And just when Diocletian seemed to have brought something approaching stability to Rome, this happens 
It's almost miraculous Rome survived as long as it did.
It's almost miraculous Rome survived as long as it did.
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Amazing to see this continue! Fantastic post as always. I always wondered why Diocletian gets credit for having made the lasting administrative reforms he did, when the Tetrarchy barely lasted past his death and even the division of the Roman Empire didn't become permanent until much later.
5.1. THE REORGANIZATION OF THE ROMAN EAST BY CONSTANTINE.
5.1. THE REORGANIZATION OF THE ROMAN EAST BY CONSTANTINE.
Constantine I the Great became sole ruler of the Roman empire in 324 CE. In November of that year, he took the momentous decision of moving the capital of the empire to the Greek city of Byzantium on the Bosporus, which he rebuilt on a grandiose scale and renamed as Constantinople (Latin: Constantinopolis; Greek: Κωνσταντινούπολις, Kōnstantinoúpolis). The new capital was officially inaugurated on May 11, 330 CE. Nicknamed by Constantine the “New Rome”, the new capital enjoyed several key advantages over the old one. Firstly, it was a seaport and it was also located on a triangular peninsula surrounded by sea on two sides, which made it much more defensible than Rome as long as the Romans kept naval supremacy. It was also located halfway between the two most dangerous borders of the empire: the lower Danube and the border with the Sasanians. It was also located directly astride the great military road that run from Raetia and Pannonia to Antioch (the Via Militaris) and which during the previous two centuries had shown itself to be the most vital military artery of the empire.
Restitution of Constantinople during the rule of Justinian I by the French archaeologist and architect Jean-Claude Golvin. The city is surrounded in its land side by the Theodosian walls built under Theodosius II during the first half of the V century CE. The Constantinian walls enclosed an area of about hald this surface.
Hypothetical drawing of the Forum of Constantine in Constantinople with the Column of Constantine at its center, by Antoine Helbert.
Another aerial reconstruction of the Forum of Constantine. The colonnaded street that enters and leaves the forum from right to left is the Mese, Constantinople's main avenue and the scene of triumphal parades, imperial entries and solemns lithurgical processions. The round building at the top was the first Senate House of Constantinople.
Remains of the Column of Constantine, the only thing that remains today of the Forum of Constantine above ground level.
The final victory against Licinius emboldened Constantine and he began enacting openly pro-Christian policies and sidestepping pagans from key posts in the imperial service. After the victory, he began by conducting a general purge of supporters of Licinius in the administration and armies of the eastern provinces, who also happened to be prominent pagans. The eastern protectorates of Rome also watched with expectation the rise of Constantine as sole augustus. Despite his old personal friendship with Licinius, Tirdad of Armenia had been slowly distancing from him and immediately after Constantine’s victory, he sent envoys to Constantine asking for a meeting. Constantine acquiesced, and given that according to the Armenian historian Agathangelos Tirdad met Constantine with an enormous entourage including bishops and most of the Armenian nobility the meeting must probably have taken place in the border between Armenia and Roman Anatolia. The meeting was a success and Constantine renewed the alliance between Rome and Armenia. The alliance between Rome and Armenia is most probably real, although many scholars are skeptical about the actual meeting ever happening.
Seeing the turn of events, king Mirian (or Mihran) of Iberia decided to convert too to Christianity and in 325 CE or 327 CE Iberia was incorporated into the new Christian oikumene of Constantine, who clearly wanted to Christianity and its spread outside the empire’s borders into a political tool for his foreign policy. Although Constantine’s actions fell in accordance with the terms of the 299 CE treaty (Armenia and Iberia were acknowledged by the Sasanians as Roman protectorates), the Sasanians probably did not like this turn of events one bit; both Armenia and Iberia had been Zoroastrian nations, and their conversion to Christianity pulled them into the Roman orbit and away from Iranian influence.
According to Eusebius of Caesarea, also in 324 CE the young Šābuhr II sent an embassy with presents and offering a new peace treaty to Constantine, as the new ruler of the Roman world. In turn, Constantine took the (quite undiplomatic) step of sending an outwardly courteous letter to the šāhān šāh in which he proclaimed himself as the protector of all the Christians who lived outside the Roman empire, including those who lived in Ērānšahr. Eusebius quotes it in its entirety in his Vita Constantini. First, there’s an introduction by Eusebius explaining the circumstances that surrounded the composition of this letter:
And then Eusebius quotes the letter in its entirety. Including fabricated letters or public speeches was a common literary device in Antiquity (the HA for example is full of fabricated letters), but there’s a good chance that this letter as quoted by Eusebius is authentic; Eusebius of Caesarea became very close to Constantine between 324 CE and the death of the emperor, and resided at the imperial court in Constantinople for long tracts of time, so it’s quite plausible that he had full access to the state archives:
I’ve underlined the parts of the letter where Constantine addresses the Sasanian king in a patronizing and vaguely menacing tone, and it’s easy to imagine the effect that such a letter would have had on a young king like Šābuhr II who showed himself during his long life very zealous of his authority and dignity.
During the last decade of Constantine's rule, he began issuing coins in which he appeared in the obverse in a typical pose, with his gaze directed to the heavens and without any inscriptions. Gold solidus dated to 335 CE, mint of Nicomedia. On the reverse: VICTORIA CONSTANTINI AVG(usti).
This letter had disastrous results for the Christians who lived under Sasanian rule. Šābuhr II was not a king who allowed himself to be easily intimidated (even at a very young age) and his reaction was (in typical fashion) very violent. While previous Sasanian kings had been mostly indifferent towards Christianity, as a result of Constantine’s conversion Šābuhr II saw them as potential traitors and a sort of Roman fifth column. As we will see in other chapters, Šābuhr II was not a king inclined towards leniency; he was a harsh ruler who did not hesitate to use terror and mass killings as political weapons, and the Christians of Ērānšahr would become one of the most notorious victims of Šābuhr II’s ruthlessness.
But Constantine’s “provocations” against the Sasanian king did not stop here. It’s probable that it was in 324 CE when Šābuhr II’s brother Hormazd, who’d been languishing in prison for over a decade, managed to escape and fled into the Roman empire, where Constantine (according to Zosimus and the Liber Suda; John of Antioch states that it was Licinius who granted him refuge) received him with open arms and granted him not only asylum, but also a palace in his new city of Constantinople and resources that would allow him to live according to his social status. Again, this would’ve been received by the šāhān šāh as a personal insult and a latent menace against his rule, for the Romans could at any time send Hormazd back into Ērānšahr with an army to join those unhappy with Šābuhr II’s rule within his kingdom to launch a civil war.
Gold dinar of Šābuhr II.
Constantine’s policy of exporting Christianity outside the borders of the Roman empire was also practiced in other borders: Roman missionaries from Egypt converted king ‘Ezana of Aksum (in today’s Erithrea/northern Ethiopia), the Arab ruler of the Lakhmids Imru' al-Qays ibn 'Amr also converted and Christianity (in its Arian persuasion favored by Constantine during his last years) was also introduced among the northern “barbarians” across the Danube. All these conversions were accompanied either by military alliances or by the signing of foedus treaties by which the Lakhmids and some of the northern peoples became Roman protectorates. It seems quite logical that Šābuhr II would have been utterly alarmed by this situation and given that he spent half of his seventy-year long personal reign in open war with Rome trying to reverse the losses of the 299 CE treaty, he decided not to allow Constantine to play the religious card and try to create a religious pro-Roman party inside his empire that would be dedicated to sabotage the main objective of his foreign policy.
Constantine I the Great became sole ruler of the Roman empire in 324 CE. In November of that year, he took the momentous decision of moving the capital of the empire to the Greek city of Byzantium on the Bosporus, which he rebuilt on a grandiose scale and renamed as Constantinople (Latin: Constantinopolis; Greek: Κωνσταντινούπολις, Kōnstantinoúpolis). The new capital was officially inaugurated on May 11, 330 CE. Nicknamed by Constantine the “New Rome”, the new capital enjoyed several key advantages over the old one. Firstly, it was a seaport and it was also located on a triangular peninsula surrounded by sea on two sides, which made it much more defensible than Rome as long as the Romans kept naval supremacy. It was also located halfway between the two most dangerous borders of the empire: the lower Danube and the border with the Sasanians. It was also located directly astride the great military road that run from Raetia and Pannonia to Antioch (the Via Militaris) and which during the previous two centuries had shown itself to be the most vital military artery of the empire.
Restitution of Constantinople during the rule of Justinian I by the French archaeologist and architect Jean-Claude Golvin. The city is surrounded in its land side by the Theodosian walls built under Theodosius II during the first half of the V century CE. The Constantinian walls enclosed an area of about hald this surface.
Hypothetical drawing of the Forum of Constantine in Constantinople with the Column of Constantine at its center, by Antoine Helbert.
Another aerial reconstruction of the Forum of Constantine. The colonnaded street that enters and leaves the forum from right to left is the Mese, Constantinople's main avenue and the scene of triumphal parades, imperial entries and solemns lithurgical processions. The round building at the top was the first Senate House of Constantinople.
Remains of the Column of Constantine, the only thing that remains today of the Forum of Constantine above ground level.
The final victory against Licinius emboldened Constantine and he began enacting openly pro-Christian policies and sidestepping pagans from key posts in the imperial service. After the victory, he began by conducting a general purge of supporters of Licinius in the administration and armies of the eastern provinces, who also happened to be prominent pagans. The eastern protectorates of Rome also watched with expectation the rise of Constantine as sole augustus. Despite his old personal friendship with Licinius, Tirdad of Armenia had been slowly distancing from him and immediately after Constantine’s victory, he sent envoys to Constantine asking for a meeting. Constantine acquiesced, and given that according to the Armenian historian Agathangelos Tirdad met Constantine with an enormous entourage including bishops and most of the Armenian nobility the meeting must probably have taken place in the border between Armenia and Roman Anatolia. The meeting was a success and Constantine renewed the alliance between Rome and Armenia. The alliance between Rome and Armenia is most probably real, although many scholars are skeptical about the actual meeting ever happening.
Seeing the turn of events, king Mirian (or Mihran) of Iberia decided to convert too to Christianity and in 325 CE or 327 CE Iberia was incorporated into the new Christian oikumene of Constantine, who clearly wanted to Christianity and its spread outside the empire’s borders into a political tool for his foreign policy. Although Constantine’s actions fell in accordance with the terms of the 299 CE treaty (Armenia and Iberia were acknowledged by the Sasanians as Roman protectorates), the Sasanians probably did not like this turn of events one bit; both Armenia and Iberia had been Zoroastrian nations, and their conversion to Christianity pulled them into the Roman orbit and away from Iranian influence.
According to Eusebius of Caesarea, also in 324 CE the young Šābuhr II sent an embassy with presents and offering a new peace treaty to Constantine, as the new ruler of the Roman world. In turn, Constantine took the (quite undiplomatic) step of sending an outwardly courteous letter to the šāhān šāh in which he proclaimed himself as the protector of all the Christians who lived outside the Roman empire, including those who lived in Ērānšahr. Eusebius quotes it in its entirety in his Vita Constantini. First, there’s an introduction by Eusebius explaining the circumstances that surrounded the composition of this letter:
And then Eusebius quotes the letter in its entirety. Including fabricated letters or public speeches was a common literary device in Antiquity (the HA for example is full of fabricated letters), but there’s a good chance that this letter as quoted by Eusebius is authentic; Eusebius of Caesarea became very close to Constantine between 324 CE and the death of the emperor, and resided at the imperial court in Constantinople for long tracts of time, so it’s quite plausible that he had full access to the state archives:
I’ve underlined the parts of the letter where Constantine addresses the Sasanian king in a patronizing and vaguely menacing tone, and it’s easy to imagine the effect that such a letter would have had on a young king like Šābuhr II who showed himself during his long life very zealous of his authority and dignity.
During the last decade of Constantine's rule, he began issuing coins in which he appeared in the obverse in a typical pose, with his gaze directed to the heavens and without any inscriptions. Gold solidus dated to 335 CE, mint of Nicomedia. On the reverse: VICTORIA CONSTANTINI AVG(usti).
This letter had disastrous results for the Christians who lived under Sasanian rule. Šābuhr II was not a king who allowed himself to be easily intimidated (even at a very young age) and his reaction was (in typical fashion) very violent. While previous Sasanian kings had been mostly indifferent towards Christianity, as a result of Constantine’s conversion Šābuhr II saw them as potential traitors and a sort of Roman fifth column. As we will see in other chapters, Šābuhr II was not a king inclined towards leniency; he was a harsh ruler who did not hesitate to use terror and mass killings as political weapons, and the Christians of Ērānšahr would become one of the most notorious victims of Šābuhr II’s ruthlessness.
But Constantine’s “provocations” against the Sasanian king did not stop here. It’s probable that it was in 324 CE when Šābuhr II’s brother Hormazd, who’d been languishing in prison for over a decade, managed to escape and fled into the Roman empire, where Constantine (according to Zosimus and the Liber Suda; John of Antioch states that it was Licinius who granted him refuge) received him with open arms and granted him not only asylum, but also a palace in his new city of Constantinople and resources that would allow him to live according to his social status. Again, this would’ve been received by the šāhān šāh as a personal insult and a latent menace against his rule, for the Romans could at any time send Hormazd back into Ērānšahr with an army to join those unhappy with Šābuhr II’s rule within his kingdom to launch a civil war.
Gold dinar of Šābuhr II.
Constantine’s policy of exporting Christianity outside the borders of the Roman empire was also practiced in other borders: Roman missionaries from Egypt converted king ‘Ezana of Aksum (in today’s Erithrea/northern Ethiopia), the Arab ruler of the Lakhmids Imru' al-Qays ibn 'Amr also converted and Christianity (in its Arian persuasion favored by Constantine during his last years) was also introduced among the northern “barbarians” across the Danube. All these conversions were accompanied either by military alliances or by the signing of foedus treaties by which the Lakhmids and some of the northern peoples became Roman protectorates. It seems quite logical that Šābuhr II would have been utterly alarmed by this situation and given that he spent half of his seventy-year long personal reign in open war with Rome trying to reverse the losses of the 299 CE treaty, he decided not to allow Constantine to play the religious card and try to create a religious pro-Roman party inside his empire that would be dedicated to sabotage the main objective of his foreign policy.
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5.2. ŠĀBUHR II’S COMING OF AGE AND THE SITUATION IN THE EASTERN BORDERS OF ĒRĀNŠAHR. THE HUNS IN CENTRAL ASIA.
5.2. ŠĀBUHR II’S COMING OF AGE AND THE SITUATION IN THE EASTERN BORDERS OF ĒRĀNŠAHR. THE HUNS IN CENTRAL ASIA.
According to Tabarī, when Šābuhr II reached the age of sixteen he assumed direct rule over Ērānsahr, and he immediately began showing that he would be one of the more energetic and aggressive members of the dynasty. The most pressing issue that he encountered when he assumed effective power were the repeated Arab raids against Pārs from across the Persian Gulf (more about this in the next chapter), but Šābuhr II’s response to these raids was hindered at first by a situation that is described in an intriguing passage by Tabarī:
Tabari does not explain why “the troops” had been stationed along the borders, and along which borders they were posted. Apparently, the situation had been going on for a long time because the troops had been “reduced to a sorry state”. Ilkka Syvänne attempted to find an explanation for this passage. According to Tabarī, during Šābuhr II’s minority, there’d been trouble with the “Turks” and the Romans. In the previous chapters we’ve seen that there’s confirmation in several other sources for the conflicts against the Romans, and that they were brief and very localized (and most definitely finished by 325 CE) so the border in trouble can’t have been the western one. That only leaved the one facing the “Turks” (an anachronism from Tabarī’s own times) in Central Asia. Given that the Sasanian army was mostly (for lack of a better expression) a “feudal levy”, Syvänne thinks that the regents that ruled during Šābuhr II’s minority had to face a long and indecisive war against some Central Asian nomadic peoples, and as the war dragged on, the feudal forces posted there became more and more restless due to the protracted absence from their homes.
How was Šābuhr II capable of demobilizing the assembled army and defuse a potentially very dangerous situation is unclear, and the same goes for the identity of these Central Asian foes. Syvänne guesses that perhaps this were the first stirrings of the great wave of nomads that later in the IV century CE would fall over Iran, India and Europe (Huns, Kidarites, Chionites, and Hephtalites) and that’s an interesting guess (even if there’s a lack of “hard evidence” supporting it). As I said in my previous post, Šābuhr II spent half of his reign in open war against Rome, but the other half was spent in wars along his eastern borders, and the conflicts with Central Asian nomads would monopolize the attention of his successors until the reign of Xusrō I in the VI century CE in a drastic shift of attention of the foreign policies of the Sasanian kings.
In his book The Huns (Routledge, 2016), Korean scholar Hyun Jin Kim has delineated a political story for the Huns from the rise of the Xiongnu empire in what’s currently Mongolia in the III/II centuries BCE until the V and VI centuries CE. The rise of the Xiongnu is described in the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), a chronicle written by the historian of the eastern Han court Sima Qian (ca. 145/135 BCE – ca. 86 BCE). The Xiongnu became a steppe empire which subjugated all their neighboring nomadic peoples (the Donghu, Yuezhi, Hunyu and Dingling) during the reign of their first emperor (who bore the title of Shanyu/Chanyu according to Chinese authors) Modu Shanyu, who was probably the first great conqueror of the Eurasian steppe. After his great victory over the Han emperor Gaozu at Ping Cheng in 200 BCE, Modu Shanyu and his two immediate successors turned the Han empire into a tributary state, and it was not until the warlike emperor Wudi rose to the Chinese throne in 141 BCE that things began to change.
Hypothetical reconstruction of political borders in Asia at 1 CE, with the still unified Xiongnu empire directly north to the Han empire. The Xiongnu have already lost control over the Tarim basin to the Han.
