I think one way to do this is to have the WRE hold together a bit longer and more cohesively than OTL. Build more of a divide between the Germanic tribes moving into Europe and the locals of these areas. That way, when the WRE does fall apart, there is a major divide between the invaders and their subjects, kind of like the Vandalic kingdom in North Africa. Then have those kingdoms convert to Nicene/whatever flavor of Christianity is popular in Rome (so probably not Arianism, and while you could probably have Valentinianism win out that would be a nucleus of an interesting timeline in and of itself.) so there is now a religious dictate to not revolt, and you could have what were once powerful chieftains back in Germany become the kind of solidified landowners that the OP is looking for.
 
I'm not really contesting the weakness of the central state in the Persian states, but I do wonder if they were really that much weaker when dynasties lasted so long, I imagine there must have been some kind of inertia that avoided other noble houses from taking over the "first among equals" position?

Certainly. My position is not that the Sassanid or Arsacid empire were/are weak, far from it. The system they had was extremely durable and effective and in total existed for approximately 1000 years as a single polity based around the creed of the Dahae-Parthian confederacy. As I have pointed out in many threads, there was a sense wherein the confederacy we speak of, was ultra-durable to crisis and tended to consistently reform itself when invaded and counter invasions without Imperial support. There is a great amount of discussion on the extension of the Roman empire and the complexity of its border situation and how conflicts could occur at a large range. During the late Arsacid period, we find that despite a raging civil war between Artabanus IV and Vologases VI, the Arsacids were able to rally noble armies that halted the Roman invasion and attempt to capitalize on the situation and likewise, for two centuries, were able to effectively rebuff the Kushan empire on its eastern flank, despite constantly harried by its pressing issues with its western foes, such as Rome. In most cases, we find that the noble houses legitimately forces that promoted the longevity and durability of the Eranshahr and as I pointed out, in a manner far better than the more 'statist' model that their geographic forefathers did, the Achaemenid empire.

However, to briefly answer why the other noble houses did not contest the Arsacid or Sassanid position, there are two points to note.

There were only three times in the history of the empire where another clan attempted to destroy the existing order of the Sassanid or Arsacid.

1. The Sassanid revolt: This rebellion occurred during the final Arsacid civil war between Artabanus IV and Vologases VI. It was centred entirely in the region of Persia/Fars and the ancient land of Elam. This area had historically been under the Arsacids ruled by priest-kings and local magnates who were nominal vassals of the Arsacid empire and the area was also composed of Arsacid crown holdings, especially the region of ancient Elam and the city of Susa. What we gain from the sources at our disposal, the Sassanid clan were not from a noble household, but were priests perhaps of the cult of Anahita or the more generalized Magian tradition of fire temples and veneration of Ahura Mazda, which would eventually coalesce into what the ideas of Kartir and later Sassanid religious policy, Zoroastrianism.

Regardless, the father of Ardashir, Papak, a priest rebelled and unified much of Persia while the Arsacid claimants and their constituent nobles battled each other for the last time. This rebellion reached its climax when Papak passed for unknown reasons and was replaced by a short interregnum between his sons Shapur and Ardashir, with the former dying supposedly at an ancient temple (a rock falling upon his head, symbolizing that the ancients of the ruins chose Ardashir to lead the people to glory). In the subsequent years, Ardashir would capture Elam and gain the attention of Artabanus IV who invaded Fars and was subsequently defeated in battle by Ardashir I and slain. Following this event, the Sassanid position solidified and seemed to have aligned with two major Dahae houses, the Ispahbudhan and Suren, who leikely assisted Ardashir with eradicating Arsacid rule in the region, and slaying Vologases VI at some point in the 220s. Ardahsir's reign would be one wherein the nobles accented to Ardashir's rebellion and accepted his replacement of the Arsacid, under the pretext that the rule would not change and for most ways, for the nobility, the Arsacid-Sassanid change would not be felt until the 540s CE.

2. The Mihranid revolt of Bahram Chobin Mihran: The revolt against Hormizd IV, was caused most assuredly to the monarch's attempt at centralizing of power that had began under his father Khosrow I and had reached a more tyrannical climax under Hormizd IV. This rebellion of Bahram, was claimed by him to be the end of the Sassanid dynasty and the ascension of a new and the restoration in his view of the Arsacid ancient order. In fact, his propaganda and message was that he wished to invite the Armenian (Christian) descendants of the Arsacid to rule alongside him and his Mihran clan and undo the evils of the Sassanid clan. An action like this, was the first time that a noble claimed to end the Sassanid position at the helm of the confederacy and was seen as extremely taboo. Even with the united hatred of the nobles against Hormizd IV, none of the other houses supported Bahram and instead chose to oppose him. The Karenids cut their losses and attacked Bahram from the east; the Surenids, the clan that was in control of the palace and were generally the ones who married Sassanid princes, launched a coup and had Hormizd IV blinded and then killed, replacing him with his young son Khosrow II, whom when Bahram defeated the Suren-Sassanid armies, arranged for Khorow's flight to Syria under Roman control.

