Don't Overthink It
The winter of 77-78 was a hard one for the people of the people of Mesopotamia. The vicarius of Roma, Marcus Salvius Otho, was beginning to understand the gravity of the political situation that he had not only gotten himself into, but helped to create. All over the region, on either side of the border, Jewish communities in different cities were protesting the Roman foreign policy in one way or another, and more often than not, the protests were turning violent. In the city of Arbela, where Roman troops had been garrisoned to ensure the stability of Aristobóulos’ government, a curfew had had to be imposed on the public after the violent suppression of demonstrations that involved pelting Roman soldiers with stones. The curfew was so strict, that anyone caught wandering the streets after hours was arrested on sight… no matter their age. This curfew had bred serious discontent between the Aššurist, Zoroastrian, and Jewish communities, as the new Jewish king had imposed it upon everyone equally, when it was the Jews who were attacking soldiers in broad daylight. After a series of ambushes on Roman patrols during the night, the punishment for violation of the curfew was risen to death. Violent counter-riots erupted in the following weeks that set Jewish neighborhoods ablaze and saw many Jews personally injured by their upset neighbors, and night-time massacres of the families of rioters began to sweep the city. And in Mēšān, things were similarly about to boil over. The Jewish community, led by their tanna’im, had begun with protests of prayer like those that were seen in Orhāi in the city of Khárax Spasínou, and later clogged the streets with wooden signs in which they made known their desire that the Aryan king Warāwāz II declare his independence from Aršaka sovereignty and withdraw his army from the walls of Nherdaʻă because of the collapse of House Suren. However, the king feared what the retribution for his actions might be if he failed to declare for Walāxš II before the war was over, and so he was hesitant to declare Mēšān an independent state just yet.
All in all, it had become very apparent to Otho that the decisive factor in how things played out going forward for many of the cities in Mesopotamia was how the Jews reacted to the situation. Thus far, he had been able to utilize their religious fundamentalism in Bêṯ Ōsrā Īnē and twist it to his advantage, but as the winter went by, and protests in Khárax Spasínou intensified and similarly began to erupt in Sinḡar and Ḥaṭra, he realized that he was playing with fire that he wasn’t sure he could control, and this worried him, not only because he feared for his ability to retain his office, but also because he had recently impregnated the young princess Gamilath, who was staying with him in Antiókheia. Gamilath of course, wanted to visit her mother in Yerušalēm, where, apparently troubles with the indigenous Jewish community had recently been renewed upon the completion of the Temple of Dū Šarā on the Mount of Olives, though not as much in Yerušalēm herself as in the nearby city of Lod. The tanna Târp̄ôn had gathered enough of a following in Lod that a formal schism had occurred, with associated tanna’im, many of whom were his seniors and more than influential, conceding that the temple in Yerušalēm had been made unclean by the heresy of the Great Sanhedrin there, and by the presence of a heathen temple that overlooked the Temple Mount. Otho was afraid that this schism might cause trouble on the Roman side of the border, and with large Jewish communities in senatorial provinces that were outside of the scope of his control, such as Kyrēnaïkḗ and the island of Kýpros, he worried that further escalation of the conservative movement might damage his influence in the senate and with the people of Roma herself. Judaea however, was within that scope, and so he decided to act against the conservatives at Lod by ordering the arrest and execution of Târp̄ôn and his affiliates, their stated crime being the promotion of circumcision, and by extension, as such was now legally considered to be the mark of radical anti-Roman sentiments, of sedition against the state.
However, before the end of the winter, the Roman garrison in Arbela was slaughtered at the hands of Jewish insurgents and the Aryan garrison, which itself had been paid by members of the Adiabenian court, and Aristobóulos was deposed and imprisoned in favor of Sanatrūk, the Jewish nephew of the deceased Mānuwaz. Aristobóulos, in his short tenure as king of Ḥḏay’aḇ Īnē, had proven to be very immoveable to the Adiabenian court, who wanted someone who was not only not Hellenized, but also someone who was younger and easier to manipulate. Though the young Sanatrūk’s reign did not even last the winter, as he himself was assassinated by the Aryan garrison, whose commanders were in communication with Jāmāsp, or Pakūr II, the uncle of the incumbent Šāhān Šāh. He was replaced with a friend of Jāmāsp’s at the Adiabenian court, and cousin to Mānuwaz, Zawan, which sparked an anti-Aryan revolt in the city that had the Aryan garrison and sizable portions of the city’s Zoroastrian and Aššurist populations barricaded in the palace for the remainder of the winter until they were relieved by troops from Mépsila at the behest of Marcus Ulpius Traianus, who went on a massacre of the local tanna’im, burned every local synagogue, and proceeded to sell all Jewish males above the age of 10 years old who did not belong to the country’s nobility into slavery. Though, because Aristobóulos did not make it through the ordeal, having been executed as a gesture of good will by Zawan to the Jewish insurgents, Zawan was allowed to retain his title as King of Ḥḏay’aḇ Īnē… for the time being.