The Han emperors began a series of sustained offensives against the Xiongnu that, despite being very costly in lives and treasury, gradually bore the Xiongnu down, and in turn this slow erosion of the prestige of the ruling clan (the descendants of Modu) caused an upsurge of internal trouble and civil war among the Xiongnu. In 72/71 BCE, the Xiongnu lost control over some of their subject peoples, the Wusun to the west, the Dingling to the north and the Wuhuan to the east. By 60 BCE, they had lost control over the whole Tarim basin at the hands of the Han empire. The usurpation of Wang Mang in China and the overthrow of the western Han gave a temporary respite to the Xiongnu and allowed them to regain control over the Tarim basin (and the lucrative trade routes that crossed it, as it was a vital link of the Silk Road) and regained control over the tribes who had rebelled, but it would not last. With the Han restored to the Chinese throne (the later or eastern Han, with capital at Luoyang) in 46 CE the Xiongnu split into two rival groups, each ruled by its own Shanyu. One group, known by the Chinese as Southern Xiongnu, sought refuge in China, and the Han emperor granted them the right to settle in the Ordos region south of the Great Wall provided that the Shanyu showed publicly his submission to the Han at Luoyang, and their ruler Bi Shanyu agreed.
The Northern Xiongnu, who remained in the steppe, had to suffer the renewed offensives by the armies of the Han who in 73/74 CE snatched the Tarim basin once more from their control. But worse was to come; soon the Dingling rebelled again, but the rise of the Xianbei to the east, however, proved to be the greatest threat. The Xianbei (in Early Middle Chinese pronounced Serbi) were former vassals of the Xiongnu, but now they allied themselves with the Chinese against their former masters. In 87 CE the Xianbei inflicted a massive defeat on the Northern Xiongnu, killed the reigning Shanyu and flayed his body. Fifty-eight Xiongnu tribes then deserted to the Han empire. In 89 CE the Chinese general Dou Xian defeated the Shanyu in Mongolia and killed 13,000 Xiongnu soldiers along with many high-ranking nobles. Some eighty-one Xiongnu tribes consisting of two hundred thousand people are said to have surrendered to the Han on that occasion according to Chinese sources. Just two years later in 91 CE another crippling defeat in the southern range of the Altai mountains virtually ended the Xiongnu empire and its control over Mongolia and the Tarim basin. The last known Shanyu of the Northern Xiongnu in Chinese records is said to have retreated in the direction of the Ili basin in eastern Kazakhstan. The Southern Xiongnu though remained in China, and in the IV century CE after the fall of the Han dynasty they were able to profit from the political chaos and seize control over Luoyang and most of northern China from the hands of the Chinese Jin dynasty.
The Ordos region is an area in northern China (inner Mongolia) which comprises steppe and desert, and is encircled by the great loop of the Yellow River. This was the original homeland of the Xiongnu according to the Shiji, and the territory where the Han allowed the Southern Xiongnu to settle after their Shanyu submitted to the Chinese emperor at Luoyang.
The identification of the Xiongnu with the Huns has been a controversial subject for over two centuries. It was the Jesuit priest Joseph de Guignes in his work, Histoire générale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mogols et des autres Tartares occidentaux (Paris, 1756-1758) who made a controversial conjecture based on his intuition. He equated the European Huns of the IV and V centuries CE with the earlier powerful and sophisticated Xiongnu people who appear in the Chinese historical records of the Han dynasty. This conjecture then triggered a lively debate that has continued unabated for centuries. Historians and experts on the Huns and Inner Asia tended to voice skepticism about the Hun-Xiongnu connection. They suggested that if any connections existed between the Huns and the Xiongnu, they are only likely to have been cultural affinities of some sort rather than blood connections. However, this very debate regarding the Hun-Xiongnu connection was often based on the erroneous assumption that the Huns and Xiongnu constituted a specific “race” or a particular ethnic category. But according to Hyun Jim Kim the Huns and other Inner Asian steppe peoples like the Xiongnu must be viewed as “heterogeneous political categories rather than homogenous ethnic groups”. The key to understanding the links between the Xiongnu and the Huns is to recognize that the transmission of cultural and political heritage matters far more than potential “genetic” links between the two groups.
Research work done after the Second World war though has dispelled most of these doubts, and Hyun Jim Kim shows that today there can be little doubt that the Huns and the older Xiongnu were one and the same group. In 1948, the German-American Iranologist Walter Bruno Henning published a letter written by a Sogdian merchant named Nanaivande dating to the year 313 CE. It was a letter sent from the Gansu region in western China describing the fall of the imperial Chinese capital Luoyang to the Southern Xiongnu in 311 CE. In it, Nanaivande without any ambiguity calls the Xiongnu “Huns”.
Another scholar which has made a remarkable labor in this field is the French historian Étienne de La Vaissière. His analysis of the translations of the ancient Buddhist texts Tathagataguhya-sutra and Lalitavistara by Zhu Fahu, a Buddhist monk from the westernmost Chinese town of Dunhuang, who was of Central Asian Bactrian descent himself, reaffirmed this identification. Zhu Fahu, whose translations are dated to 280 CE and 308 CE respectively (so roughly contemporaneous with Nanaivande’s letter), identifies again without any ambiguity or generalization the Huna (appellation of the Huns in Indian sources) with the Xiongnu, as a specific political entity adjacent to China. Therefore, to Hyun Jin Kim it’s now perfectly clear that the imperial Xiongnu of Mongolia and China and the European-Central Asian Huns had exactly the same name.
According to Hyun Jin Kim, it’s impossible to ascribe any ethnicity to the Xiongnu as a whole. Current evidence seems to suggest that among the tribes who formed the Xiongnu empire (or confederation) there were speakers of Indo-European (Iranian, and perhaps Tokharian), Altaic (both Turkic and Mongolian) and Yeniseian languages. Very cautiously scholars would suggest that perhaps the aristocratic elite who controlled the Xiongnu empire was originally a speaker of a Yeniseian or a Turkic language (or maybe even both). Among the later European Huns of the IV and V centuries CE, Turkic names are very prominent, although this doesn’t imply necessarily that the same was true for their Central Asian cousins (Kidarites, Chionites and Hephtalites) or for the earlier Xiongnu.
Hyun Jin Kim also points out that Hunnic culture seems to have shared many traits with Central Asian Iranian nomadic cultures, particularly the Alans. As archaeology shows, both the Alans and the Huns shared a very similar material culture, and they also shared a very distinctive custom: the practice of cranial deformation among infant children. This practice was also shared by the Hephtalites or White Huns that would be the main enemies of the Sasanian empire during the V century CE.
According to Hyun Jin Kim, the Xiongnu/Huns possessed a sophisticated political organization which was the main reason behind their ability to forge large steppe empires (not once but twice), and which would be in turn inherited by later steppe empires like the Xianbei and the Rouran (possibly the ancestors of the Avars). Also, archaeology has shown that the Xiongnu were not completely nomadic pastoralists; they practiced agriculture on a limited scale and built fortresses and permanent settlements. In the I century BCE, the historian of the Han court Sima Qian described the political system of the Xiongnu thus:
The Shanyu was the recognized head of the central government. Just as with Iranian peoples, royal succession tended to be collateral within the ruling family or clan, rather than patrilineal. The actual administrative tasks within the central government, however, were handled by the so-called gu-du marquesses who also coordinated the affairs of the empire and administered communications with governors and vassals on behalf of the Shanyu. Under the control of this central government were four principal, regional governorships in the east and west (also called the “horns”): the “Worthy King of the Left” and the “Luli King of the Left” in the east, and the “Worthy King of the Right” and the “Luli King of the Right” in the west. Each of these four governorships in turn had its own government bureaucracy and the kings, who were usually the sons or brothers of the reigning Shanyu were the highest-ranking aristocrats in the Xiongnu empire. The practice of four pre-eminent sub-kings ruling under a supreme king is also found among the later Volga Bulgars, and among the Göktürks who succeed the Huns and the Rouran as masters of the eastern steppes.
The Xiongnu empire at its maximum extent, and later expansion of the Hunnic peoples westwards, according to Hyun Jin Kim in his book "The Huns" (Routledge, 2016).
The later Chinese source Hou Hanshu (“Book of the Later Han”, compiled in the V century CE) gives a slightly different account of the political and social workings of the Xiongnu and scholars are unsure if that’s due to the natural evolution of Xiongnu society in time or if one of the two Chinese sources is more precise than the other. According to the Hou Hanshu there was also a supreme aristocratic council of six top ranking nobles. This council included the so-called “Rizhu kings” of the Left and Right, which were titles originally only given to the sons and younger brothers of the Shanyu. However, later as the Xiongnu political system evolved, these titles were transferred to the aristocratic Huyan clan, which was related to the royal family by marriage. The other four nobles making up the council were the Wenyuti kings of the Left and Right, and the Zhanjiang Kings of the Left and Right. The Hou Hanshu calls these lords the “six corners” or “horns”.
Under these ten top-ranking nobles (or including these ten) there were the twenty-four imperial leaders/ministers (each titled “Ten Thousand Horsemen”), who seem to have been the imperial governors of the key, major provinces of the Xiongnu empire. These lords again consisted of the close relatives of the Shanyu or members of the Xiongnu aristocracy that were related to the royal house. These senior nobles were divided into eastern and western groups in a dual system and the designated successor to the Xiongnu imperial throne was usually appointed the “Wise King of the Left”, who was the titular ruler of the eastern half of the empire. All political appointments were tightly controlled by the reigning Shanyu in order to strengthen the power of the central government vis-à-vis the periphery.
At the bottom of this complex administrative hierarchy was a large group of subordinate or vassal tribal leaders (labelled in the Shiji sub-kings, prime ministers, chief commandants, household administrators, chü-ch’ü officials etc.). These officials were under the control of the twenty-four imperial governors, but at times enjoyed a level of local autonomy. Sometimes, former rulers of conquered peoples were also allowed to remain sub-kings/chiefs under appropriate Xiongnu oversight and over-kings. For the government of the more distant western parts of their territory the Xiongnu created the office colorfully titled the “Commandant in charge of Slaves”, which under the general oversight of a Xiongnu sub-king had the power to tax minor states such as Karashar and Kalmagan in the Tarim basin and to conscript forced labor. In addition, certain Chinese defectors were also appointed sub-kings, (for example, Wei Lu as king of the Dingling people and Lu Wan as king of the Donghu people). However, the upper echelons of power and positions of political, administrative and military importance close to the Shanyu and key strategic areas were almost exclusively reserved for members of the imperial clan and a few select Xiongnu aristocratic families.
A non-decimal system of ranks was used for the political administration of tribes and territory within the empire during peacetime and these included groups of many different sizes. However, a tighter system of decimal ranks (like other steppe peoples did, as well as the Arsacid and Sasanian armies) was used in wartime when large-scale armies were formed from troops conscripted from different parts of the empire under a single command structure. A general census was also conducted to determine the empire’s reserves of manpower and livestock.
Another important aspect of Xiongnu political organization is the degree to which they absorbed and adapted Chinese practices concerning their state organization and administration. This alleged Chinese influence on the Xiongnu is rejected by some scholars who see the resemblances and similarities between Xiongnu and Chinese administrative and cultural practices to be largely the result of a shared set of associations that may go back to a more ancient cultural stratum. However, the essentially “quasi-feudal” character of the Xiongnu empire with its complex hierarchy of kings and marquesses, the highest ranks of which were reserved exclusively for members of the royal clan and the lesser ranks for leaders of other leading clans that intermarried with the royal clan shows striking similarities to the distribution of kingdoms and marquisates within the Han imperial system, but with obvious clear differences in functions. The Xiongnu territorial divisions which favored the left, (the east, when viewed with orientation towards the south in the Chinese manner or right when viewed with orientation towards the north in the steppe manner) over the west may conceivably reflect the influence of Chinese ideas which identified the left (east) with the yang (as in yinyang) forces of generation and growth. The use of colors as symbolism for territory, blue for east, white for west, black for north and red for south, also correspond to the symbolism of Chinese cosmology (Wuxing, five elements theory).
There have long been suggestions that the Scythians/Sakas, an Iranian-speaking steppe people who flourished between the VIII and IV centuries BCE, had a cultural impact on the Xiongnu. There is also some evidence of similarities between the political systems of both groups as well. Herodotus recounts a Scythian legend in which the principal components of the Scythian polity are divided into three part. This is like the tripartite division of power among the leading tribes/clans, which characterized the Xiongnu form of government. The Xiongnu system featured three aristocratic clans linked via family/marriage ties to the Shanyu: the Huyan, Lan and Xubu (the imperial clan was the Xulianti/Luanti clan which descended from the early Shanyus Touman and Modu), which constituted the ruling upper class of Xiongnu society. These ruling clans, along with the royal family, led separate sub-divisions of steppe peoples in ways reminiscent of the three Scythian divisions.
Just as the Xiongnu had a ruling Xulianti clan, the Scythians were also headed by the so-called Royal Scythians who held supremacy over all other groups of Scythians. The taking of the census by the Scythian king Ariantes, reported by Herodotus, also shows that there were already steppe models of taxation and labor exploitation available for the Xiongnu to adapt to their purposes without even needing to seek out Chinese alternatives. The geographical proximity of these Scythians to the Xiongnu is also worth considering. According to archaeological excavations from Arzhan in Tuva, northwest of Mongolia (the core territory of the Xiongnu), remains dating from the Scythian period (VIII century BCE) have revealed the existence of highly organized steppe polities in Central Asia that corroborate Herodotus’ observations. A large-scale Scythian type tomb that consisted of seventy chambers and contained one hundred and sixty saddle horses buried together with a Saka king demonstrates the existence of a well-organized steppe confederacy under the rule of a powerful monarch, long before the rise of the Xiongnu empire. That this Saka king ruled over a typical steppe hierarchical state or quasi-state entity is confirmed by the fact that subordinate princes or nobles were buried to the north, south and west of the king and his wife. The roots of complex political organization in the steppes seem therefore to have been truly ancient. The Xiongnu and the later Huns did not appear out of thin air.
Hyun Jin Kim describes the Xiongnu political system as “almost feudal” and stresses how the usual practice of the Xiongnu when they defeated another steppe people was to leave their political, cultural and social systems intact but to impose over them a leading Xiongnu ruling elite that ensured the loyalty of the vanquished tribe to the central Xiongnu government led by the Shanyu. The office of Shanyu, the highest government posts and all the “sub-king” posts were all hereditary within an exclusive circle of aristocratic families which formed the true core of the Xiongnu “nation” and who were perhaps the only group within the larger Xiongnu empire to whom an “ethnic” Xiongnu identity can perhaps be ascribed. But except for this exclusive leading group, for the rest of the members of the Xiongnu as a steppe polity, being Xiongnu/Hun was not an ethnic trait, but a political one: they were Xiongnu/Huns because they were ruled by the Xiongnu/Hun elite and because they identified as such.
While political this system was extremely flexible and adaptable to the ever-changing conditions of steppe societies and made extremely easy to absorb other peoples into their society, it had also inherent weaknesses; which were the ones to be found in all decentralized “feudal” societies, and which meant that it was absolutely necessary for the Xiongnu/Hunnic elite to keep its inner solidarity and cohesion in front of external threats and that keeping the military prestige intact of the ruling elite was absolutely essential. Internal quarrels between aristocratic factions, succession wars and military defeats against foreign foes quickly undermined the loyalty of subject peoples and could lead to a rapid fragmentation of the empire by simultaneous uprisings of ambitious sub-kings and discontent vassal peoples. This system shared many similarities with the political system of pre-Islamic Iran, especially under the Arsacids, who were themselves a steppe clan before entering the Iranian plateau, and many of these problems were the same that the Arsacid and Sasanian empires suffered.
Traditionally, scholars were reticent about following De Guignes’ intuition and identify the Huns of the IV and V centuries with the earlier Xiongnu, because they believed that Chinese sources became silent about them after the middle of the II century CE. The last recorded Northern Xiongnu Shanyu in Chinese sources reigned ca. 94 - 118 CE. But according to Hyun Jin Kim, that’s not the case. The Weilüe, a mid-III century CE source offers a clear indication that the Xiongnu still existed at the time as a political entity in the Altai region, just west of their original power center in Mongolia, a hundred years after the mid-II century CE which supposedly initiated the two-hundred years’ “gap” in extant sources. The Wei Shu, the history of the Tuoba Xianbei state of Northern Wei in China, adds that towards the beginning of the V century CE, to the northwest of the Rouran (then the ruling power in Mongolia) there were still in the vicinity of the Altai the remaining descendants of the Xiongnu. The Weilue also provides a clear sense of the geographical context in which these Xiongnu/Huns were situated in the III century CE. It notes that the Zhetysu region (modern eastern Kazakhstan) directly to the southwest of the Altai (where the Xiongnu were located) was still occupied by the Wusun people, and the area to the west of this area and north of the Kangju people (centered around the city of Tashkent in what is now modern Uzbekistan) was the territory of the Turkic Dingling tribes. The Wusun and the Kangju are said in the Weilue to have neither expanded nor shrunk since Han times.
Political borders in Asia in 200 CE; the Xiongnu empire has collapsed and the Northern Xiongnu have moved west of the Altai. The Kushan empire and the Kangju control southern Central Asia.
By the V century CE however, Chinese sources indicate that this geographical situation had been radically altered. The Wei Shu tells that a people called the Yueban Xiongnu were now occupying the territory of the Wusun and adds the comment that these Yueban were a horde of the Shanyu of the Northern Xiongnu. It also states that when the Northern Xiongnu were defeated by the imperial Han armies they fled westwards, the weak elements among them were left behind in the area north of the city of Qiuci (Kucha, in the Tarim basin). Afterwards, this weak group of Xiongnu is said to have subjected the land of the Wusun to form the new state of Yueban. According to the same sources, the stronger group of Xiongnu/Huns headed further west. The Wei Shu adds that the remnants of the defeated Wusun were to be found in the V century CE in the Pamirs. Archaeology in addition to the written evidence shows that the main group of Huns/Xiongnu in the Altai region (i.e. the “strong Xiongnu” as opposed to the “weak Xiongnu” Yueban) had already started to absorb the Dingling Turkic tribes to their west, an area corresponding to modern northern/northeastern Kazakhstan, and the Irtysh and Middle Ob regions (western Siberia) in the III century CE. This corresponds exactly with the areas from which the Huns of Europe and the Huns of Central Asia would later start their trek to Europe and Sogdiana respectively. The Wei Shu confirms that the Central Asian White Huns originated from the Altai region and moved into Central Asia at around 360 CE, at the same exact time when the European Huns were moving into Europe at the expense of the Alans and later the Goths.