3. The Surenid rebellion: Khosrow II, though through his mother, a Surenid, came to resent his Surenid uncles and cousins whom he owed his crown to, the brothers Vistuyih and Vistahm. Khosrow II became as his father was, a man devoted to centralism of power and a hatred of the Dahae-Parthian noble houses and their perverse polytheistic religion. As a result, Khosrow II had Vistuyih killed at his orders on the charge that he killed his father Hormizd IV. Vistahm hearing of the event, fled the capitol region and returned to Iran and rose the flag of rebellion, claiming to end the Sassanid dynasty once and for all and place his Surenid family or another on the throne. Vistahm even made his point clear when he wrote to Khosrow II mentioning that he should remember his place 'your forefathers were goat herders and peasants' while his, as one of the ancient clans, was one that was both related to that Dahae conquest but also related to the great mythical kings of Iran that preceded the Achaemenid empire. In any event, Vistahm was defeated due to Khosrow's alliance with Christian Armenian magnates and the noble house of Mihran who wished to redeem themselves. (later, the fall of Khosrow II was derived from his excessive lust for power; his conquest of the Roman empire was done almost entirely by the Mihran-Karenid armies and Khosrow sent commands near the end of his campaign to have one of his Mihranid generals killed [supposed fear of their prowess] which led to the House Mihran defecting to the Romans and breaking the Sassanid war effort).


As we see, that over the period of say 1000 years, we have only three rebellions that questioned the legitimacy of the ruling monarch and only two from the nobility. Thus, there was some benefit to this state formulation, namely the nobility were very loyal to the political arrangement that existed and had little reason to take power for themselves as the position the monarch held, was not any more prestigious than theirs, and it came with a responsibility of rule that many of the nobles may have seen as limiting. Regardless, these are a few reasons given by some scholars of the field and from myself as to the benefits in the Sassanid case:

1. The major noble houses were generally drawn from that steppe Dahae route or were nurtured by this element in the regions of Media, Sistan and others. They were inheritors of a tradition of cavalry combat not unlike that of the Scythians, Dahae and others from whom they derived. They controlled the trade routes for which horses were acquired from the steppe and taught their own men the ways of the saddle and warfare on the field as a matter of custom. Sassanid royal holdings on the other hand, were lands made up of the Persian and Iraqi peasantry and urban classes, who had less access to warsteads and much less so to how to fight with said horses. The nobles' and their horsemanship and their expertise on the matter were a required resource for victory at war against both Rome and the steppe nomads to the east and north.

To put it also in perspective, Khosrow I was the first Sassanid emperor to construct a standing army, which was seen as his attempt to remove his reliance upon the nobles. His army was composed of poorly or less trained cavalry and large infantry contingents. Originally, this was a supplemental to the existing noble armies and was not truly intended to replace the noble war machine of the Sassanid confederacy. Khosrow even convince the nobles by way of gifting them honorary command posts in said armies. Ultimately, these standing armies amounted to honorary garrisons who tended to be drawn exclusively from free cities and were unaccustomed to their positions. When the Celestial Turks pushed into Sassanid empire, the standing armies who were placed in the east to relieve the nobles, were decimated, routed and became famed for their cowardice and inability to stand against the horsemen from the northeast. The famous tale then goes, that inspired by an omen, Hormizd IV broke his own creed and used the Mihran clan and sent a noble army to engage the Turks, wherein the Mihran clan would both win and slay the Turkish khagan and conquered all lands from Nishapur up to Sogdiana for the Sassanid crown. All successful Sassanid emperors, understood the power of these nobles when combined with the Sassanid-Persian ruling identity and they quelled their hatred of the Dahae-Parthian nobles for the sake of empire, when Sassanid emperors allowed their resentment to boil over, is when the empire convulsed and eventually would fall resoundingly.