Though, the rumors of what had occurred in Arbela were difficult to contain, and by the spring of 78, they had spread to other cities in Mesopotamia, specifically to Khárax Spasínou, where the king finally recalled his army in light of the subsequent civil unrest, leaving only the troops from Elymais, who, as of yet had not negotiated any kind of an agreement with the Romans. Tullius Senecio, who was in command of the I Italica, attempted to negotiate with the Elymaeans to continue the siege and declare for Walāxš II, but they had already received orders from their king, Kapnuškira Ūrūd II, to withdraw and return home. The final withdrawal of the Elymaeans released the exilarch and the conservatives at Nherdaʻă at long last, and he, now fully drunk on the possibilities of harnessing the religious furvor of his people, declared that the Aryans and the Romans were tearing themselves apart, and that the time to reestablish God’s kingdom was nigh. The declaration was carried to every city in Mesopotamia with a Jewish community, but was also carried to cities on the Roman side of the border, such as Zeugma, Qerqesīn, Kallínikos, and Manbuḡ, going even as far west as Judaea Aegyptus and as far south as the Arabian city of Tayma.
Otho tried to crack down on the dissent as best he could, and anyone caught circulating the messages, whether by shouting them in the markets or in the synagogues or through discrete notes was immediately put under arrest and crucified for sedition. However, to many Jews in the diaspora, the idea of a Jewish state was an abstract one, since there was not a single person alive at the time who remembered a time when the Jews had their own independent state, and yet, sacrifices at the temple had continued as they always had, and there was still a Jewish monarch… however much of a despot he might have been. In the homeland, conservatives in Lod and Ĕḏôm didn’t even seem to feel the inclination to turn violent, remembering the failed revolution of the kana’im a decade earlier, instead preaching peaceful disobedience to the Roman rulings on Jewish doctrine. The Jews of Aegyptus were quite another matter, however, and riots broke out in Alexandria that organized with a stunning degree of rapidity as the rioters seized barracks and began arming themselves before the legion could respond. Though when it did, the consequences were harsh enough to attract attention from the countryside, swelling the Jewish mobs in the city to such a degree that the predominantly Jewish districts were simply evacuated of their non-Jewish inhabitants and barricaded with furniture, wagons, palates, barrels, and bags of sand. Although, a significant enough number of non-Jews, many of them Roman citizens, were held prisoner in exchange for rations that the governor saw himself as having no choice but to provide in exchange for their lives. The true center of the problem however, was certainly in the Mesopotamian heartland. The Jewish diaspora of the region was deeply conservative, deeply anti-Hellenization, and accustomed to striking swords for a desired outcome. Ḥarrān, Ḥaṭra, Sinḡar, Zeugma, Tel Baṭnān, Qerqesīn, and Kallínikos all experienced violent riots that saw Jews burning and looting the temples and arming themselves whenever they could seize a barracks or kill enough soldiers to get their hands on enough weapons. Even the Jews of Antiókheia attempted arson on the temple of Arēs and assaulted some priestesses of Týkhē, while there were two coordinated mass stabbings in Tadmor at the temple of Bēl and in the markets, committed by several Jewish men and a Jewish woman.