The Altai mountains.
The Wei Shu specifically states that the V century CE rulers of Sogdiana, that is the White Huns, were of Xiongnu origin. It also calls the country (in phonetical transcription according to Modern Chinese pronunciation) wen-na-sha, which would have been pronounced Huna sha in Early Middle Chinese, meaning “king of the Huns”.
But while the Northern Xiongnu/Huns were languishing in relative obscurity immediately west of the Altai, other peoples were flourishing in the lands that the Huns would soon be conquering in a path that would lead them into Europe, Iran and Southern Asia. As Hyun Jin Kim remembers us, Inner Asia between the II and IV centuries CE was far from primitive or backward. In fact, the area was arguably the center of Eurasian civilizational exchange and trade.
Until the mid-III century CE, Central and Southern Asia was dominated by the formidable empire of the Kushans, who under their greatest ruler Kanishka I (ca. 127 CE – ca. 140 CE) known as Kanishka the Great, stretched from the lower Ganges (downriver from Pataliputra) to Tashkent in modern Uzbekistan and across the Pamir including the city of Kashgar in the Tarim basin. The Kushans were direct descendants of the Yuezhi people, which had been defeated and driven out of the steppes by the Xiongnu in the II century BCE. According to the Hanshu (“Book of the Former Han”, written in the I century CE by Ban Biao and Ban Zhao) the Yuezhi shared similar political practices with the Xiongnu. When the Yuezhi first settled in Bactria, they were at first governed by five rulers. However, among these five Yabghus (kings) the lord of the Guishuang/Kushan tribe would eventually emerge as the supreme ruler. Under this Kushan dynasty the Yuezhi state came to dominate most of southern Central Asia and parts of South Asia. Like the Xiongnu, the Yuezhi possessed a political and ceremonial center even when they were ruled by the five Yabghus and not yet united under a single dynasty. There’s also the overlapping of military and civilian administration so typical of the Xiongnu system of government in the Kushan system. Kushan inscriptions in India show that officials called dandanayaka and mahadandanayaka performed both civil and military functions throughout India.
Maximum extent of the Kushan empire under Kanishka I.
Even more strikingly, among the Kushans collateral succession to the imperial throne and some form of joint rulership and association of sub-kings in the imperial administration were persistently practiced right up to the end of their empire in the III century CE. A very similar system of government is also found among the contemporary Sakas and the Pahlavas (Indo-Parthians) in India. Among the Saka rulers of Mathura in western India a senior king was assisted in his duties by a junior king in an elaborated system of joint rule and this is made clear in the concept of dvairajya (double kingship) among them. Thus, as among the Xiongnu and later steppe empires the Yuezhi/Kushans and even the Saka in India seem to have practiced dualism/collective rule and possessed an elaborate hierarchy of sub-kings and officials. Interestingly the Kushans like the Hephthalite and European Huns as well as the Alans practiced the widespread western steppe custom of artificial cranial deformation which would later be introduced into Europe by the Huns and Alans.
The Kangju state of northern Uzbekistan and southern Kazakhstan was an equally well-organized state entity that became a power to be reckoned with in the I century CE. Their territory covered the region of the Ferghana Valley and the area between the Oxus (Amu Darya) and Yaxartes (Syr Darya) rivers, with the core territory along the middle Yaxartes. By the time of the Hanshu (which covers the period from 206 BCE to 23 CE), the Kangju had expanded considerably to a nation of some 600,000 individuals, with 120,000 men able to bear arms. They were clearly now a major power in their own right. It allowed them to subjugate the warlike Yancai (the Alans of later Graeco-Roman sources) in western Kazakhstan and keep them in that state of subservience until at least the II century CE. These Kangju were ruled by a yabghu like the Yuezhi Kushans with whom they were dynastically linked by marriage. They also possessed a system of five “lesser kings”, indicating that they too had very similar political institutions to their southern and eastern neighbors. Just like the Xiongnu/Huns to the east, the Kangju would impose their own ruling elite upon the conquered Alans. Signs of Kangju-Xiongnu contacts can also be seen archaeologically in the discovery of a Xiongnu (Hunnic) style silver belt plaque at Kultobe in Kazakhstan, a site identified as belonging to the Kangju.
Coin of the Kangju ruler Vanvan of Chach. On the reverse, tamga of the Kangju.
The Kangju are regarded as an Indo-European people and are generally held to have been an Iranian people closely related to the Sogdians. But Sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank has however suggested that the Kangju could have been Tocharians. The ruling elite of the Kangju consisted of nomadic tribes whose customs were very similar to those of the Yuezhi. Kangju burials of the early period have been excavated at Berk-kara and Tamdî, in which the dead were placed in pit-graves, often covered with logs, under kurgan mounds. These graves often contain hand-made pots, iron swords, arrow-heads and jewels. The burials show that the traditional culture of the Kangju had similarities to the Saka.
References from written sources and archaeological finds show that the Kangju reached a considerable level of agricultural sophistication. Much of the population of their kingdom consisted of sedentary farmers. Wide canals from the Kangju period have been discovered, with the land area under irrigation of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya being four times larger than today. According to some historians, the irrigation systems of Central Asia reached their highest levels of development under the Kangju-Kushans and were in fact superior to those developed in the Middle Ages.
The Wusun were the direct neighbors of the Huns in the southwest of the Ili basin, whose territory the Xiongnu/Huns would later absorb in their expansion west and south in the fourth century AD, and they also show signs of highly developed political institutions that are reminiscent of the Xiongnu/Hun models. Among the Wusun there was a hereditary monarch who was assisted in his duties by a “council of elders”, a body of aristocrats that could function as a restraint on the powers of the sovereign. There was likewise quite a complex administrative apparatus consisting of sixteen graded officials, who were recruited from the ruling nobility. The officials and nobles of the realm collected taxes/tribute from subordinate tribes and supplemented their income via war booty and profits from trading activities. The Kunmo, the Wusun Great King and his two sons, the rulers of the left and right domains (exactly as with the Xiongnu), with each wing-ruler commanding a personal force of 10,000 horsemen, ruled over a sophisticated political entity. Both the Kangju and the Wusun were absorbed by the Huns before the Huns advanced on the Alans and Goths in Europe and the Sasanians in eastern Iran and Afghanistan.
Zhetysu ("Seven Rivers" in Kazakh; "Semyrechye" in Russian) is the region in southeastern Kazakhstan crossed by seven rivers which flow into lake Balkash. This land was inhabited by the Wusun before the Hynnic expansion.
The Ili river is the largest of the rivers which flow into lake Balkash from the Tian Shan mountains in Zhetysu.
In the I and II centuries CE the Xiongnu/Huns were in desperate straits. They were for all intents and purposes surrounded by hostile powers around their core base in the Altai region. To the west and south the Dingling, Kangju and Wusun exerted pressure. To the east the powerful Xianbei and the Han empire were driving them out completely from their eastern territories. However, respite came to them during the III century CE when each of these menaces disappeared in quick succession.
To the east, the Han empire collapsed amongst civil war in 220 CE, split into three kingdoms and could no longer exert any influence west. The Xianbei who had earlier inflicted such harsh defeats on the Huns during the I and II centuries CE fragmented into feuding tribes. To the west and southwest the Kangju and Kushan empires were slowly dissolving due to the campaigns of the Sasanian Šāhān Šāh Šābuhr I, who gained direct control over Bactria, Gandhara and Sindh, splitting the Kushan territories in half, with the authority of the remaining Kushan rulers being recognized only in India while Sogdiana and the northern territories up to Tashkent, the Ferghana valley and Kashgar submitted to the Sasanian king (according to the ŠKZ inscription). Sogdiana, Tashkent and the Ferghana valley were the core territories of the Kangju, so it’s quite probable that they also were defeated by Šābuhr I and became critically weakened. A further factor that could have weakened the Kushans and Kangju was the declined in transcontinental Eurasian exchange along the Silk Road, due to the collapse of the Han empire on one side and the crisis of the Roman empire during the III century CE in the other. Scholars have detected a noticeable fall in the amount of Roman coinage and glassware in India and Central Asia after the II century CE, and some of them believe that the tolls they levied on the trade with Rome across the western Indian ports and along the branch of the Silk Road that from these ports followed the Indus valley to the Kashmir valley and from there across the Pamirs to Kashgar, and from there to Chang’an via Dunhuang and the Gansu corridor.
Had the Sasanians been able to consolidate their power in Central Asia and control it the same way the Kushans and Kangju had, there would have been no Hunnic expansion. But probably due to Šābuhr I’s interest in events in his western border and his plans for development in the interior of Ērānšahr, and due to the brief and/or troubled reigns of his successors, the Sasanian empire failed to keep a firm grasp on the region, and so a dangerous political vacuum developed there. It is this favorable geopolitical situation that allowed the Xiongnu to expand into Central Asia and Europe. Archaeological evidence from the Ural region seems to point to the expansion of the Huns into that area by the early IV century CE at the latest. This suggests that all the states and tribes between the Altai and the Urals had succumbed to Hunnic conquest by the early IV century CE. This expansion seems to have been extremely swift, for archaeologists believe that the Kangju state collapsed by 270 CE, and soon after Hormazd I had to spend his only year as Šāhān Šāh fighting “against the Sogdians”.
Hunnic expansion westwards from the home of the Northern Xiongnu in the Altai area.
So, apparently during the second half of the III century CE and the early IV century CE a new development was taking part in the central part of the Eurasian steppe (between the Altai and the Urals) that was extremely dangerous for the future of the Sasanian empire, and which the Sasanians had failed to prevent. The troubles experienced by the Sasanian empire in Central Asia at this time could be either the first appearance of the Xiongnu/Huns in front of the borders of Ērānšahr in Central Asia, or like in the case of the Arab raids, the indirect effects of Hunnic expansion that propelled other tribal groups against the empire’s borders in a “domino” effect. For the time being, Šābuhr II and his ministers and generals could keep the situation under control, although as the IV century Ce went by the situation across the Central Asian border became progressively more dangerous, with 360 CE marking the turning point with the possible mass migration of most of the Hunnic people from their homes by the Altai to the southwest into Sogdiana and Bactria, directly against the border of the Sasanian empire.
According to Tabarī, when Šābuhr II reached the age of sixteen he assumed direct rule over Ērānsahr, and he immediately began showing that he would be one of the more energetic and aggressive members of the dynasty. The most pressing issue that he encountered when he assumed effective power were the repeated Arab raids against Pārs from across the Persian Gulf (more about this in the next chapter), but Šābuhr II’s response to these raids was hindered at first by a situation that is described in an intriguing passage by Tabarī:
Tabari does not explain why “the troops” had been stationed along the borders, and along which borders they were posted. Apparently, the situation had been going on for a long time because the troops had been “reduced to a sorry state”. Ilkka Syvänne attempted to find an explanation for this passage. According to Tabarī, during Šābuhr II’s minority, there’d been trouble with the “Turks” and the Romans. In the previous chapters we’ve seen that there’s confirmation in several other sources for the conflicts against the Romans, and that they were brief and very localized (and most definitely finished by 325 CE) so the border in trouble can’t have been the western one. That only leaved the one facing the “Turks” (an anachronism from Tabarī’s own times) in Central Asia. Given that the Sasanian army was mostly (for lack of a better expression) a “feudal levy”, Syvänne thinks that the regents that ruled during Šābuhr II’s minority had to face a long and indecisive war against some Central Asian nomadic peoples, and as the war dragged on, the feudal forces posted there became more and more restless due to the protracted absence from their homes.
How was Šābuhr II capable of demobilizing the assembled army and defuse a potentially very dangerous situation is unclear, and the same goes for the identity of these Central Asian foes. Syvänne guesses that perhaps this were the first stirrings of the great wave of nomads that later in the IV century CE would fall over Iran, India and Europe (Huns, Kidarites, Chionites, and Hephtalites) and that’s an interesting guess (even if there’s a lack of “hard evidence” supporting it). As I said in my previous post, Šābuhr II spent half of his reign in open war against Rome, but the other half was spent in wars along his eastern borders, and the conflicts with Central Asian nomads would monopolize the attention of his successors until the reign of Xusrō I in the VI century CE in a drastic shift of attention of the foreign policies of the Sasanian kings.
In his book The Huns (Routledge, 2016), Korean scholar Hyun Jin Kim has delineated a political story for the Huns from the rise of the Xiongnu empire in what’s currently Mongolia in the III/II centuries BCE until the V and VI centuries CE. The rise of the Xiongnu is described in the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian), a chronicle written by the historian of the eastern Han court Sima Qian (ca. 145/135 BCE – ca. 86 BCE). The Xiongnu became a steppe empire which subjugated all their neighboring nomadic peoples (the Donghu, Yuezhi, Hunyu and Dingling) during the reign of their first emperor (who bore the title of Shanyu/Chanyu according to Chinese authors) Modu Shanyu, who was probably the first great conqueror of the Eurasian steppe. After his great victory over the Han emperor Gaozu at Ping Cheng in 200 BCE, Modu Shanyu and his two immediate successors turned the Han empire into a tributary state, and it was not until the warlike emperor Wudi rose to the Chinese throne in 141 BCE that things began to change.
Hypothetical reconstruction of political borders in Asia at 1 CE, with the still unified Xiongnu empire directly north to the Han empire. The Xiongnu have already lost control over the Tarim basin to the Han.
The Han emperors began a series of sustained offensives against the Xiongnu that, despite being very costly in lives and treasury, gradually bore the Xiongnu down, and in turn this slow erosion of the prestige of the ruling clan (the descendants of Modu) caused an upsurge of internal trouble and civil war among the Xiongnu. In 72/71 BCE, the Xiongnu lost control over some of their subject peoples, the Wusun to the west, the Dingling to the north and the Wuhuan to the east. By 60 BCE, they had lost control over the whole Tarim basin at the hands of the Han empire. The usurpation of Wang Mang in China and the overthrow of the western Han gave a temporary respite to the Xiongnu and allowed them to regain control over the Tarim basin (and the lucrative trade routes that crossed it, as it was a vital link of the Silk Road) and regained control over the tribes who had rebelled, but it would not last. With the Han restored to the Chinese throne (the later or eastern Han, with capital at Luoyang) in 46 CE the Xiongnu split into two rival groups, each ruled by its own Shanyu. One group, known by the Chinese as Southern Xiongnu, sought refuge in China, and the Han emperor granted them the right to settle in the Ordos region south of the Great Wall provided that the Shanyu showed publicly his submission to the Han at Luoyang, and their ruler Bi Shanyu agreed.
The Northern Xiongnu, who remained in the steppe, had to suffer the renewed offensives by the armies of the Han who in 73/74 CE snatched the Tarim basin once more from their control. But worse was to come; soon the Dingling rebelled again, but the rise of the Xianbei to the east, however, proved to be the greatest threat. The Xianbei (in Early Middle Chinese pronounced Serbi) were former vassals of the Xiongnu, but now they allied themselves with the Chinese against their former masters. In 87 CE the Xianbei inflicted a massive defeat on the Northern Xiongnu, killed the reigning Shanyu and flayed his body. Fifty-eight Xiongnu tribes then deserted to the Han empire. In 89 CE the Chinese general Dou Xian defeated the Shanyu in Mongolia and killed 13,000 Xiongnu soldiers along with many high-ranking nobles. Some eighty-one Xiongnu tribes consisting of two hundred thousand people are said to have surrendered to the Han on that occasion according to Chinese sources. Just two years later in 91 CE another crippling defeat in the southern range of the Altai mountains virtually ended the Xiongnu empire and its control over Mongolia and the Tarim basin. The last known Shanyu of the Northern Xiongnu in Chinese records is said to have retreated in the direction of the Ili basin in eastern Kazakhstan. The Southern Xiongnu though remained in China, and in the IV century CE after the fall of the Han dynasty they were able to profit from the political chaos and seize control over Luoyang and most of northern China from the hands of the Chinese Jin dynasty.
The Ordos region is an area in northern China (inner Mongolia) which comprises steppe and desert, and is encircled by the great loop of the Yellow River. This was the original homeland of the Xiongnu according to the Shiji, and the territory where the Han allowed the Southern Xiongnu to settle after their Shanyu submitted to the Chinese emperor at Luoyang.
The identification of the Xiongnu with the Huns has been a controversial subject for over two centuries. It was the Jesuit priest Joseph de Guignes in his work, Histoire générale des Huns, des Turcs, des Mogols et des autres Tartares occidentaux (Paris, 1756-1758) who made a controversial conjecture based on his intuition. He equated the European Huns of the IV and V centuries CE with the earlier powerful and sophisticated Xiongnu people who appear in the Chinese historical records of the Han dynasty. This conjecture then triggered a lively debate that has continued unabated for centuries. Historians and experts on the Huns and Inner Asia tended to voice skepticism about the Hun-Xiongnu connection. They suggested that if any connections existed between the Huns and the Xiongnu, they are only likely to have been cultural affinities of some sort rather than blood connections. However, this very debate regarding the Hun-Xiongnu connection was often based on the erroneous assumption that the Huns and Xiongnu constituted a specific “race” or a particular ethnic category. But according to Hyun Jim Kim the Huns and other Inner Asian steppe peoples like the Xiongnu must be viewed as “heterogeneous political categories rather than homogenous ethnic groups”. The key to understanding the links between the Xiongnu and the Huns is to recognize that the transmission of cultural and political heritage matters far more than potential “genetic” links between the two groups.
Research work done after the Second World war though has dispelled most of these doubts, and Hyun Jim Kim shows that today there can be little doubt that the Huns and the older Xiongnu were one and the same group. In 1948, the German-American Iranologist Walter Bruno Henning published a letter written by a Sogdian merchant named Nanaivande dating to the year 313 CE. It was a letter sent from the Gansu region in western China describing the fall of the imperial Chinese capital Luoyang to the Southern Xiongnu in 311 CE. In it, Nanaivande without any ambiguity calls the Xiongnu “Huns”.
