,000 mobile horsemen. Both sides chose similar tactics, infantry in the first line, cavalry in the second, as a reserve for maneuver. But there was one key difference. The Persians placed all their elephants in front, turning them into a living battering ram directly before the main forces. The battle began with an attack by the Persian left flank against the Muslim right wing. Rostam Farrukhzad immediately hoped to take advantage of the numerical superiority of the Sasanians. In this sector, the Persians managed to push back the caliphate troops. In response, the Muslims transferred infantry and cavalry from the center to reinforce the right flank. This helped stop the Persian assault. The cavalry of the caliphate was lighter and faster than the heavily armed horsemen of the empire. This mobility became an additional advantage for the Rashidun forces. The Persians still relied on their numerical superiority and the power of their war elephants. The right wing of the Sasanian army launched an attack and pushed back the left flank of the caliphate army. However, the Muslims did not break. Inspired by faith, they withstood the assault of the elephants and managed to temporarily take them out of battle. Launching a counterattack, they pushed back the Persian right wing and returned the armies to their original positions. While the Sasanians prepared a second wave of elephant attacks, the armies engaged in brutal hand-to-hand combat. Rostam Farrukhzad and Saud ibn Abi Waqas ordered a general offensive. Eventually, the Persians managed to use the elephants again and increase the pressure on the enemy. Yet once again, the Muslims held firm. They neutralized the elephants, finally removing them from the battle, repelled the frontal assault, and themselves pressed against the right flank of the Sasanians. Then, suddenly, a fatal turn. Under unclear circumstances, Rostam Farrukhzad was killed. Despite the desperate resistance of the Persian right wing, without unified command, the army instantly lost order. The retreat quickly turned into panic, and panic into a catastrophic defeat. The Battle of Al-Qadisiyah was one of the most important victories of the early Muslim conquests. For the Sasanians, it became the beginning of the end. The defeat opened the road to the capital of the empire, Ctesiphon. At the beginning of the following year, the Rashidun army under the command of Saud ibn Abi Waqas marched on Ctesiphon and laid siege to the city. Knowing of the enemy's approach, Yazdegerd III prepared the capital for defense. But he did not lead the defense of the city. The King of Kings fled in advance to Hulwan. Ctesiphon was effectively left without a commander of its defense. The Sasanian army, commanded in a fragmented manner by representatives of the nobility and military commanders, failed to defend Ctesiphon and retreated from Mesopotamia. The city, which for almost 800 years had been the capital first of the Parthian and then of the Sasanian empires, fell under Muslim control. A new road opened before the Rashiduns, to the Iranian plateau, deep into the state of the Sasanians. That same year, almost immediately after the fall of Ctesiphon, the Battle of Halula took place. The Rashidun forces under the command of Hashim ibn Utbah, nephew of Saud ibn Abi Waqas, defeated the Sasanians. The Persian commander Miran Razi, who led the imperial army, was killed during the retreat. Upon learning of the defeat at Halula, Yazdegerd left Hulwan and fled even farther east to ancient Media. There, the King of Kings began gathering the last great army capable of stopping the Muslim advance. Then came several years of the slow but inevitable advance of the Rashidun Caliphate. City after city, province after province, the Sasanian empire lost control over its lands. Eventually, this pushed the Persians into one final desperate attempt to regain what had been lost. If the Battle of Al-Qadisiyah became a severe strategic defeat, the place of death of the Persian commander-in-chief and a gateway to the Persian capital, then the Battle of Nehevan turned into the final sentence for the empire. The army was led by Piruz Khosrow and it was on him that the King of Kings placed his last hope. The Rashidun forces were commanded by Anuman ibn Muqarin. Before the battle, he prayed, O Allah, grant Anuman martyrdom together with victory for the Muslims. And according to tradition, the higher powers heard his prayer. The Persians, as before, tried to win through numbers. 30,000 Muslims faced a large army which, according to various estimates, may have been twice or even four times larger, from 60 to 120,000 warriors. But the well-armed and highly motivated Muslims once again defeated the Persians. Both commanders were killed. After the Battle of Nehevan, the chances of the Sasanian dynasty retaining power became truly illusory. Though, ordinary Persians and other peoples of the empire did not reconcile themselves to foreign rule and the new religion, and therefore resisted the invaders. Two years later, in Medina, the Persian slave Abu Luluwafiruz stabbed Caliph Umar to death. This was a major political assassination. The new Caliph became Uthman, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. It was during his reign that the Muslims finally conquered the Sasanian empire. In the 640s, a series of Persian uprisings against the Rashidun Caliphate broke out. Persia did not fall in a single year. It rose again and again to fight. But each new uprising was weaker than the previous one. Several waves of Persian resistance ultimately could no longer change the course of the war. The