2. As already stipulated, the political alliance and confederacy of the empire, allowed for the Sassanid's to create a taboo regarding usurpation of the Sassanid royal family that was respected so long as the custom of the confederacy was maintained. The nobles, saw it as custom and for the betterment of the realm that they wage wars on behalf of the overall empire, hence the great successes of the early Sassanid empire, always came from the contribution of almost all the major noble houses as allies and equals of the monarch. Shapur II displayed this confederacy exquisitely in his reign, a monarch whom the nobles respected as their equal in war, diplomacy and title, but unlike Khosrow I, did not attempt to monopolize his power and did not commit the taboo of questioning the confederacy. Even the reign of Bahram V is preferable, as he agreed to rule by submitting to the nobility and vowing to rescind the taboos of his father Yazdgered II. As long as the Sassanid rulers maintained the confederate nature of the empire, the nobility represented the position of power for their empire.

3. In any other case, the situation of the Sassanid-Confederacy was simply a reality, wherein the nobles had developed originally as tribal kings and allies of the Arsacid empire and coalesced over 460 years into noble houses who of Dahae origin, intermingled and combined with existing ancient Medo-Irano-Greek nobles houses. Their claims to the land were primordial and to uproot them would cause disaster, as it did for the Sassanid empire.


@Optical_Illusion To answer your point, read these. If more question such as these arise, they may be discussed. There is negatives and drawbacks certainly, but the height of the Sassanid empire was at a time when the nobles were unmolested by the royal power and when the confederacy of the empire was at its apogee. Arsacid imperial durability is the same, in that case.

@Falecius The view is not that the Sassanid royalty lacks power, but that there is an extra dimension regarding noble held lands, which forms what is called the Sassanid-Confederacy, the ruling polity of the Eranshahr in late antiquity and characterized the previous middle antiquity of the Arsacid-Confederacy of Eranshahr. Sassanid roayl power derived from its religious sentiment partly but also on the ancient tradition of free cities and its imperial capitol holding of Iraq.

Free cities were various urban locations that began as a tradition under the Seleucid and Greco-Bactrian polities. They were means by which the Greek rulers could increase revenues, amplify central authority and subvert local Iranian magnates. These free cities were powered by the trade of goods of domestic and foreign quality, but also in the bustling slave trade that flourished during the Seleucid empire and later the Kushan empire. Prior to the Sassanid rise, there was a decline in the relative importance of the slave trade in Central Asia and generally in Iran-Iraq, which coincided with greater powers for the nobility. Arsacid authorities nevertheless respected the free city tradition and these continued to be areas of central authority, especially in Persia and Iraq, where urban densities were higher. During the Sassanid empire, the Sassanid house attempted to construct free cities and sponsor them as a way to increase their power and also for legitimacy purposes. The issue is, from existing records we have, it is apparent that the majority of free cities were actually being constructed by noble houses and the tax-trade incomes made therein were of the nobles. Especially in the eastern end of the empire, almost all free cities were owned, constructed and controlled by the nobles. In Iraq, the royal house was successful in constructing free cities, but otherwise was ineffective in using this as a method to increase their power. It also should be noted, that much of the older literature from the 1930s regarding the Sassanid empire, have been largely disputed in regards to some matters. Though initially the ones who posed the idea of the Sassanid-Confederacy, the knowledge regarding the nature of some of these points and extent to which this confederacy existed have only in the last 5-10 years come to light.
 
I think most of us are trying to design top-down structures to force the dynastics upon a basis too late on the feudal running. I can't see this as a organic development of such course of action, frankish juggernaut can't burn the ground of their fuel.
 
Excellent post.
Only a minor point, what is your source for the claim that Vistahm and Vinduy were Surenids? P. Pourshariati claims, with seemingly solid arguments, that they were Ispahbudans.

Seems I made a slip, you are correct, it was the Ispahbudhan. Surenids and Ispahbudhan tend to be quite similar actors in my view as the most prominent in the marriage of Sassanid princes.
 
Actually in Feudal Europe, well in the old Carolingian Core, virtually all old established dynasties had allodial possessions alongside fiefs. These allodial possessions could be lordships, counties or eventually even principalities/'principalities'. In a sense the kingdom of Bohemia was treated in a similar manner within the Empire. That is the lord of an allodial possession is lord in his own domain, generally that also excludes them from promotion on the titulature pyramid. The duke of Brabant had the ancestral county of Leuven (Louvain) as a an allodial county, the count later duke of Gelre had the county of Zutphen as an allodial possession. The duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg was created from the allodial Saxon lands of the (younger*) house of Welf (-Este*), inherited from previous Saxon dynasties. In a way it was a demotion of sorts, since a Lord of an allodial possession was autonomous, however it also excluded them from de facto Imperial Politics and they were robbed from the rank of a great noble of the Empire (back then being a duke was still quite prestigious in the Empire).
AFAIK Anglo-Saxon England also had allodial possessions, that changed after the Norman Conquest.