Another scholar which has made a remarkable labor in this field is the French historian Étienne de La Vaissière. His analysis of the translations of the ancient Buddhist texts Tathagataguhya-sutra and Lalitavistara by Zhu Fahu, a Buddhist monk from the westernmost Chinese town of Dunhuang, who was of Central Asian Bactrian descent himself, reaffirmed this identification. Zhu Fahu, whose translations are dated to 280 CE and 308 CE respectively (so roughly contemporaneous with Nanaivande’s letter), identifies again without any ambiguity or generalization the Huna (appellation of the Huns in Indian sources) with the Xiongnu, as a specific political entity adjacent to China. Therefore, to Hyun Jin Kim it’s now perfectly clear that the imperial Xiongnu of Mongolia and China and the European-Central Asian Huns had exactly the same name.
According to Hyun Jin Kim, it’s impossible to ascribe any ethnicity to the Xiongnu as a whole. Current evidence seems to suggest that among the tribes who formed the Xiongnu empire (or confederation) there were speakers of Indo-European (Iranian, and perhaps Tokharian), Altaic (both Turkic and Mongolian) and Yeniseian languages. Very cautiously scholars would suggest that perhaps the aristocratic elite who controlled the Xiongnu empire was originally a speaker of a Yeniseian or a Turkic language (or maybe even both). Among the later European Huns of the IV and V centuries CE, Turkic names are very prominent, although this doesn’t imply necessarily that the same was true for their Central Asian cousins (Kidarites, Chionites and Hephtalites) or for the earlier Xiongnu.
Hyun Jin Kim also points out that Hunnic culture seems to have shared many traits with Central Asian Iranian nomadic cultures, particularly the Alans. As archaeology shows, both the Alans and the Huns shared a very similar material culture, and they also shared a very distinctive custom: the practice of cranial deformation among infant children. This practice was also shared by the Hephtalites or White Huns that would be the main enemies of the Sasanian empire during the V century CE.
According to Hyun Jin Kim, the Xiongnu/Huns possessed a sophisticated political organization which was the main reason behind their ability to forge large steppe empires (not once but twice), and which would be in turn inherited by later steppe empires like the Xianbei and the Rouran (possibly the ancestors of the Avars). Also, archaeology has shown that the Xiongnu were not completely nomadic pastoralists; they practiced agriculture on a limited scale and built fortresses and permanent settlements. In the I century BCE, the historian of the Han court Sima Qian described the political system of the Xiongnu thus:
The Shanyu was the recognized head of the central government. Just as with Iranian peoples, royal succession tended to be collateral within the ruling family or clan, rather than patrilineal. The actual administrative tasks within the central government, however, were handled by the so-called gu-du marquesses who also coordinated the affairs of the empire and administered communications with governors and vassals on behalf of the Shanyu. Under the control of this central government were four principal, regional governorships in the east and west (also called the “horns”): the “Worthy King of the Left” and the “Luli King of the Left” in the east, and the “Worthy King of the Right” and the “Luli King of the Right” in the west. Each of these four governorships in turn had its own government bureaucracy and the kings, who were usually the sons or brothers of the reigning Shanyu were the highest-ranking aristocrats in the Xiongnu empire. The practice of four pre-eminent sub-kings ruling under a supreme king is also found among the later Volga Bulgars, and among the Göktürks who succeed the Huns and the Rouran as masters of the eastern steppes.
The Xiongnu empire at its maximum extent, and later expansion of the Hunnic peoples westwards, according to Hyun Jin Kim in his book "The Huns" (Routledge, 2016).
The later Chinese source Hou Hanshu (“Book of the Later Han”, compiled in the V century CE) gives a slightly different account of the political and social workings of the Xiongnu and scholars are unsure if that’s due to the natural evolution of Xiongnu society in time or if one of the two Chinese sources is more precise than the other. According to the Hou Hanshu there was also a supreme aristocratic council of six top ranking nobles. This council included the so-called “Rizhu kings” of the Left and Right, which were titles originally only given to the sons and younger brothers of the Shanyu. However, later as the Xiongnu political system evolved, these titles were transferred to the aristocratic Huyan clan, which was related to the royal family by marriage. The other four nobles making up the council were the Wenyuti kings of the Left and Right, and the Zhanjiang Kings of the Left and Right. The Hou Hanshu calls these lords the “six corners” or “horns”.
Under these ten top-ranking nobles (or including these ten) there were the twenty-four imperial leaders/ministers (each titled “Ten Thousand Horsemen”), who seem to have been the imperial governors of the key, major provinces of the Xiongnu empire. These lords again consisted of the close relatives of the Shanyu or members of the Xiongnu aristocracy that were related to the royal house. These senior nobles were divided into eastern and western groups in a dual system and the designated successor to the Xiongnu imperial throne was usually appointed the “Wise King of the Left”, who was the titular ruler of the eastern half of the empire. All political appointments were tightly controlled by the reigning Shanyu in order to strengthen the power of the central government vis-à-vis the periphery.
At the bottom of this complex administrative hierarchy was a large group of subordinate or vassal tribal leaders (labelled in the Shiji sub-kings, prime ministers, chief commandants, household administrators, chü-ch’ü officials etc.). These officials were under the control of the twenty-four imperial governors, but at times enjoyed a level of local autonomy. Sometimes, former rulers of conquered peoples were also allowed to remain sub-kings/chiefs under appropriate Xiongnu oversight and over-kings. For the government of the more distant western parts of their territory the Xiongnu created the office colorfully titled the “Commandant in charge of Slaves”, which under the general oversight of a Xiongnu sub-king had the power to tax minor states such as Karashar and Kalmagan in the Tarim basin and to conscript forced labor. In addition, certain Chinese defectors were also appointed sub-kings, (for example, Wei Lu as king of the Dingling people and Lu Wan as king of the Donghu people). However, the upper echelons of power and positions of political, administrative and military importance close to the Shanyu and key strategic areas were almost exclusively reserved for members of the imperial clan and a few select Xiongnu aristocratic families.
A non-decimal system of ranks was used for the political administration of tribes and territory within the empire during peacetime and these included groups of many different sizes. However, a tighter system of decimal ranks (like other steppe peoples did, as well as the Arsacid and Sasanian armies) was used in wartime when large-scale armies were formed from troops conscripted from different parts of the empire under a single command structure. A general census was also conducted to determine the empire’s reserves of manpower and livestock.
Another important aspect of Xiongnu political organization is the degree to which they absorbed and adapted Chinese practices concerning their state organization and administration. This alleged Chinese influence on the Xiongnu is rejected by some scholars who see the resemblances and similarities between Xiongnu and Chinese administrative and cultural practices to be largely the result of a shared set of associations that may go back to a more ancient cultural stratum. However, the essentially “quasi-feudal” character of the Xiongnu empire with its complex hierarchy of kings and marquesses, the highest ranks of which were reserved exclusively for members of the royal clan and the lesser ranks for leaders of other leading clans that intermarried with the royal clan shows striking similarities to the distribution of kingdoms and marquisates within the Han imperial system, but with obvious clear differences in functions. The Xiongnu territorial divisions which favored the left, (the east, when viewed with orientation towards the south in the Chinese manner or right when viewed with orientation towards the north in the steppe manner) over the west may conceivably reflect the influence of Chinese ideas which identified the left (east) with the yang (as in yinyang) forces of generation and growth. The use of colors as symbolism for territory, blue for east, white for west, black for north and red for south, also correspond to the symbolism of Chinese cosmology (Wuxing, five elements theory).
There have long been suggestions that the Scythians/Sakas, an Iranian-speaking steppe people who flourished between the VIII and IV centuries BCE, had a cultural impact on the Xiongnu. There is also some evidence of similarities between the political systems of both groups as well. Herodotus recounts a Scythian legend in which the principal components of the Scythian polity are divided into three part. This is like the tripartite division of power among the leading tribes/clans, which characterized the Xiongnu form of government. The Xiongnu system featured three aristocratic clans linked via family/marriage ties to the Shanyu: the Huyan, Lan and Xubu (the imperial clan was the Xulianti/Luanti clan which descended from the early Shanyus Touman and Modu), which constituted the ruling upper class of Xiongnu society. These ruling clans, along with the royal family, led separate sub-divisions of steppe peoples in ways reminiscent of the three Scythian divisions.
Just as the Xiongnu had a ruling Xulianti clan, the Scythians were also headed by the so-called Royal Scythians who held supremacy over all other groups of Scythians. The taking of the census by the Scythian king Ariantes, reported by Herodotus, also shows that there were already steppe models of taxation and labor exploitation available for the Xiongnu to adapt to their purposes without even needing to seek out Chinese alternatives. The geographical proximity of these Scythians to the Xiongnu is also worth considering. According to archaeological excavations from Arzhan in Tuva, northwest of Mongolia (the core territory of the Xiongnu), remains dating from the Scythian period (VIII century BCE) have revealed the existence of highly organized steppe polities in Central Asia that corroborate Herodotus’ observations. A large-scale Scythian type tomb that consisted of seventy chambers and contained one hundred and sixty saddle horses buried together with a Saka king demonstrates the existence of a well-organized steppe confederacy under the rule of a powerful monarch, long before the rise of the Xiongnu empire. That this Saka king ruled over a typical steppe hierarchical state or quasi-state entity is confirmed by the fact that subordinate princes or nobles were buried to the north, south and west of the king and his wife. The roots of complex political organization in the steppes seem therefore to have been truly ancient. The Xiongnu and the later Huns did not appear out of thin air.
Hyun Jin Kim describes the Xiongnu political system as “almost feudal” and stresses how the usual practice of the Xiongnu when they defeated another steppe people was to leave their political, cultural and social systems intact but to impose over them a leading Xiongnu ruling elite that ensured the loyalty of the vanquished tribe to the central Xiongnu government led by the Shanyu. The office of Shanyu, the highest government posts and all the “sub-king” posts were all hereditary within an exclusive circle of aristocratic families which formed the true core of the Xiongnu “nation” and who were perhaps the only group within the larger Xiongnu empire to whom an “ethnic” Xiongnu identity can perhaps be ascribed. But except for this exclusive leading group, for the rest of the members of the Xiongnu as a steppe polity, being Xiongnu/Hun was not an ethnic trait, but a political one: they were Xiongnu/Huns because they were ruled by the Xiongnu/Hun elite and because they identified as such.
While political this system was extremely flexible and adaptable to the ever-changing conditions of steppe societies and made extremely easy to absorb other peoples into their society, it had also inherent weaknesses; which were the ones to be found in all decentralized “feudal” societies, and which meant that it was absolutely necessary for the Xiongnu/Hunnic elite to keep its inner solidarity and cohesion in front of external threats and that keeping the military prestige intact of the ruling elite was absolutely essential. Internal quarrels between aristocratic factions, succession wars and military defeats against foreign foes quickly undermined the loyalty of subject peoples and could lead to a rapid fragmentation of the empire by simultaneous uprisings of ambitious sub-kings and discontent vassal peoples. This system shared many similarities with the political system of pre-Islamic Iran, especially under the Arsacids, who were themselves a steppe clan before entering the Iranian plateau, and many of these problems were the same that the Arsacid and Sasanian empires suffered.
Traditionally, scholars were reticent about following De Guignes’ intuition and identify the Huns of the IV and V centuries with the earlier Xiongnu, because they believed that Chinese sources became silent about them after the middle of the II century CE. The last recorded Northern Xiongnu Shanyu in Chinese sources reigned ca. 94 - 118 CE. But according to Hyun Jin Kim, that’s not the case. The Weilüe, a mid-III century CE source offers a clear indication that the Xiongnu still existed at the time as a political entity in the Altai region, just west of their original power center in Mongolia, a hundred years after the mid-II century CE which supposedly initiated the two-hundred years’ “gap” in extant sources. The Wei Shu, the history of the Tuoba Xianbei state of Northern Wei in China, adds that towards the beginning of the V century CE, to the northwest of the Rouran (then the ruling power in Mongolia) there were still in the vicinity of the Altai the remaining descendants of the Xiongnu. The Weilue also provides a clear sense of the geographical context in which these Xiongnu/Huns were situated in the III century CE. It notes that the Zhetysu region (modern eastern Kazakhstan) directly to the southwest of the Altai (where the Xiongnu were located) was still occupied by the Wusun people, and the area to the west of this area and north of the Kangju people (centered around the city of Tashkent in what is now modern Uzbekistan) was the territory of the Turkic Dingling tribes. The Wusun and the Kangju are said in the Weilue to have neither expanded nor shrunk since Han times.
Political borders in Asia in 200 CE; the Xiongnu empire has collapsed and the Northern Xiongnu have moved west of the Altai. The Kushan empire and the Kangju control southern Central Asia.
By the V century CE however, Chinese sources indicate that this geographical situation had been radically altered. The Wei Shu tells that a people called the Yueban Xiongnu were now occupying the territory of the Wusun and adds the comment that these Yueban were a horde of the Shanyu of the Northern Xiongnu. It also states that when the Northern Xiongnu were defeated by the imperial Han armies they fled westwards, the weak elements among them were left behind in the area north of the city of Qiuci (Kucha, in the Tarim basin). Afterwards, this weak group of Xiongnu is said to have subjected the land of the Wusun to form the new state of Yueban. According to the same sources, the stronger group of Xiongnu/Huns headed further west. The Wei Shu adds that the remnants of the defeated Wusun were to be found in the V century CE in the Pamirs. Archaeology in addition to the written evidence shows that the main group of Huns/Xiongnu in the Altai region (i.e. the “strong Xiongnu” as opposed to the “weak Xiongnu” Yueban) had already started to absorb the Dingling Turkic tribes to their west, an area corresponding to modern northern/northeastern Kazakhstan, and the Irtysh and Middle Ob regions (western Siberia) in the III century CE. This corresponds exactly with the areas from which the Huns of Europe and the Huns of Central Asia would later start their trek to Europe and Sogdiana respectively. The Wei Shu confirms that the Central Asian White Huns originated from the Altai region and moved into Central Asia at around 360 CE, at the same exact time when the European Huns were moving into Europe at the expense of the Alans and later the Goths.
The Altai mountains.
The Wei Shu specifically states that the V century CE rulers of Sogdiana, that is the White Huns, were of Xiongnu origin. It also calls the country (in phonetical transcription according to Modern Chinese pronunciation) wen-na-sha, which would have been pronounced Huna sha in Early Middle Chinese, meaning “king of the Huns”.
But while the Northern Xiongnu/Huns were languishing in relative obscurity immediately west of the Altai, other peoples were flourishing in the lands that the Huns would soon be conquering in a path that would lead them into Europe, Iran and Southern Asia. As Hyun Jin Kim remembers us, Inner Asia between the II and IV centuries CE was far from primitive or backward. In fact, the area was arguably the center of Eurasian civilizational exchange and trade.
Until the mid-III century CE, Central and Southern Asia was dominated by the formidable empire of the Kushans, who under their greatest ruler Kanishka I (ca. 127 CE – ca. 140 CE) known as Kanishka the Great, stretched from the lower Ganges (downriver from Pataliputra) to Tashkent in modern Uzbekistan and across the Pamir including the city of Kashgar in the Tarim basin. The Kushans were direct descendants of the Yuezhi people, which had been defeated and driven out of the steppes by the Xiongnu in the II century BCE. According to the Hanshu (“Book of the Former Han”, written in the I century CE by Ban Biao and Ban Zhao) the Yuezhi shared similar political practices with the Xiongnu. When the Yuezhi first settled in Bactria, they were at first governed by five rulers. However, among these five Yabghus (kings) the lord of the Guishuang/Kushan tribe would eventually emerge as the supreme ruler. Under this Kushan dynasty the Yuezhi state came to dominate most of southern Central Asia and parts of South Asia. Like the Xiongnu, the Yuezhi possessed a political and ceremonial center even when they were ruled by the five Yabghus and not yet united under a single dynasty. There’s also the overlapping of military and civilian administration so typical of the Xiongnu system of government in the Kushan system. Kushan inscriptions in India show that officials called dandanayaka and mahadandanayaka performed both civil and military functions throughout India.
Maximum extent of the Kushan empire under Kanishka I.
Even more strikingly, among the Kushans collateral succession to the imperial throne and some form of joint rulership and association of sub-kings in the imperial administration were persistently practiced right up to the end of their empire in the III century CE. A very similar system of government is also found among the contemporary Sakas and the Pahlavas (Indo-Parthians) in India. Among the Saka rulers of Mathura in western India a senior king was assisted in his duties by a junior king in an elaborated system of joint rule and this is made clear in the concept of dvairajya (double kingship) among them. Thus, as among the Xiongnu and later steppe empires the Yuezhi/Kushans and even the Saka in India seem to have practiced dualism/collective rule and possessed an elaborate hierarchy of sub-kings and officials. Interestingly the Kushans like the Hephthalite and European Huns as well as the Alans practiced the widespread western steppe custom of artificial cranial deformation which would later be introduced into Europe by the Huns and Alans.
The Kangju state of northern Uzbekistan and southern Kazakhstan was an equally well-organized state entity that became a power to be reckoned with in the I century CE. Their territory covered the region of the Ferghana Valley and the area between the Oxus (Amu Darya) and Yaxartes (Syr Darya) rivers, with the core territory along the middle Yaxartes. By the time of the Hanshu (which covers the period from 206 BCE to 23 CE), the Kangju had expanded considerably to a nation of some 600,000 individuals, with 120,000 men able to bear arms. They were clearly now a major power in their own right. It allowed them to subjugate the warlike Yancai (the Alans of later Graeco-Roman sources) in western Kazakhstan and keep them in that state of subservience until at least the II century CE. These Kangju were ruled by a yabghu like the Yuezhi Kushans with whom they were dynastically linked by marriage. They also possessed a system of five “lesser kings”, indicating that they too had very similar political institutions to their southern and eastern neighbors. Just like the Xiongnu/Huns to the east, the Kangju would impose their own ruling elite upon the conquered Alans. Signs of Kangju-Xiongnu contacts can also be seen archaeologically in the discovery of a Xiongnu (Hunnic) style silver belt plaque at Kultobe in Kazakhstan, a site identified as belonging to the Kangju.
Coin of the Kangju ruler Vanvan of Chach. On the reverse, tamga of the Kangju.