Sasanian empire, weakened by external and internal conflicts, could not withstand the Rashidun Caliphate, whose rulers inflicted one defeat after another upon the Persians. The young Yazdegerd III spent most of his reign in flight, moving from one province to another, vainly trying to gather an army capable of turning the tide. Eventually, Yazdegerd found refuge near the city of Merv, where he was killed by a local miller. According to the most widespread version, the last king of kings was murdered for his valuables. The death of Yazdegerd III marked the end of the Sasanian dynasty and put an end to organized Persian resistance against the invaders. The Sasanian empire ceased to exist, and the pre-Islamic history of Persia came to an end. These events in Persia were interpreted differently. Some saw them as a blessing, the arrival of the true faith and the end of paganism. Others perceived them as a humiliating national defeat and the subjugation of the country by foreign conquerors. During the reign of the first Caliphs, the Arab Muslim conquerors tried to preserve their own political and cultural unity, despite the influence of the advanced civilization they had conquered. The Persian nobility and urban classes generally accepted the new religion more readily than the peasants and daikons. Among the Persians who converted to Islam, Sunni Islam predominated, while Shi'ism spread across the country much later. The new Muslim rulers treated their Persian subjects, who paid a special tax, the jizya, rather leniently. Women and children were not required to pay it. But in practice, things often looked different. Tax collectors frequently humiliated and oppressed Zoroastrians. Conversion to Islam was encouraged. If a Zoroastrian was enslaved during war, by accepting Islam, he could gain freedom. Persians who agreed to change their faith were exempted from the jizya. Some researchers even believe that during that period, conversion to Islam opened the way for Persians to gain equal status with Arab Muslims. Yet, in the first centuries, there was no mass conversion. Persia Islamized slowly, and the majority of the population continued practicing Zoroastrianism for a long time. Alongside this, large Christian and Jewish communities continued to exist in the country. The Rashidun Caliphate did not last long. First, the elderly Caliph Uthman was killed in Medina. His successor was Ali, cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, who is regarded as the first Shia Imam. He moved the capital to Kufa, where a few years later, he too was killed by an assassin. His rival, the governor of Syria, Muawiyah I, seized power in the Muslim state. He founded the first hereditary dynasty in the history of Islam, the Umayyads. Thus, the Umayyad Caliphate replaced the Rashidun Caliphate. The capital of the new state became Damascus, one of the oldest cities in the world. During the Rashidun period, the official language of Persia remained Middle Persian, Pahlavi, the official language of the Sasanian Empire. But under the Umayyads, Arabic rapidly spread throughout the Caliphate. At the end of the 7th century, the governor of Iraq, Al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, outraged by the use of Persian in administration, ordered the administration of Persia to switch to Arabic. Under the Umayyads, the Arabs formed a ruling elite with special rights and privileges that they had no intention of sharing with the other peoples of the Caliphate. It seemed that Persia was gradually dissolving into the new state, and the Persians were losing their identity. Yet the Arabs did not destroy everything to its foundations. On the contrary, they borrowed much, from systems of government and taxation to culture and advanced scientific knowledge. Persia changed and gradually became one of the key parts of the Islamic world. It was here that the idea matured that the Caliphate should be a state for all Muslims, not only Arabs. Later, Persians, dissatisfied with Umayyad rule, played an enormous role in the creation of the Abbasid Caliphate, while the Persian commander Abu Muslim became the central figure of the Abbasid Revolution. The great civilization of antiquity experienced rises and falls for centuries, until, under the pressure of external and internal crises, it changed radically. When the first Muslim conquests were only beginning, and the Prophet Muhammad had just founded the first Islamic state, the Sasanian Empire controlled Egypt and much of Asia Minor. Its possessions stretched from South Asia almost to Constantinople itself, the capital of Byzantium. But the world of mighty empires is ever-changing. On the Arabian Peninsula, a new power was already emerging, destined to change the course of history. The Sasanian state proved to be a colossus with feet of clay. Civil war, struggles among the nobility, and a series of rapid changes of rulers, the last of whom was a child king of kings, brought the empire to collapse. The first Caliphs conquered Persia in less than 20 years. Islam began slowly but steadily to displace Zoroastrianism and become an integral part of Persian society. Along with a new faith came profound changes, in politics, culture, science, art, literature, and philosophy. Still, these changes did not destroy Persian culture. After a brief decline, it adapted to the new conditions and survived. The combination of the heritage of a thousand-year-old civilization with Persia's advantageous position on the Silk Road, the crossroads of major trade and cultural routes, later brought the Persians to the forefront of the Islamic Golden Age.