I admit, that this isn't the same as a total 'allodial system', when translated to European terms, which apparently was in place in Iran; I'd just wanted to note that western Europe was totally feudal either. There were allodial territorial possessions, some by actual Royal or Imperial grant, some by maintaining a claim long enough (even claims from the Carolingian era (or before) eventually just became accepted as the current status quo).
 
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Actually in Feudal Europe, well in the old Carolingian Core, virtually all old established dynasties had allodial possessions alongside fiefs. These allodial possessions could be lordships, counties or eventually even principalities/'principalities'. In a sense the kingdom of Bohemia was treated in a similar manner within the Empire. That is the lord of an allodial possession is lord in his own domain, generally that also excludes them from promotion on the titulature pyramid. The duke of Brabant had the ancestral county of Leuven (Louvain) as a an allodial county, the count later duke of Gelre had the county of Zutphen as an allodial possession. The duchy of Braunschweig-Lüneburg was created from the allodial Saxon lands of the (younger*) house of Welf (-Este*), inherited from previous Saxon dynasties. In a way it was a demotion of sorts, since a Lord of an allodial possession was autonomous, however it also excluded them from de facto Imperial Politics and they were robbed from the rank of a great noble of the Empire (back then being a duke was still quite prestigious in the Empire).
AFAIK Anglo-Saxon England also had allodial possessions, that changed after the Norman Conquest.

I admit, that this isn't the same as a total 'allodial system', when translated to European terms, which apparently was in place in Europe; I'd just wanted to note that western Europe was totally feudal either. There were allodial territorial possessions, some by actual Royal or Imperial grant, some by maintaining a claim long enough (even claims from the Carolingian era (or before) eventually just became accepted as the current status quo).

My impression, was that titles in allodium were gifted or granted by monarchs or the Papacy, is this the case? I think it is a good example though, certainly.
 
I think most of us are trying to design top-down structures to force the dynastics upon a basis too late on the feudal running. I can't see this as a organic development of such course of action, frankish juggernaut can't burn the ground of their fuel.

Have you or any on the site considered the possibility of a successful Hunnic-Germanic invasion of the Western empire and the seeding of varied formerly steppe nomadic-Germanic tribal elites across a conquered empire, as possible venues for this? This would to some degree mimic the creation of the imperial confederation under the Arsacid-Sassanids.
 
I'm not able to formulate a timeline, but how does OTL pre-HRE post-carolingian East Francia fit in this model?
 
My impression, was that titles in allodium were gifted or granted by monarchs or the Papacy, is this the case? I think it is a good example though, certainly.

Most were certainly, though old dynasties, which held possessions since Carolingian times or before, eventually they could claim that original fiefs were given to them as an allodium (such a claim eventually was over time accepted).
 

Metaverse

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Let me get it clarified before beginning to make a point.

By Dynastic, do you mean for example, X clan/family/circle descended from or aligned to a a people who were historically of a X tribe/conquerers/ruling family and each of the members of this group had significant power in the kingdom/empire?
 
Let me get it clarified before beginning to make a point.

By Dynastic, do you mean for example, X clan/family/circle descended from or aligned to a a people who were historically of a X tribe/conquerers/ruling family and each of the members of this group had significant power in the kingdom/empire?

Not necessarily, but this is part of it. It refers simply to a system wherein the nobility are of a power and land owning class that transcends monarchical contractual agreements or appointments. Thus, the nobility rule their lands without any legal connection to the monarch. It is more derived from the idea as I noted, of large agnatic-patriarchal clans who saw themselves as legally equal to the royalty. In some works, it is described as a supposition of a state/sedentary governmental system over existing independent and powerful tribal conglomerates who coalesce into nobility of peerless power and co-equality to the ruling monarch.

In Iran, this was formed by way of a steppe nomadic conquest of the Seleucid empire’s eastern holdings and then the rapid adoption of a state by the Arsacid. This imposed upon an existing decentralized culture of powerful lords among the horde who considered themselves equal to the Arsacid clan and as such were called kings and the Arsacid adopted the title king of kings, yet with the inversion that it was a king among kings, instead of king over other kings.
 

Metaverse

Banned
Okay. That's clear. Didn't Egypt and Rome have a similar system of rule in the Ancient era?

Now for the next question. Could people work their way up to the Nobility or is it by birth? For example, a family of an upper middle class level could work their way to become eligible as a nobility in a generation or two. That's what was the system in Rome. Could this be allowed by your conditions?
 
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