The Kangju are regarded as an Indo-European people and are generally held to have been an Iranian people closely related to the Sogdians. But Sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank has however suggested that the Kangju could have been Tocharians. The ruling elite of the Kangju consisted of nomadic tribes whose customs were very similar to those of the Yuezhi. Kangju burials of the early period have been excavated at Berk-kara and Tamdî, in which the dead were placed in pit-graves, often covered with logs, under kurgan mounds. These graves often contain hand-made pots, iron swords, arrow-heads and jewels. The burials show that the traditional culture of the Kangju had similarities to the Saka.
References from written sources and archaeological finds show that the Kangju reached a considerable level of agricultural sophistication. Much of the population of their kingdom consisted of sedentary farmers. Wide canals from the Kangju period have been discovered, with the land area under irrigation of the Amu Darya and Syr Darya being four times larger than today. According to some historians, the irrigation systems of Central Asia reached their highest levels of development under the Kangju-Kushans and were in fact superior to those developed in the Middle Ages.
The Wusun were the direct neighbors of the Huns in the southwest of the Ili basin, whose territory the Xiongnu/Huns would later absorb in their expansion west and south in the fourth century AD, and they also show signs of highly developed political institutions that are reminiscent of the Xiongnu/Hun models. Among the Wusun there was a hereditary monarch who was assisted in his duties by a “council of elders”, a body of aristocrats that could function as a restraint on the powers of the sovereign. There was likewise quite a complex administrative apparatus consisting of sixteen graded officials, who were recruited from the ruling nobility. The officials and nobles of the realm collected taxes/tribute from subordinate tribes and supplemented their income via war booty and profits from trading activities. The Kunmo, the Wusun Great King and his two sons, the rulers of the left and right domains (exactly as with the Xiongnu), with each wing-ruler commanding a personal force of 10,000 horsemen, ruled over a sophisticated political entity. Both the Kangju and the Wusun were absorbed by the Huns before the Huns advanced on the Alans and Goths in Europe and the Sasanians in eastern Iran and Afghanistan.
Zhetysu ("Seven Rivers" in Kazakh; "Semyrechye" in Russian) is the region in southeastern Kazakhstan crossed by seven rivers which flow into lake Balkash. This land was inhabited by the Wusun before the Hynnic expansion.
The Ili river is the largest of the rivers which flow into lake Balkash from the Tian Shan mountains in Zhetysu.
In the I and II centuries CE the Xiongnu/Huns were in desperate straits. They were for all intents and purposes surrounded by hostile powers around their core base in the Altai region. To the west and south the Dingling, Kangju and Wusun exerted pressure. To the east the powerful Xianbei and the Han empire were driving them out completely from their eastern territories. However, respite came to them during the III century CE when each of these menaces disappeared in quick succession.
To the east, the Han empire collapsed amongst civil war in 220 CE, split into three kingdoms and could no longer exert any influence west. The Xianbei who had earlier inflicted such harsh defeats on the Huns during the I and II centuries CE fragmented into feuding tribes. To the west and southwest the Kangju and Kushan empires were slowly dissolving due to the campaigns of the Sasanian Šāhān Šāh Šābuhr I, who gained direct control over Bactria, Gandhara and Sindh, splitting the Kushan territories in half, with the authority of the remaining Kushan rulers being recognized only in India while Sogdiana and the northern territories up to Tashkent, the Ferghana valley and Kashgar submitted to the Sasanian king (according to the ŠKZ inscription). Sogdiana, Tashkent and the Ferghana valley were the core territories of the Kangju, so it’s quite probable that they also were defeated by Šābuhr I and became critically weakened. A further factor that could have weakened the Kushans and Kangju was the declined in transcontinental Eurasian exchange along the Silk Road, due to the collapse of the Han empire on one side and the crisis of the Roman empire during the III century CE in the other. Scholars have detected a noticeable fall in the amount of Roman coinage and glassware in India and Central Asia after the II century CE, and some of them believe that the tolls they levied on the trade with Rome across the western Indian ports and along the branch of the Silk Road that from these ports followed the Indus valley to the Kashmir valley and from there across the Pamirs to Kashgar, and from there to Chang’an via Dunhuang and the Gansu corridor.
Had the Sasanians been able to consolidate their power in Central Asia and control it the same way the Kushans and Kangju had, there would have been no Hunnic expansion. But probably due to Šābuhr I’s interest in events in his western border and his plans for development in the interior of Ērānšahr, and due to the brief and/or troubled reigns of his successors, the Sasanian empire failed to keep a firm grasp on the region, and so a dangerous political vacuum developed there. It is this favorable geopolitical situation that allowed the Xiongnu to expand into Central Asia and Europe. Archaeological evidence from the Ural region seems to point to the expansion of the Huns into that area by the early IV century CE at the latest. This suggests that all the states and tribes between the Altai and the Urals had succumbed to Hunnic conquest by the early IV century CE. This expansion seems to have been extremely swift, for archaeologists believe that the Kangju state collapsed by 270 CE, and soon after Hormazd I had to spend his only year as Šāhān Šāh fighting “against the Sogdians”.
Hunnic expansion westwards from the home of the Northern Xiongnu in the Altai area.
So, apparently during the second half of the III century CE and the early IV century CE a new development was taking part in the central part of the Eurasian steppe (between the Altai and the Urals) that was extremely dangerous for the future of the Sasanian empire, and which the Sasanians had failed to prevent. The troubles experienced by the Sasanian empire in Central Asia at this time could be either the first appearance of the Xiongnu/Huns in front of the borders of Ērānšahr in Central Asia, or like in the case of the Arab raids, the indirect effects of Hunnic expansion that propelled other tribal groups against the empire’s borders in a “domino” effect. For the time being, Šābuhr II and his ministers and generals could keep the situation under control, although as the IV century Ce went by the situation across the Central Asian border became progressively more dangerous, with 360 CE marking the turning point with the possible mass migration of most of the Hunnic people from their homes by the Altai to the southwest into Sogdiana and Bactria, directly against the border of the Sasanian empire.
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Wow.
After expounding at length on the Roman and Iranian Empires, you now stretch out to cover the Steppe with bits of China thrown in. If you go on for two more threads you could publish this as a comprehensive world history
After expounding at length on the Roman and Iranian Empires, you now stretch out to cover the Steppe with bits of China thrown in. If you go on for two more threads you could publish this as a comprehensive world history
Wow.
After expounding at length on the Roman and Iranian Empires, you now stretch out to cover the Steppe with bits of China thrown in. If you go on for two more threads you could publish this as a comprehensive world history
One of the defining and more interesting (in my opinion) characteristics of the Arsacid and Sasanian empires was that they stood at the crossroads of the sedentary and nomadic worlds. The Arsacids themselves were of nomadic Parni origin, and the society of the Iranian plateau of these times never lost a certain "steppe varnish". The social structure based around arictocratic clans with a "royal clan" amongst them, the use of tamgas, the emplyment of armies based on cavalry, the importance of horse archery and armored horse lancers ... All this coexisted with walled cities, irrigation works, palace complexes, a complex literary output or a stable coinage which are defining traits of ancient sedentary societies. This was not an exclusive trait of the Arsacids and Sasanians (the same can be said about the Kushans or about the Hephtalite Huns after they conquered Central Asia), but in the case of Iran this mixed society lasted for a very long time, which is unusual in the case of states founded by steppe nomads.
Just as an aside: it's interesting to note that between the III and VI centuries CE China was also ruled by dynasties of nomadic origin, the Li imperial clan of the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) was also related by marriage to the old nomadic ruling elite and influenced by their customs and practices. Nomadic Turkish cavalry was utilized to unify China after the collapse of the previous, short-lived Sui dynasty and many of the powerful aristocrats at the Tang court (including in some cases the emperors themselves) could speak Turkish or were Turks commanding Turkish troops in imperial service.
5.3. ŠĀBUHR II’S ARAB CAMPAIGN.
5.3. ŠĀBUHR II’S ARAB CAMPAIGN.
According to Tabarī, the first task that the young king tackled was the constant raiding by Arab tribesmen against his empire, not only in Āsōrestān, but also in Pārs by seaborne raids that departed from the Arab side of the Persian Gulf. According to Tabarī:
Modern scholars put these Arab raids against the Sasanian empire within the frame of the defection of the Lakhmid king of Hira Imru' al-Qays ibn 'Amr to the Romans, and his establishment of a foedus with Licinius. By this foedus, Imru' al-Qays became Rome’s agent among the Arabs, and with Roman support he began to expand his rule over the Arab tribes of the Syrian desert and the peninsula of Arabia. The fact that Imru' al-Qays was the first Lakhmid king to convert to Christianity must also have helped to strengthen his ties with the new Roman ruler Constantine I (it’s probable that his conversion was an opportunistic move to gain Constantine’s favor, considering that he’d originally signed the foedus with Constantine’s rival Licinius).
In 1901 two French archaeologists found at Namārah, 100 km south of Damascus and 50 km north of Bosra an inscription carved on a block of basalt. Upon examination, it was discovered that this had been the epitaph of a tomb, and that it originally stood over the lintel of the grave’s entrance. It was written in an archaic form of Arabic using the Nabataean script (which has posed considerable difficulties to scholars) and it’s considered to have been the epitaph of none other than Imru' al-Qays himself; it’s securely dated to 328 CE. At that time, Namārah stood slightly to the west of the Roman limes arabicus, so just inside Roman land.
In this inscription, Imru' al-Qays calls himself “king of all the Arabs” (an old title which was already displayed by the kings of Hatra). The full text of the inscription (according to James A. Bellamy) reads:
According to this inscription, Imru' al-Qays’s rule extended deep and far into Arabia, as far south as Yemen (he explicitly names the city of Najran), and most importantly: that he did so in order that the chieftains and rulers of these tribes and peoples became “phylarchs of the Romans”. Imru' al-Qays names also in this inscription the king of Himyar Shammar Yahri'sh (“Najran, the city of Shammar”) which was at the time the most powerful king in Arabia and under whom the kingdom of Himyar attained its maximum extension.
The Namārah insciption (today in the Musée du Louvre, Paris).
This growth of Roman influence in Arabia has been linked by modern scholars with an attempt by Licinius and Constantine to revitalize the old sea trade routes between Egypt and India across the Indian ocean. This trade, which had been crucial for the Roman fiscus during the I and II centuries CE had suffered a slump during the III century CE due both to the events in the Roman empire and the expansion of Sasanian power and influence in Arabia and India. Direct trade between Egypt and India offered a double benefit to the Romans: apart from the obvious fiscal benefits, this trade bypassed the Sasanian empire and so denied the Sasanian treasury the tolls that could be levied out of it. Archaeological digs at the Egyptian Red Sea ports of Berenice and Myos Hormos have revealed that at this time considerable improvement and enlargement works were undertaken by the Roman authorities. In order to protect and foster this trade, it was essential to secure the goodwill and cooperation of the Arabs, as the Arabian Peninsula sat right in the middle of the sea route between Egypt and India. So, the mission entrusted by Licinius and Constantine to their proxy Imru' al-Qays must’ve been double: to protect the Roman border against other Arab raiders (or Sasanian small-scale attacks) and to extend Roman influence across Arabia.
Map detailing the routes and ports mentioned in the Greek text from the I century CE known as the "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea" (Greek: Περίπλους τῆς Ἐρυθράς Θαλάσσης, Períplous tês Erythrás Thalásses).
In these circumstances, the Arab raids against Ērānsahr could have been undertaken by express command of Imru' al-Qays or (more probably) they could be an indirect consequence of the growth of his power in mainland Arabia, as the tribes defeated by him fled across the Persian Gulf into Pārs.
Once the situation in Central Asia was settled, Šābuhr II turned his attention back to the Arabs. He launched a swift, decisive and brutal campaign against them described in detail by Tabarī. First, he attacked those Arabs who had crossed the Gulf into Pārs:
And then he carried the fight across the sea into Arabia proper:
I’ll stop here to comment the rather short but dense passage by Tabarī above. First, let’s look at all the names of places and tribes.
The 'Abd al-Qays were an ancient Arab tribe, originally from the inland regions of eastern Najd. They migrated
toward the western shores of the Persian Gulf, to Qaṭīf and Baḥrayn, which, as Tabarī stated in a previous part of his book, were since Šābuhr I's time directly under Sasanian rule, with garrisons and governors, and were later handed over to the Sasanians' Arab representatives, the Lakhmids. The 'Abd al-Qays were thus well placed, under the stimulus of inadequate resources to support them in the oases of the eastern Arabian coastlands, to make incursions across the gulf against the coast of Pārs. According to later Islamic authors, al-Kāẓimah was a place on the al-Baḥrayn coast south of the mouth of the Shatt al-'Arab but not further specified.
Hajar refers to the western Persian Gulf coastland, of what is now Kuwait, Qatar, and eastern Saudi Arabia, the term appearing in Syriac sources as Hagar; it was also called al-Baḥrayn (in this sense including both the island and the adjacent mainland) in early Islamic times and, right up to modem times, al-Aḥsā' or al-Ḥasā.
Al-Yamāmah is an extensive region of eastern Arabia, with several important oases, extending westward to the scarp of the Jabal Ṭuwayq and eastward to the Daḥnā', thus comprising much of the modem Saudi provinces of al-Riyāḍ, al-Kharj, and al-'Āriḍ. At the beginning of the Islamic era, Yamāmah was home of the semi-Christianized tribe of the Banū Ḥanīfah and the epicenter of activity of Muhammad’s rival prophet, Musaylimah.
The Al-Hasa oasis in eastern Arabia; the largest oasis in the peninsula. It was probably one of the "stops" during Šābuhr II's Arabian campaign.
The Taghlib ibn Wā’il were an important tribe who lived in Najd until the early sixth century, and who were already within the sphere of the Sasanians and their Lakhmid allies since Šābuhr I’s times. As for Dārīn, al-Samāhīj, and al-Khațṭ, medieval Islamic geographers give confused reports about their exact situation, other than they were in al-Baḥrayn; either in the main island of Baḥrayn, in the mainland or on separate islands in the Gulf.
The Bakr ibn Wā'il were a nomadic tribe originally located in the Yamāmah region, but, also like the Taghlib, they migrated northward to the desert fringes of the lower and middle Euphrates. Here they fell into the orbit of the Lakhmids, especially after the Taghlib moved on again into Upper Mesopotamia and began to clash with the rival pastoralists of the tribe of Tamīm.
Abān was a place in eastern Pārs, lying to the southeast of Yazd in the district of Rudhan, and is now the modern town of Anār in Iran.
The Hanẓalah ibn Mālik were a subdivision of the great tribe of Tamīm ibn Murrah or Ma'add, and they formed the main group within its branch of Zayd Manāt. The Tamīm's center was in Yamāmah, where they were rivals and opponents of the tribes of Taghlib and Bakr. In general, the Tamīm had close connections with the Sasanians and Lakhmids and they cooperated with the Sasanian authorities in Hajar and policed the trade routes across central Arabia to Yemen for the two powers quoted above.
According to C. E. Bosworth, Al-Ramaliyyah may well be the Qaryat al-Ramal of subsequent Islamic times situated in western Khuzistan, between Qurqūb and the Nahr Tirā on or near the Karkhā affluent of the Kārūn river.
What Tabarī describes here is nothing less than a campaign of reprisal on a large scale led by Šābuhr II across the whole of eastern, central, western and northern Arabia against the Arab tribes which had fallen into the Lakhmid sphere of influence (and thus under Roman control) with the aim of establishing a firm Sasanian control over the peninsula. That he did not limit himself to punish the Arabs who had raided Pārs is obvious because he did not limit his objectives to the Arabs who had crossed into the Iranian side of the Gulf or to the ones who lived in the Arabian shore of it and who had been previously under Sasanian control (and who could thus be considered as rebels), but he extended his campaign all the way to Medina in the Hijaz in northwestern Arabia, and to the tribes who lived in the Syrian desert, right under the noses of the Roman garrisons of the limes arabicus.
Tabari states that the campaign was heroically led by the young king in person with a force of just 1,000 elite asvārān (or savārān), which is probably a legend; a campaign across such a vast territory must’ve demanded more troops than that, but what’s probably true is that the Sasanians used small detachments of around 1,000 men (the size of a regiment or drafš of the Sasanian spāh), which would have been elite armored cavalrymen, thus simplifying the great logistic problem of having to supply an army in a desert country like Arabia. As for Šābuhr II’s personal leadership, it’s possible that he commanded one of these detachments; from later accounts by Graeco-Roman and Islamic historians we know that he led personally armies in the field more than once in his mature age.
This first campaign also shows one of the characteristics of Šābuhr II: his ruthlessness. Tabarī wrote in the IX-X centuries CE, but it’s clear that the memory of the extraordinary brutality of this campaign was still fresh among the Arabs; Tabarī describes unambiguously the campaign as a killing spree by the Sasanian forces, killing everyone in their path without distinction and destroying systematically all the water wells, as well as the use of mass deportations, which as we have seen is a well attested practice among the Sasanians. The fearful memory that Šābuhr II left among the Arabs is attested by the fact that in much later Arabic texts he is systematically called Dhū al-Aktāf, meaning “he who pierces shoulders” for he had the macabre custom of pulling out the shoulder girdles of his Arab prisoners of war. This sanguinary habit is also attested by the Bundahišn, one of the Zoroastrian Pahlavi Books:
But these tactics worked; Šābuhr II never again had problems with the Arabs for the rest of his reign. This campaign is dated by modern historians to 325 CE, and it most possibly included the complete defeat of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays; it’s probable that he was forced to seek refuge in Roman territory, where he died shortly after in 328 CE as attested by the Namārah inscription. His son 'Amr ibn Imru' al-Qays returned to Sasanian allegiance and henceforth the Banu Lakhm (who were allowed by Šābuhr II to return to their capital at al-Hira) would remain loyal vassals of the Sasanians until the annexation of their kingdom by Xusrō II in 602 CE.
During the reign of Šābuhr II, the great rock reliefs that the first Sasanian kings had favored so much fell out of fashion. Instead, silver vessels and plates were now employed as the main vehicle of royal propaganda, and they were probably presented by the king to his relatives, dignitaries, main nobles and foreign ambassadors and rulers. These silver vessels are characteristic of Sasanian art and under Šābuhr II they already reached a high degree of artistic refinenemt. Here, Šābuhr II is depicted hunting wild boars; hunting, war and feasting were deemed to be the only activities proper for an Iranian aristocrat. The wild boar had also an added significance, because it symbolized the Zoroastrian deity Verethragna/Bahrām, the god of bravery.
The deportation of Arab tribes included the settlement of the Taghlib in al-Baḥrayn and al-Khaṭṭ; the Banū 'Abd al-Qays and the Banū Tamīm to Hajar; the Banū Bakr to Kirmān, and the Banū Hanẓalah to a place near Hormazd-Ardaxšīr in Pārs (all territories under direct Sasanian control, either on the Arab or the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf). In order to prevent the Arabs from launching more raids into Āsōrestān, Šābuhr II ordered the construction of a permanent defensive line along the right shore of the Euphrates which became known as the Wall of the Arabs (Middle Persian: war-ī tāzīgān; Arabic: khandaq Sābūr), which was the first great defensive work built by the Sasanian empire. The Arabic name of this work means literally "Ditch of Šābuhr" (or perhaps "Wall of Šābuhr"), and according to the historian Touraj Daryaee it was a large moat, probably also an actual wall on the Sasanian side, with watchtowers and a network of fortifications, at the edge of the Arabian desert, located between the modern city of al-Basrah in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. The whole area was governed by a marzbān, and the allied Lakhmids would have added a further layer of protection in front of it.
Šābuhr II also settled colonies of Iranian soldiers and officials in the Arab coastlands of the Persian Gulf in order to ensure Sasanian control over this strategical area. From this moment until the fall of the Sasanian dynasty, the Sasanians would never again lose control over the waters of the Persian Gulf, which was a key step in order to foster the growth of maritime trade between the ports of Ērānšahr and India, in direct competition with the direct Roman trade with India through the Egyptian ports in the Red Sea.
With a quick and decisive campaign, Šābuhr II had reduced to nothing a decade of careful planning by two Roman augusti (Licinius and Constantine) to secure Roman control over Arabia to protect and foster Roman trade in the Indian ocean. As this also included the open defeat and humiliation of a Roman foederatus (Imru' al-Qays, something that Constantine could not ignore), this would only add to the escalating tensions between Rome and Ērānšahr. Both empires were now on the brink of open war, with the final trigger coming from two places: one was a traditional area of Roman-Sasanian conflict (Armenia) and the other was an unexpected one: India.
EDIT: I've just read a chapter in the book Sasanian Persia: Between Rome and the Steppes of Eurasia (a collection of scholarly essays edited by Eberhard W. Sauer.) which contains more information about the "Wall of the Arabs", including a map based on aerial and satellite surveys of the area as well as archaeological digs:
As you can see, it covered a front much longer than what was stated by Touraj Daryaee (and quite more to the north). The backbone of this defensive line was actually an artificial canal dug roughly in parallel to the western shore of the Euphrates, which acted as a moat behind which stood the forts and trenches of the fortified line proper.
According to Tabarī, the first task that the young king tackled was the constant raiding by Arab tribesmen against his empire, not only in Āsōrestān, but also in Pārs by seaborne raids that departed from the Arab side of the Persian Gulf. According to Tabarī:
Modern scholars put these Arab raids against the Sasanian empire within the frame of the defection of the Lakhmid king of Hira Imru' al-Qays ibn 'Amr to the Romans, and his establishment of a foedus with Licinius. By this foedus, Imru' al-Qays became Rome’s agent among the Arabs, and with Roman support he began to expand his rule over the Arab tribes of the Syrian desert and the peninsula of Arabia. The fact that Imru' al-Qays was the first Lakhmid king to convert to Christianity must also have helped to strengthen his ties with the new Roman ruler Constantine I (it’s probable that his conversion was an opportunistic move to gain Constantine’s favor, considering that he’d originally signed the foedus with Constantine’s rival Licinius).
In 1901 two French archaeologists found at Namārah, 100 km south of Damascus and 50 km north of Bosra an inscription carved on a block of basalt. Upon examination, it was discovered that this had been the epitaph of a tomb, and that it originally stood over the lintel of the grave’s entrance. It was written in an archaic form of Arabic using the Nabataean script (which has posed considerable difficulties to scholars) and it’s considered to have been the epitaph of none other than Imru' al-Qays himself; it’s securely dated to 328 CE. At that time, Namārah stood slightly to the west of the Roman limes arabicus, so just inside Roman land.
In this inscription, Imru' al-Qays calls himself “king of all the Arabs” (an old title which was already displayed by the kings of Hatra). The full text of the inscription (according to James A. Bellamy) reads:
According to this inscription, Imru' al-Qays’s rule extended deep and far into Arabia, as far south as Yemen (he explicitly names the city of Najran), and most importantly: that he did so in order that the chieftains and rulers of these tribes and peoples became “phylarchs of the Romans”. Imru' al-Qays names also in this inscription the king of Himyar Shammar Yahri'sh (“Najran, the city of Shammar”) which was at the time the most powerful king in Arabia and under whom the kingdom of Himyar attained its maximum extension.
The Namārah insciption (today in the Musée du Louvre, Paris).
This growth of Roman influence in Arabia has been linked by modern scholars with an attempt by Licinius and Constantine to revitalize the old sea trade routes between Egypt and India across the Indian ocean. This trade, which had been crucial for the Roman fiscus during the I and II centuries CE had suffered a slump during the III century CE due both to the events in the Roman empire and the expansion of Sasanian power and influence in Arabia and India. Direct trade between Egypt and India offered a double benefit to the Romans: apart from the obvious fiscal benefits, this trade bypassed the Sasanian empire and so denied the Sasanian treasury the tolls that could be levied out of it. Archaeological digs at the Egyptian Red Sea ports of Berenice and Myos Hormos have revealed that at this time considerable improvement and enlargement works were undertaken by the Roman authorities. In order to protect and foster this trade, it was essential to secure the goodwill and cooperation of the Arabs, as the Arabian Peninsula sat right in the middle of the sea route between Egypt and India. So, the mission entrusted by Licinius and Constantine to their proxy Imru' al-Qays must’ve been double: to protect the Roman border against other Arab raiders (or Sasanian small-scale attacks) and to extend Roman influence across Arabia.
Map detailing the routes and ports mentioned in the Greek text from the I century CE known as the "Periplus of the Erythraean Sea" (Greek: Περίπλους τῆς Ἐρυθράς Θαλάσσης, Períplous tês Erythrás Thalásses).
In these circumstances, the Arab raids against Ērānsahr could have been undertaken by express command of Imru' al-Qays or (more probably) they could be an indirect consequence of the growth of his power in mainland Arabia, as the tribes defeated by him fled across the Persian Gulf into Pārs.
Once the situation in Central Asia was settled, Šābuhr II turned his attention back to the Arabs. He launched a swift, decisive and brutal campaign against them described in detail by Tabarī. First, he attacked those Arabs who had crossed the Gulf into Pārs:
And then he carried the fight across the sea into Arabia proper:
I’ll stop here to comment the rather short but dense passage by Tabarī above. First, let’s look at all the names of places and tribes.
The 'Abd al-Qays were an ancient Arab tribe, originally from the inland regions of eastern Najd. They migrated
toward the western shores of the Persian Gulf, to Qaṭīf and Baḥrayn, which, as Tabarī stated in a previous part of his book, were since Šābuhr I's time directly under Sasanian rule, with garrisons and governors, and were later handed over to the Sasanians' Arab representatives, the Lakhmids. The 'Abd al-Qays were thus well placed, under the stimulus of inadequate resources to support them in the oases of the eastern Arabian coastlands, to make incursions across the gulf against the coast of Pārs. According to later Islamic authors, al-Kāẓimah was a place on the al-Baḥrayn coast south of the mouth of the Shatt al-'Arab but not further specified.
Hajar refers to the western Persian Gulf coastland, of what is now Kuwait, Qatar, and eastern Saudi Arabia, the term appearing in Syriac sources as Hagar; it was also called al-Baḥrayn (in this sense including both the island and the adjacent mainland) in early Islamic times and, right up to modem times, al-Aḥsā' or al-Ḥasā.
Al-Yamāmah is an extensive region of eastern Arabia, with several important oases, extending westward to the scarp of the Jabal Ṭuwayq and eastward to the Daḥnā', thus comprising much of the modem Saudi provinces of al-Riyāḍ, al-Kharj, and al-'Āriḍ. At the beginning of the Islamic era, Yamāmah was home of the semi-Christianized tribe of the Banū Ḥanīfah and the epicenter of activity of Muhammad’s rival prophet, Musaylimah.
The Al-Hasa oasis in eastern Arabia; the largest oasis in the peninsula. It was probably one of the "stops" during Šābuhr II's Arabian campaign.
The Taghlib ibn Wā’il were an important tribe who lived in Najd until the early sixth century, and who were already within the sphere of the Sasanians and their Lakhmid allies since Šābuhr I’s times. As for Dārīn, al-Samāhīj, and al-Khațṭ, medieval Islamic geographers give confused reports about their exact situation, other than they were in al-Baḥrayn; either in the main island of Baḥrayn, in the mainland or on separate islands in the Gulf.
The Bakr ibn Wā'il were a nomadic tribe originally located in the Yamāmah region, but, also like the Taghlib, they migrated northward to the desert fringes of the lower and middle Euphrates. Here they fell into the orbit of the Lakhmids, especially after the Taghlib moved on again into Upper Mesopotamia and began to clash with the rival pastoralists of the tribe of Tamīm.
Abān was a place in eastern Pārs, lying to the southeast of Yazd in the district of Rudhan, and is now the modern town of Anār in Iran.
The Hanẓalah ibn Mālik were a subdivision of the great tribe of Tamīm ibn Murrah or Ma'add, and they formed the main group within its branch of Zayd Manāt. The Tamīm's center was in Yamāmah, where they were rivals and opponents of the tribes of Taghlib and Bakr. In general, the Tamīm had close connections with the Sasanians and Lakhmids and they cooperated with the Sasanian authorities in Hajar and policed the trade routes across central Arabia to Yemen for the two powers quoted above.
According to C. E. Bosworth, Al-Ramaliyyah may well be the Qaryat al-Ramal of subsequent Islamic times situated in western Khuzistan, between Qurqūb and the Nahr Tirā on or near the Karkhā affluent of the Kārūn river.
What Tabarī describes here is nothing less than a campaign of reprisal on a large scale led by Šābuhr II across the whole of eastern, central, western and northern Arabia against the Arab tribes which had fallen into the Lakhmid sphere of influence (and thus under Roman control) with the aim of establishing a firm Sasanian control over the peninsula. That he did not limit himself to punish the Arabs who had raided Pārs is obvious because he did not limit his objectives to the Arabs who had crossed into the Iranian side of the Gulf or to the ones who lived in the Arabian shore of it and who had been previously under Sasanian control (and who could thus be considered as rebels), but he extended his campaign all the way to Medina in the Hijaz in northwestern Arabia, and to the tribes who lived in the Syrian desert, right under the noses of the Roman garrisons of the limes arabicus.
Tabari states that the campaign was heroically led by the young king in person with a force of just 1,000 elite asvārān (or savārān), which is probably a legend; a campaign across such a vast territory must’ve demanded more troops than that, but what’s probably true is that the Sasanians used small detachments of around 1,000 men (the size of a regiment or drafš of the Sasanian spāh), which would have been elite armored cavalrymen, thus simplifying the great logistic problem of having to supply an army in a desert country like Arabia. As for Šābuhr II’s personal leadership, it’s possible that he commanded one of these detachments; from later accounts by Graeco-Roman and Islamic historians we know that he led personally armies in the field more than once in his mature age.
This first campaign also shows one of the characteristics of Šābuhr II: his ruthlessness. Tabarī wrote in the IX-X centuries CE, but it’s clear that the memory of the extraordinary brutality of this campaign was still fresh among the Arabs; Tabarī describes unambiguously the campaign as a killing spree by the Sasanian forces, killing everyone in their path without distinction and destroying systematically all the water wells, as well as the use of mass deportations, which as we have seen is a well attested practice among the Sasanians. The fearful memory that Šābuhr II left among the Arabs is attested by the fact that in much later Arabic texts he is systematically called Dhū al-Aktāf, meaning “he who pierces shoulders” for he had the macabre custom of pulling out the shoulder girdles of his Arab prisoners of war. This sanguinary habit is also attested by the Bundahišn, one of the Zoroastrian Pahlavi Books:
But these tactics worked; Šābuhr II never again had problems with the Arabs for the rest of his reign. This campaign is dated by modern historians to 325 CE, and it most possibly included the complete defeat of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays; it’s probable that he was forced to seek refuge in Roman territory, where he died shortly after in 328 CE as attested by the Namārah inscription. His son 'Amr ibn Imru' al-Qays returned to Sasanian allegiance and henceforth the Banu Lakhm (who were allowed by Šābuhr II to return to their capital at al-Hira) would remain loyal vassals of the Sasanians until the annexation of their kingdom by Xusrō II in 602 CE.
During the reign of Šābuhr II, the great rock reliefs that the first Sasanian kings had favored so much fell out of fashion. Instead, silver vessels and plates were now employed as the main vehicle of royal propaganda, and they were probably presented by the king to his relatives, dignitaries, main nobles and foreign ambassadors and rulers. These silver vessels are characteristic of Sasanian art and under Šābuhr II they already reached a high degree of artistic refinenemt. Here, Šābuhr II is depicted hunting wild boars; hunting, war and feasting were deemed to be the only activities proper for an Iranian aristocrat. The wild boar had also an added significance, because it symbolized the Zoroastrian deity Verethragna/Bahrām, the god of bravery.
The deportation of Arab tribes included the settlement of the Taghlib in al-Baḥrayn and al-Khaṭṭ; the Banū 'Abd al-Qays and the Banū Tamīm to Hajar; the Banū Bakr to Kirmān, and the Banū Hanẓalah to a place near Hormazd-Ardaxšīr in Pārs (all territories under direct Sasanian control, either on the Arab or the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf). In order to prevent the Arabs from launching more raids into Āsōrestān, Šābuhr II ordered the construction of a permanent defensive line along the right shore of the Euphrates which became known as the Wall of the Arabs (Middle Persian: war-ī tāzīgān; Arabic: khandaq Sābūr), which was the first great defensive work built by the Sasanian empire. The Arabic name of this work means literally "Ditch of Šābuhr" (or perhaps "Wall of Šābuhr"), and according to the historian Touraj Daryaee it was a large moat, probably also an actual wall on the Sasanian side, with watchtowers and a network of fortifications, at the edge of the Arabian desert, located between the modern city of al-Basrah in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. The whole area was governed by a marzbān, and the allied Lakhmids would have added a further layer of protection in front of it.
Šābuhr II also settled colonies of Iranian soldiers and officials in the Arab coastlands of the Persian Gulf in order to ensure Sasanian control over this strategical area. From this moment until the fall of the Sasanian dynasty, the Sasanians would never again lose control over the waters of the Persian Gulf, which was a key step in order to foster the growth of maritime trade between the ports of Ērānšahr and India, in direct competition with the direct Roman trade with India through the Egyptian ports in the Red Sea.
With a quick and decisive campaign, Šābuhr II had reduced to nothing a decade of careful planning by two Roman augusti (Licinius and Constantine) to secure Roman control over Arabia to protect and foster Roman trade in the Indian ocean. As this also included the open defeat and humiliation of a Roman foederatus (Imru' al-Qays, something that Constantine could not ignore), this would only add to the escalating tensions between Rome and Ērānšahr. Both empires were now on the brink of open war, with the final trigger coming from two places: one was a traditional area of Roman-Sasanian conflict (Armenia) and the other was an unexpected one: India.
EDIT: I've just read a chapter in the book Sasanian Persia: Between Rome and the Steppes of Eurasia (a collection of scholarly essays edited by Eberhard W. Sauer.) which contains more information about the "Wall of the Arabs", including a map based on aerial and satellite surveys of the area as well as archaeological digs:
As you can see, it covered a front much longer than what was stated by Touraj Daryaee (and quite more to the north). The backbone of this defensive line was actually an artificial canal dug roughly in parallel to the western shore of the Euphrates, which acted as a moat behind which stood the forts and trenches of the fortified line proper.
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Dhū al or Zul (ذوال) in Arabic is used for ownership and Dhū al-Aktāf means "the owner of shoulders" or "he who owns the shoulders" though the concept is the same.
But it's rude of me to nitpick without appreciating your work. I've really enjoyed your effort, in this tread and the tread before. Not just its expansive and precise, its well rounded and unbiased too which is a bit of rarity for me. For some reason the Roman-Persian topic functions like a cheerleading contest where people jump in this or that train and that leaves very little in term of discussion. So for me it's most welcome to hear a neutral (or someone who appreciate both sides) tell the story.
But it's rude of me to nitpick without appreciating your work. I've really enjoyed your effort, in this tread and the tread before. Not just its expansive and precise, its well rounded and unbiased too which is a bit of rarity for me. For some reason the Roman-Persian topic functions like a cheerleading contest where people jump in this or that train and that leaves very little in term of discussion. So for me it's most welcome to hear a neutral (or someone who appreciate both sides) tell the story.
I stand corrected then. Actually I've come across several translations for that sentence, and one of them was the one you've just posted, although the general concept is the same as you say.
Thank you, that was precisely one of my main goals when I began writing these threads. I find it quite ridiculous to react to something that happened 1,700 years ago like football fans watching a match, cheering for one side or the other because "it's their team". But it happens, yes
.Thank you, that was precisely one of my main goals when I began writing these threads. I find it quite ridiculous to react to something that happened 1,700 years ago like football fans watching a match, cheering for one side or the other because "it's their team". But it happens, yes
In that case I'm glad to inform you that you've nailed it. Personally reading your posts I learned a lot, and not just about history of these certain nations and dynasties but the concept of history itself and the way to approach it. I was impressed that you refused to dismiss or de validate any claim and narrative and meanwhile remained completely skeptical and critical about them. And I'm looking forward to learn a lot more.
I am pretty sure however petty good ol' Volksmarschall may be, that happens to be his sentiment as well so that's a small caveat to appreciate.
5.4. ARMENIA, INDIA AND THE SONS OF CONSTANTINE I.
5.4. ARMENIA, INDIA AND THE SONS OF CONSTANTINE I.
In 325 CE, an ecumenical council of the Christian bishops of the Roman empire gathered at Nicaea at the request of Constantine the Great (who took part in the meetings) to try to put an end that had erupted between the bishop of Alexandria Alexander and the priest Arius about the complex theological issue of defining the exact nature of the relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The town of Iznik (ancient Nicaea) has preserved complete its entire perimeter of late Roman/Byzantine walls. Here you cans see the Gate of Constantinople.
According to the Armenian chronicler Moses of Chorene, Constantine would have asked king Tirdad of Armenia and bishop Gregory the Illuminator to take part in the council, but king Tirdad refused because he’d heard that Šābuhr II had concluded an alliance with the “king of India” and the “Khagan of the East”. This can relate to the information given by Tabarī (see previous chapter) according to which Šābuhr II´s first task as king had been to solve the situation in the Central Asian borders of his empire due to a protracted war against “the Turks”. This is the full quote from Moses of Chorene’s History of the Armenians:
It should be pointed out though that the other Armenian source for events at this time, Agathangelos, does not say that Constantine summoned king Tirdad, but that he merely summoned “all bishops”, and so king Tirdad and Gregory dispatched a certain Aristakēs as the Armenian representative at Nicaea. The mention of the “king of India” by Moses of Chorene is intriguing though, because both Ammianus Marcellinus and George Cedrenus tells a curious episode also related to “India” which must’ve happened also around this time. Ammianus’ story has survived in only an isolated fragment, as this part of his Res Gestae has not arrived intact to us:
The fragment by Cedrenus is quite longer and gives more details:
These are the only historical testimonials that tell about a war between Constantine I and Šābuhr II in the 320s. Cedrenus and Malalas describe this war in a very concise (and highly confusing) way. The text by Cedrenus says thus:
And the narration by Malalas:
But there are several big issues with this news by Cedrenus and Malalas, which have led most modern historians to dismiss completely the notion of a war taking place between Rome and the Sasanians in the 320s. These points are:
There’s also the curious story about this certain Metrodorus. In the first place, I should clarify that when Greek and Latin writers referred to “India” and “Indians” they did refer not only to the Indian subcontinent, but also to southern Arabia, Axum and the islands of the Indian ocean (i.e., everything that they encountered during the sea trip between the Red Sea ports of Egypt and the ports of western India). That is a first consideration that should be made, because the “king of the Indians” mentioned by Cedrenus could very well have been a southern Arabian king (the king of Himyar for example) or even the Axumite king, and not a king from India proper. This loose use of the terms “India” and “Indian” is only found in Greek and Latin writers, not in Islamic authors (either those writing in Arabic or those writing in New Persian).
But it’s perhaps somewhat intriguing that Moses of Chorene also mentioned an alliance between Šābuhr II and “the king of India”. Did the Sasanian empire also experience trouble along its Indian borders during the minority and early years of the personal reign of Šābuhr II? Like it had happened in Central Asia, the eastern conquests of Šābuhr I during the mid-III century CE also altered deeply the political situation in northern India. During the previous two centuries, northern India had been firmly under control of the Kushan empire, and the Kushan kings had winter residences at Purushapura (in the Peshawar valley) and Mathura (in the Gangetic plain, 50 km from Agra) as well as summer residences at Bactra/Balkh and Kapiśa/Begram in what is now Afghanistan.
The Kushan king Kanishka II (225 CE – 245 CE) lost control over Bactria and Gandhara and all territories north of the Hindu Kush to the Sasanian Šāhān Šāh Šābuhr I, and Kushan rule was restricted to India; it’s even possible that Kanishka II and his successors became Sasanian tributaries. At the same time, they began steadily to lose control over northern India, minting increasingly debased coinage (a sure sign of financial difficulties). As in Central Asia, this political vacuum favored the rise of new powers, and the void was filled by a native Indian dynasty which was originally based at Magadha (middle-lower Ganges valley), the Guptas. The first known king of this new dynasty was Sri Gupta who ruled during the second half of the III century CE. The exact dating of his reign is still disputed among scholars; with the earliest proposed start date being 240 CE and the latest end date for his reign being 300 CE.
He was succeeded by Ghatotkacha, who ruled between 280/300 CE and 305/320 CE. In turn, he was succeeded by the first famous king of the dynasty, Chandragupta I (300/319 CE – 335/350 CE), who is considered to have been the first Gupta “emperor” and the founder of the Gupta empire. While his two immediate predecessors had used the title Mahārāja (Sanskrit for “great king”), he bore the title Mahārājadhirāja (Sanskrit for “king of great kings”). Thanks to a fortunate marriage with the Lichchhavi princess Kumaradevi, he managed to extend his control over most of the middle Ganges valley, which is the richest and most populated part of the Indian subcontinent, establishing a firm basis for the expansion of the Gupta empire by military conquest under his son Samudragupta (335/350 CE – 375 CE) who managed to conquer most of northern and eastern India, including the Indus valley, which had been perhaps under control (under tributary kings?) of the Sasanians since the times of Šābuhr I. There’s no historical record of armed conflicts between the Sasanians and Guptas, but their spheres of influence clearly clashed in the Indus valley and Afghanistan during the second half of the IV century CE, so I would say (cautiously) that in this case the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Gold coin of Chandragupta I and his wife Kumaradevi.
Still, looking at the chronology it seems quite improbable that any sort of conflict happened this early during the reign of Šābuhr II. The only secure source that we have for the extension of the early Gupta empire under Chandragupta I comes from the praśasti (eulogy) of Samudragupta at the Allahabad Pillar inscription. As this inscription lists exhaustively the conquests of the warrior emperor Samudragupta, it’s possible to ascertain which were the limits of the Gupta empire when he rose to the throne, and it seems quite clear that in the west the empire extended no further than Mathura, which stands 700 km in a straight line from the Indus river.
Map of the Gupta empire, showing its expansion during the IV and early V centuries CE. The area ruled by Chandragupta I is shown in dark purple.
That doesn’t mean though that some minor Indian king could not have tried to establish some sort of alliance or treaty with Constantine I against the Sasanians. The Kushans were still ruling a much-diminished territory in northwestern India (until they were conquered by Samudragupta), and historically they had sustained close contacts with the Roman empire. Kanishka III (who ruled for a brief period around 268 CE) even called himself Kaisara in the Ara inscription in Punjab.
Šābuhr II’s Arab wars were not unnoticed by Constantine. Despite limited documentation of this period, historian Irfan Shahid concluded that Šābuhr II’s wars altered the balance of power in Arab lands causing pressure along the Arabian limes and the Strata Diocletiana as the Arab Banū Laḥm and Banū Tanukh tribal confederations rebounded from the Persian offensives.
The incident of Metrodorus could demonstrate though that Rome had economic and diplomatic interests in India during the IV century CE. Shahid argued that Constantine pursued a vigorous trade policy in the 330s CE as he prepared for war against the Sasanian empire. This was the period when the Egyptian Red Sea ports of Berenike and Myos Hormos were expanded according to archaeological research. While the IV century CE trade was not at the same volume as during the I and II centuries CE, it was overcoming the slump of the III century CE. Based upon records of port activities, many ships sailed between Roman Africa and India, propelled by monsoon winds and bypassing Sasanian-controlled ports. Šābuhr II’s Arab wars also disrupted Rome’s incense trade with the kingdoms of southern Arabia. Despite this fact, Constantine I chose not to address the “Sasanian problem” until he settled the conflict with the Goths and Sarmatians along the Danube. He also concentrated his efforts in the building of his new capital of Constantinople and the reform of the government structures and army in the Roman East along the same lines that he had already established in the West before 324 CE. The succession crisis caused by the execution of his eldest son and heir Crispus must have also played a role in Constantine’s decision to refrain from risky eastern adventures.
Gold solidus of Crispus as caesar. On the obverse, D(ominus) N(oster) CRISPVS NOBILISS(imus) CAES(ar). On the reverse VICTORIA AVG(usti) ET CAESS (caesarum) NN (nostrorum). Mint of Sirmium.
This cameo is known under several names: Gemma Constantiniana, the Batavia Cameo and Constantine's Cameo. It represents the triumph of Constantine I, riding in a chariot with his wife Fausta besides him and his son Crispus standing immediately in front of him; his mother Helena is standing immediately behind him.
Crispus had been the son of Constantine with his first wife (or maybe concubine) Minervina and had been born between 299 CE and 305 CE. After executing him, Constantine was left with three legitimate sons that he had with his second wife Fausta (Flavia Maxima Fausta, daughter of Maximian): Constantine II (Flavius Claudius Constantinus, 316 CE – 340 CE), Constantius II (Flavius Iulius Constantius, 317 CE – 361 CE) and Constans (Flavius Iulius Constans, 323 CE – 350 CE). In 326 CE, the eldest of the three (Constantine II) would have been only 9 years old, and that would have forced Constantine to come up with a temporary administrative structure, in order to groom his sons for his succession. The system he instituted has puzzled historians ever since, because it was an extremely elaborate one that treated his three sons as equals without offering any clear clue as to what would really happen after Constantine I’s death: was there to be a single successor or was the empire to be ruled jointly (or even divided) in a sort of new dynastic version of the Tetrarchy?. The system was built upon appointment of his three sons as caesares and their allocation to different parts of the empire in order to allow them to gain experience in civilian and military affairs (as well as building up their personal prestige), together with the rotation of several praetorian prefects between himself and his sons from 326 CE until 333 CE – 334 CE. These praetorian prefects were men who enjoyed Constantine’s full trust and who were long-term collaborators of the augustus. Most of them (as it happened with a majority of Constantine’s “secular” inner circle) were westerners, and they included members of some of the most illustrious (and rich) families of the Italian senatorial aristocracy. Some names:
Constantine II was born at Arelate (modern Arles in France) in February 316 CE and was and raised as a Christian. On March 1, 317 CE, he was risen to the rank of caesar. In 323 CE, at the age of seven, he took part in his father's campaign against the Sarmatians in Pannonia. In 326 CE at age ten (probably in the immediate wake of Crispus’ execution), he became his father’s lieutenant in Gaul. An inscription dated to 330 CE awards him the title of Alamannicus, so it is probable that his generals won a victory over the Alamanni. His military career continued when Constantine I made him field commander during the 332 CE campaign against the Goths in the lower Danube.
Gold solidus of Constantine II as caesar. On the obverse, CONSTANTINVS IVN(ior) NOB(ilissimus) CAES(ar). On the reverse, VICTORIA CAESAR(um) NN (nostrorum). Mint of Heraclea.
Constantius II was born in 317 CE in Sirmium and was raised in the Christian faith. He was made caesar by his father on November 13, 324 CE. In 336 CE, he was appointed by his father as commander of the field army of the East in the imminent campaign against Šābuhr II.
Gold solidus of Constantius II as caesar. On the obverse, FL(avius) IVL(ius) CONSTANTIVS NOB(ilissimus) C(aesar). On the reverse, PRINCIPII IVVENTVTIS. Mint of Thessalonica.
Constans was born ca. 323 CE in an unknown location. He was raised as a Christian and was educated at the court of his father at Constantinople under the tutelage of the poet Aemilius Magnus Arborius. On December 25, 333 CE, Constantine I elevated Constans to the rank of caesar at Constantinople.
Bust of Constans.
As if this arrangement was not complicated enough, Constantine I embroiled things further when in 335 CE he adlected his two nephews Dalmatius (Flavius Dalmatius) and Hannibalianus (Flavius Hannibalianus) into the college of caesares. They were both sons of Constantine I’s half-brother Flavius Dalmatius (also known as Dalmatius the Censor, son of Constantius Chlorus and his second wife Theodora). Dalmatius the Censor served in Gaul in Constantine I’s administration, and his two sons were raised in Tolosa (modern Toulouse, France) by the rhetor Exuperius. In the mid-320s CE, he and his two sons were recalled by Constantine I to the court of Constantinople. In 335 CE, Constantine I appointed Hannibalianus as caesar and married him to his eldest daughter Constantina (also known as Constantiana and Constantia, venerated as a saint by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches). On September 18, 335 CE, his brother Dalmatius was also raised to the rank of caesar and given control over Greece, Macedonia and Thrace.
Between 327 CE and 336 CE Constantine I and his eldest surviving son would be busy in a protracted campaign against the Goths and Sarmatians in the Danube.
In 325 CE, an ecumenical council of the Christian bishops of the Roman empire gathered at Nicaea at the request of Constantine the Great (who took part in the meetings) to try to put an end that had erupted between the bishop of Alexandria Alexander and the priest Arius about the complex theological issue of defining the exact nature of the relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
The town of Iznik (ancient Nicaea) has preserved complete its entire perimeter of late Roman/Byzantine walls. Here you cans see the Gate of Constantinople.
According to the Armenian chronicler Moses of Chorene, Constantine would have asked king Tirdad of Armenia and bishop Gregory the Illuminator to take part in the council, but king Tirdad refused because he’d heard that Šābuhr II had concluded an alliance with the “king of India” and the “Khagan of the East”. This can relate to the information given by Tabarī (see previous chapter) according to which Šābuhr II´s first task as king had been to solve the situation in the Central Asian borders of his empire due to a protracted war against “the Turks”. This is the full quote from Moses of Chorene’s History of the Armenians:
It should be pointed out though that the other Armenian source for events at this time, Agathangelos, does not say that Constantine summoned king Tirdad, but that he merely summoned “all bishops”, and so king Tirdad and Gregory dispatched a certain Aristakēs as the Armenian representative at Nicaea. The mention of the “king of India” by Moses of Chorene is intriguing though, because both Ammianus Marcellinus and George Cedrenus tells a curious episode also related to “India” which must’ve happened also around this time. Ammianus’ story has survived in only an isolated fragment, as this part of his Res Gestae has not arrived intact to us:
The fragment by Cedrenus is quite longer and gives more details:
These are the only historical testimonials that tell about a war between Constantine I and Šābuhr II in the 320s. Cedrenus and Malalas describe this war in a very concise (and highly confusing) way. The text by Cedrenus says thus:
And the narration by Malalas:
But there are several big issues with this news by Cedrenus and Malalas, which have led most modern historians to dismiss completely the notion of a war taking place between Rome and the Sasanians in the 320s. These points are:
- No other Graeco-Roman or Syriac source, from the IV century CE or later, tells about such a war ever happening.
- There’s a big chronological problem. Constantine I defeated Licinius at Chrysopolis on September 18, 324 CE. The Council of Nicaea (which Constantine presided) took place between May 20, 325 CE and June 19, 325 CE. And in July 25, 326 CE Constantine was in Rome to celebrate his vicennalia (twenty-year anniversary of his proclamation at Eburacum) in the old capital of the empire. In November 26, 328 CE he was again at Constantinople, carrying out a second foundation ceremony (of a “more Christian” nature than the previous one) for the new city. That doesn’t leave much space for a campaign against an enemy of the caliber of the Sasanian empire. Plus, between 328 CE and 336 CE Constantine was almost permanently at war in the Danube, against the Sarmatians and Goths.
- While en route to Rome, in the spring of 326 CE tragedy struck the imperial family. Constantine’s eldest son and heir, the caesar Flavius Iulius Crispus, was arrested and executed at Pola (modern Pula, Croatia) in Istria by his father’s orders. A couple of months later Constantine’s wife Fausta was also arrested; she died two years later while still under arrest. Apart from the obvious personal strain that this must’ve caused Constantine (who never married again), this left him with three underage successors unfit to rule if anything happened to him.
There’s also the curious story about this certain Metrodorus. In the first place, I should clarify that when Greek and Latin writers referred to “India” and “Indians” they did refer not only to the Indian subcontinent, but also to southern Arabia, Axum and the islands of the Indian ocean (i.e., everything that they encountered during the sea trip between the Red Sea ports of Egypt and the ports of western India). That is a first consideration that should be made, because the “king of the Indians” mentioned by Cedrenus could very well have been a southern Arabian king (the king of Himyar for example) or even the Axumite king, and not a king from India proper. This loose use of the terms “India” and “Indian” is only found in Greek and Latin writers, not in Islamic authors (either those writing in Arabic or those writing in New Persian).
But it’s perhaps somewhat intriguing that Moses of Chorene also mentioned an alliance between Šābuhr II and “the king of India”. Did the Sasanian empire also experience trouble along its Indian borders during the minority and early years of the personal reign of Šābuhr II? Like it had happened in Central Asia, the eastern conquests of Šābuhr I during the mid-III century CE also altered deeply the political situation in northern India. During the previous two centuries, northern India had been firmly under control of the Kushan empire, and the Kushan kings had winter residences at Purushapura (in the Peshawar valley) and Mathura (in the Gangetic plain, 50 km from Agra) as well as summer residences at Bactra/Balkh and Kapiśa/Begram in what is now Afghanistan.
The Kushan king Kanishka II (225 CE – 245 CE) lost control over Bactria and Gandhara and all territories north of the Hindu Kush to the Sasanian Šāhān Šāh Šābuhr I, and Kushan rule was restricted to India; it’s even possible that Kanishka II and his successors became Sasanian tributaries. At the same time, they began steadily to lose control over northern India, minting increasingly debased coinage (a sure sign of financial difficulties). As in Central Asia, this political vacuum favored the rise of new powers, and the void was filled by a native Indian dynasty which was originally based at Magadha (middle-lower Ganges valley), the Guptas. The first known king of this new dynasty was Sri Gupta who ruled during the second half of the III century CE. The exact dating of his reign is still disputed among scholars; with the earliest proposed start date being 240 CE and the latest end date for his reign being 300 CE.
He was succeeded by Ghatotkacha, who ruled between 280/300 CE and 305/320 CE. In turn, he was succeeded by the first famous king of the dynasty, Chandragupta I (300/319 CE – 335/350 CE), who is considered to have been the first Gupta “emperor” and the founder of the Gupta empire. While his two immediate predecessors had used the title Mahārāja (Sanskrit for “great king”), he bore the title Mahārājadhirāja (Sanskrit for “king of great kings”). Thanks to a fortunate marriage with the Lichchhavi princess Kumaradevi, he managed to extend his control over most of the middle Ganges valley, which is the richest and most populated part of the Indian subcontinent, establishing a firm basis for the expansion of the Gupta empire by military conquest under his son Samudragupta (335/350 CE – 375 CE) who managed to conquer most of northern and eastern India, including the Indus valley, which had been perhaps under control (under tributary kings?) of the Sasanians since the times of Šābuhr I. There’s no historical record of armed conflicts between the Sasanians and Guptas, but their spheres of influence clearly clashed in the Indus valley and Afghanistan during the second half of the IV century CE, so I would say (cautiously) that in this case the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
Gold coin of Chandragupta I and his wife Kumaradevi.
Still, looking at the chronology it seems quite improbable that any sort of conflict happened this early during the reign of Šābuhr II. The only secure source that we have for the extension of the early Gupta empire under Chandragupta I comes from the praśasti (eulogy) of Samudragupta at the Allahabad Pillar inscription. As this inscription lists exhaustively the conquests of the warrior emperor Samudragupta, it’s possible to ascertain which were the limits of the Gupta empire when he rose to the throne, and it seems quite clear that in the west the empire extended no further than Mathura, which stands 700 km in a straight line from the Indus river.
Map of the Gupta empire, showing its expansion during the IV and early V centuries CE. The area ruled by Chandragupta I is shown in dark purple.
That doesn’t mean though that some minor Indian king could not have tried to establish some sort of alliance or treaty with Constantine I against the Sasanians. The Kushans were still ruling a much-diminished territory in northwestern India (until they were conquered by Samudragupta), and historically they had sustained close contacts with the Roman empire. Kanishka III (who ruled for a brief period around 268 CE) even called himself Kaisara in the Ara inscription in Punjab.
Šābuhr II’s Arab wars were not unnoticed by Constantine. Despite limited documentation of this period, historian Irfan Shahid concluded that Šābuhr II’s wars altered the balance of power in Arab lands causing pressure along the Arabian limes and the Strata Diocletiana as the Arab Banū Laḥm and Banū Tanukh tribal confederations rebounded from the Persian offensives.
The incident of Metrodorus could demonstrate though that Rome had economic and diplomatic interests in India during the IV century CE. Shahid argued that Constantine pursued a vigorous trade policy in the 330s CE as he prepared for war against the Sasanian empire. This was the period when the Egyptian Red Sea ports of Berenike and Myos Hormos were expanded according to archaeological research. While the IV century CE trade was not at the same volume as during the I and II centuries CE, it was overcoming the slump of the III century CE. Based upon records of port activities, many ships sailed between Roman Africa and India, propelled by monsoon winds and bypassing Sasanian-controlled ports. Šābuhr II’s Arab wars also disrupted Rome’s incense trade with the kingdoms of southern Arabia. Despite this fact, Constantine I chose not to address the “Sasanian problem” until he settled the conflict with the Goths and Sarmatians along the Danube. He also concentrated his efforts in the building of his new capital of Constantinople and the reform of the government structures and army in the Roman East along the same lines that he had already established in the West before 324 CE. The succession crisis caused by the execution of his eldest son and heir Crispus must have also played a role in Constantine’s decision to refrain from risky eastern adventures.
Gold solidus of Crispus as caesar. On the obverse, D(ominus) N(oster) CRISPVS NOBILISS(imus) CAES(ar). On the reverse VICTORIA AVG(usti) ET CAESS (caesarum) NN (nostrorum). Mint of Sirmium.
This cameo is known under several names: Gemma Constantiniana, the Batavia Cameo and Constantine's Cameo. It represents the triumph of Constantine I, riding in a chariot with his wife Fausta besides him and his son Crispus standing immediately in front of him; his mother Helena is standing immediately behind him.
Crispus had been the son of Constantine with his first wife (or maybe concubine) Minervina and had been born between 299 CE and 305 CE. After executing him, Constantine was left with three legitimate sons that he had with his second wife Fausta (Flavia Maxima Fausta, daughter of Maximian): Constantine II (Flavius Claudius Constantinus, 316 CE – 340 CE), Constantius II (Flavius Iulius Constantius, 317 CE – 361 CE) and Constans (Flavius Iulius Constans, 323 CE – 350 CE). In 326 CE, the eldest of the three (Constantine II) would have been only 9 years old, and that would have forced Constantine to come up with a temporary administrative structure, in order to groom his sons for his succession. The system he instituted has puzzled historians ever since, because it was an extremely elaborate one that treated his three sons as equals without offering any clear clue as to what would really happen after Constantine I’s death: was there to be a single successor or was the empire to be ruled jointly (or even divided) in a sort of new dynastic version of the Tetrarchy?. The system was built upon appointment of his three sons as caesares and their allocation to different parts of the empire in order to allow them to gain experience in civilian and military affairs (as well as building up their personal prestige), together with the rotation of several praetorian prefects between himself and his sons from 326 CE until 333 CE – 334 CE. These praetorian prefects were men who enjoyed Constantine’s full trust and who were long-term collaborators of the augustus. Most of them (as it happened with a majority of Constantine’s “secular” inner circle) were westerners, and they included members of some of the most illustrious (and rich) families of the Italian senatorial aristocracy. Some names:
- Iunius Annius Bassus. He was a Christian and built a luxurious basilica on the Esquiline hill in Rome.
- Aemilianus. Known from a single text from 328 CE; he served in the West.
- Lucius Papius Pacatianus; praetorian prefect in the West between 329 CE and 341 CE.
- Evagrius; a close collaborator of Constantine I. He served most of his career in the East and according to David S. Potter he was probably a pagan.
- Flavius Constantius; he was serving in the Eastm in 326 CE and was immediately later transferred to the West.
- Flavius Ablabius. Born in Crete in a pagan family; he later converted to Christianity. He was a rare case of a man who rose from very humble origins to the highest echelons of Roman bureaucracy. He was praetorian prefect in the East (based at Antioch) from 329 CE to 337/338 CE. He was also consul together with Iunius Bassus in 331 CE. He was executed by Constantius II in 339 CE.
Constantine II was born at Arelate (modern Arles in France) in February 316 CE and was and raised as a Christian. On March 1, 317 CE, he was risen to the rank of caesar. In 323 CE, at the age of seven, he took part in his father's campaign against the Sarmatians in Pannonia. In 326 CE at age ten (probably in the immediate wake of Crispus’ execution), he became his father’s lieutenant in Gaul. An inscription dated to 330 CE awards him the title of Alamannicus, so it is probable that his generals won a victory over the Alamanni. His military career continued when Constantine I made him field commander during the 332 CE campaign against the Goths in the lower Danube.
Gold solidus of Constantine II as caesar. On the obverse, CONSTANTINVS IVN(ior) NOB(ilissimus) CAES(ar). On the reverse, VICTORIA CAESAR(um) NN (nostrorum). Mint of Heraclea.
Constantius II was born in 317 CE in Sirmium and was raised in the Christian faith. He was made caesar by his father on November 13, 324 CE. In 336 CE, he was appointed by his father as commander of the field army of the East in the imminent campaign against Šābuhr II.
Gold solidus of Constantius II as caesar. On the obverse, FL(avius) IVL(ius) CONSTANTIVS NOB(ilissimus) C(aesar). On the reverse, PRINCIPII IVVENTVTIS. Mint of Thessalonica.
Constans was born ca. 323 CE in an unknown location. He was raised as a Christian and was educated at the court of his father at Constantinople under the tutelage of the poet Aemilius Magnus Arborius. On December 25, 333 CE, Constantine I elevated Constans to the rank of caesar at Constantinople.
Bust of Constans.
As if this arrangement was not complicated enough, Constantine I embroiled things further when in 335 CE he adlected his two nephews Dalmatius (Flavius Dalmatius) and Hannibalianus (Flavius Hannibalianus) into the college of caesares. They were both sons of Constantine I’s half-brother Flavius Dalmatius (also known as Dalmatius the Censor, son of Constantius Chlorus and his second wife Theodora). Dalmatius the Censor served in Gaul in Constantine I’s administration, and his two sons were raised in Tolosa (modern Toulouse, France) by the rhetor Exuperius. In the mid-320s CE, he and his two sons were recalled by Constantine I to the court of Constantinople. In 335 CE, Constantine I appointed Hannibalianus as caesar and married him to his eldest daughter Constantina (also known as Constantiana and Constantia, venerated as a saint by the Catholic and Orthodox Churches). On September 18, 335 CE, his brother Dalmatius was also raised to the rank of caesar and given control over Greece, Macedonia and Thrace.
Between 327 CE and 336 CE Constantine I and his eldest surviving son would be busy in a protracted campaign against the Goths and Sarmatians in the Danube.
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Fantastic work!
BTW. What's the current scholarly view on Crispus' death? Is the traditional account about Minervina's intrigue still upheld?
BTW. What's the current scholarly view on Crispus' death? Is the traditional account about Minervina's intrigue still upheld?
Good question. The complicated arrangement around the other sons denies each of them the prestige of being the presumed heir as well as giving their rivals an equal power base, which suggests that the Crispus affair involved the succession. There is clear cause for rivalry between the adult son of a first marriage and the second wife who is mother to three more sons. She may have intrigued against him and succeeded at first. Or perhaps he got anxious about her influence and jumped the gun. Either way, a private war between the two certainly undermined the emperor's authority; it was his prerogative to select a successor after all. Then again, executing the only heir capable of taking over if the emperor met with an early death threatens the dynasty. Enlighten us!Fantastic work!
BTW. What's the current scholarly view on Crispus' death? Is the traditional account about Minervina's intrigue still upheld?
In his recent biography of Constantine, David S. Potter dismissed the tale of Fausta's intrigues being behind the death of Crispus, as well as the lurid tale of Fausta's own execution in scolding/boiling water. According to Potter, the historians who wrote under Constantine I carefully avoided any mention of the affair; in his biography (or rather hagiography) of Constantine, Eusebius of Caesarea doesn't even mention Fausta's name.
After Constantine's death, the affair clearly lost its "taboo" status, but the first historian who wrote after Constantine's death (and whose work has arrived to us) to mention the affair is Aurelius Victor, who simply wrote (around 361 CE) that Constantine had ordered the execution of his son "for some unknown reason". Eight years later in 369 CE Flavius Eutropius gave more precise information:
Again, the tale of Fausta's intrigues is completely absent. It doesn't appear in written history until the next generation, in the anonymous Epitome de Caesaribus written shortly after the death of Theodosius I in 395 CE. Due to the distance in time between the alleged events and their first appearance in the historical record, Potter considers it's a clear case of gossip/urban tale becoming written history.
Constantine I and Fausta resided in the East (in Serdica and Nicomedia) between 324 CE and early 326 CE, when the imperial party began its travel to Rome so that Constantine could celebrate his vicennalia in the Urbs.
But Crispus did not travel with them. After the victories over Licinius at the naval battle of Hellespont (in which Crispus played an important part) and Chrysopolis, his father had dispatched him to Gaul, so that he would act as his lieutenent there; and Crispus took residence at Trier. So, if he was executed at Pola (midway along the route from Serdica to Rome followed by the imperial part) in the spring of 326 CE, that means that he was expressly recalled by his father to meet him at the first possible occasion (which happened to be in the Istrian city) and ws immediately executed, probably as Constantine had already taken the fateful decision in advance.
Potter underlines the similarities of this case with that of the caesar Gallus, who was executed by his uncle Constantius II in 350 CE; the whoel story is explained in detail in Ammianus Marcellinus' Res Gestae. When Constantius II had to travel west to put down the usurpation of Magnentius (a general of Germanic origin who had murdered his brother Constans), he left in command of the East his nephew Gallus, who together with his brother Julian were the only two male members of the Constantinian dynasty left alive (apart from Constantius II himself, who didn't have any male offspring). According to contemporary sources, Gallus clashed badly with Constantius II's trusted ministers in the East, and took some actions that oin the eyes of those ministrs clearly surpassed the authority with which Constantius II had entrusted him. As a result of the alarming reports that reached him about Gallus' actions, Constantius II summoned him to the West, but when he reached Pola he was arrested, put under a summary trial and executed (by the way, this is how we know that Crispus died in Pola, because Ammianus says that Crispus also was executed there many years before).
Potter suggests that perhaps Crispus made the same mistake as Gallus, and failed to understand that "a caesar was to be seen but not heard" (in Potter's words) and tried to act too independently. Constantine's men of trust (possibly the praetorian prefect allocated to Gallus) would have reported this to Constantine, and the augustus would have decided to take drastic measures. Potter remarks that Iunius Bassus (a Roman senator, and probably a pagan) had been praetorian prefect in the West since 318 CE, and that he remained in office after 326 CE, so that could mean that he played an important role in the whole affair. On the contrary, one of the consuls for the year 325 CE, Valerius Proculus, was removed from office in disgrace. According to Potter, that could be an inkling for some sort of disagreement between Constantine and certain elements of the Italian aristocracy, and that Crispus could have chosen the wrong side to support.
Potter also adds that Fausta suddenly disappeared from public record some months later, and there are no contemporary accounts of her fate, but according to Jerome, she died two years later in 328 CE, which seems to suggest that she was sent to some sort of internal exile. During these years Constantine's mother Helena stepped in to perform the public functions of an augusta. That very same year of 328 CE and also according to Jerome, Constantine's half-brother Iulius Constantius (who had been living in Etruria until then with his two sons Gallus and Julian) was also sent into internal exile at Narbo (modern Narbonne) in southern Gaul.
To Potter, this seems to suggest that there was some sort of internal family disagreeement which could or could not have been related to Crispus' execution months before. What's relevant though is that even after Fausta's death Constantine never remarried and there's no mention in ancient sources of him having pursued any other relationship with another woman.
I have a biography of Constantine by Paul Stephenson. Doesn't add anything to your discussion except one detail: Zosimus says Fausta was killed by overheating a bath, which would have been a cruel and very unusual punishment. But hot baths were at the time seen as necessary steps in inducing an abortion, so Fausta may have died while attempting to get rid of a child by another man (assuming she wouldn't have tried to abort a child of the emperor). Stephenson speculates briefly that Crispus and Fausta were much closer in age than she to her husband and grew up together, while damnatio memoriae would certainly be fitting for an adulterer against his own father or a rapist. I would add that in this scenario it could be that Constantine stole her away from Crispus. If the son then carried on the affair behind his father's back, that would have been stupid but in this light more understandable.
What is clear is that Crispus was in a much stronger position relative to his father than Constantine allowed his other sons afterwards. He was militarily successful, acknowledged as heir presumptive and as caesar, and in command of most of Western half of the empire. It was natural for him to cultivate influential men to ensure a smooth succession. Constantine got him to meet halfway, away from his power resources, and executed him suddenly.
Had Crispus already been setting himself up against his father, that would have been (another) stupid move. I think rather that Crispus maybe overstepped his authority but was calculating that Constantine would only rein him in, based perhaps on the risks Constantine ran not having a capable successor for a decade or so. If any of the lurid tale of romantic intrigue is true, it is certain that Crispus would not have come if he knew his father had found out. That scenario only makes sense if Fausta made an accusation that Crispus was not aware of. Anyway, all of this is based on a much later and hostile source so the evidence is wafer-thin to begin with. The only thing we can say with relative certainty is that Constantine must have been sufficiently alarmed by the potential for escalation that he took strong measures to ensure none of his later potential heirs developed such a power base.
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I can’t add much to that, either. Zosimus, who was a staunch supporter of paganism, was extremely hostile to Constantine, and his retelling of this episode is full of snide remarks. He wrote during the late V or early VI century CE, but modern scholars think that in this part of his work he followed the lost history of Eunapius of Sardes, another pagan historian who wrote during the late IV or early V century CE, and whose account is thus roughly contemporary to the one in the anonymous Epitome de Caesaribus.
As for the alleged form of execution of Fausta, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that in Constantine’s legislation the penalty for treason was death at the stake, and some scholars have speculated that (if the execution really happened, and it took place in this way) it could have been a "mild" variation of the standard penalty for treason.
interesting, do we know how crispus was executed or did he just dissapear from official records?
I had previously bought in to the theories that something happened between fausta and crispus but the aftermath paints a different story
the continious adding of new potential heirs, the shuffling to minimise the risk of them building a solid power base, it all speaks of someone terrified that one of his sons will attempt to overthrow him and thus he was sending a message "do not attempt to usurp me because you are replacable"
was there any indication that constantine suffered from paranoia?
Both Aurelius Victor and Flavius Eutropius, who wrote in the 360s, state that Crispus was executed, but they say nothing about how the execution was carried out. And same for later accounts, like the Epitome de Caesaribus or Zosimus' New History. As a matter of fact, both Aurelius Victor and Eurropius, who are the closest in time to the facts, say nothing at all about why he was executed.
Constantine I was not an especially bloody ruler for what was a "normal" Roman emperor. He allowed all his half-brothers to live mostly in peace, along with their offspring (for a comparison, wait to see what Constantius II and his brothers did with their uncles and cousins after their father's death), and apart from Crispus, none other among his children suffered any sort of violence. He also seems to have been relatively lenient with the high echelons of Roman society and bureaucracy in Italy and the East after his victories over Maxentius and Licinius. He could be quite savage with defeated enemies, especially foreigners (in the 310s, many Frankish and Alamannic chieftains ended their lives as fodder for the beasts in the amphiteater of Trier) but as in the case of Šābuhr II, these displays of cruelty were not gratuitous, but were used as a political weapons, to terrorize an enemy into submission (same as the Sasanian king with his Arab prisoners). What he was not was "unnecesarily" merciful, or even magnanimous. All his really dangerous enemies ended up dead, one way or another. And in two cases, he had them killed/murdered after having publicly "pardoned" them (Maximian and Licinius).
I'd also like to add a comment about the concept of "paranoia". Do you really think that after what has been written about Roman politics in these two threads that any Roman ruler was not somewhat justified in being very suspicious about plots, rebellions and uprisings? How many ruling augusti of the III and IV centuries CE ended up dead by violent means in assorted conspiracies or armed coups? The concept of "paranoia" is not the the same in a modern western society than it was in the Roman empire of that era. What today and here would seem as pathological paranoia in those times was a healthy virtue that usually allowed an augustus to remain alive.
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