The ineptitude that the Aryan officials demonstrated when responding to the problem as well simply made the Roman occupation that much more appealing to many of the cities who were already garrisoned by Roman legions, and to many more who faced possible occupation by the trained and seasoned Jewish militias from Nherdaʻă and Jewish soldiers and renegades fleeing Ḥḏay’aḇ Īnē… especially after the deposition of Aristobóulos in Arbela at the behest of Pakūr II, which was widely seen as undercutting the authority of his nephew in a time when such slights were less than welcome. No city was as welcoming however, as Khárax Spasínou and its king, who sent emissaries to treat with Tullius Senecio at Karkhā d’Bêṯ Slōkh to negotiate Mēšān’s independent status as a Roman, not Aryan, client. Word of these negotiations reached Walāxš II by way of local slaves who had overheard the negotiations reporting to Aryan officers, who relayed the information to Warāzdāt at Qtīsfōn, who further relayed it to the Šāhān Šāh. This, naturally, put the Aryan monarch in quite an awkward position – he had already ceded Armin to the Romans, and the western half of his kingdom was indeed full of Roman troops. Dismissing the Romans from Mesopotamia would be logistically impossible, because Otho was in a position to take it if he wanted to. He had the money, he had the men… already in position, and he also just so happened to have the favor of many locals both common and noble due to the expanding nature of Jewish fundamentalism in the region. Of course, technically, the fundamentalism was mostly directed at the Romans, however, he had technically invited the Romans to occupy previously Aryan-controlled cities while he dealt with rebellions in the east, which meant that there was no calming the clerics into a pro-Aryan stance at such a point in time. He could dismiss the Romans, and risk being pressed between them and the Kucans coming in from the east, or he could cede Mēšān, focus his energy on defeating the Kucan onslaught, and move forward – he chose to do the latter.
Though Gēhangir had a trick up his sleeve, and he spent much of the spring laying the foundations for it. He had opened communication with the king of the Wïrnauñi, whom he had promised a large some of gold for their aid. This represented a problem in policy, however, as the Wïrnauñi king, Polïka Mañayïkwe, had sealed a peace treaty with the Kucan king by way of the marriage of his niece to his own nephew, Sampyāka Onkwïypešše. He had won against the Kucans for the time being, though he did not want to push his luck… not without incentive, anyways. Gēhangir drove a hard bargain, however, after the betrayal of House Aspahbāt, he was willing to compromise on sovereignty of the province of Virgān, altering its status as a core Parthawi territory to an odd sort of client state that would divide its tributes between the Wïrnauñi and the Aršaka, though it would answer to the Aršaka court in matters of diplomacy and warfare, say, if the Šāhān Šāh were to call on them in a time of war, and its king would have to be approved by the Šāhān Šāh as well.
Of course, while Polïka now ruled a wide kingdom that extended from the land of Şïpïcïkenta (Ili Valley) to the Yakšarta (Fergana) Valley, where he sat as king at a city that seemed to have several names, but he had renamed Aleksandrakand (Khojand), he was contending with his brother for maintenance of his title. Naturally, the two were sons of different mothers, and while their conflict was not formalized, it was very obvious to anyone in his court that Poyuka, though the elder brother, felt snubbed by his father when Polïka had been chosen for the title, and had spent most of his political career maintaining his influence over the military. This arrangement had worked for a good many years for the two of them, as his brother did not have a mind for politics, and he didn’t have a mind for warfare, but the equation had changed when his brother had taken in the renegade Tauraɣu, who had come to Şïpïcïkenta seeking refuge. Installing him as a petty king of Virgān would certainly put some miles between them, and with the bargain that Gēhangir had driven, he would answer to the Šāhān Šāh of Aryān, who would be in Polïka’s pocket not only for his hand in restoring his rule of the country, but in for the critical role his kingdom stood to play in the land-based trade routes with the East that would hopefully be reopening once the political situation in the Xyūna Kingdom had stabilized.
Now, on one hand, Polïka would have liked to isolate his brother, who had largely been responsible for the victory against the Kucans, and had also reaped many of the socio-economical benefits as the new king of Asmarakand. To do so, he would name his own son, Tsārwo Cokatkenaşşe, who was on the cusp of adulthood and more than bright, as head of the campaign and assign his brother’s finest commanders to him. The problem with such a notion, however, was that he did not want to be implicated in breaking peace with the Kucans, whom they had only defeated by a narrow margin and could certainly win supremacy over Asmarakand if they were to invade – the now deposed local monarchs were cousins by marriage of the Kucan royal family, after all. This meant that if peace were to be broken, it would have to appear as though Polïka was not the one to break it, and so he decided that he would go ahead and give his brother the order in private while feigning ignorance in public. He promised his brother of course, that he would be king of Asmarakand and of Virgān, though he intended to put Tsārwo on the Asmarakandan throne as punishment for such a campaign to save face with the Kucans. After all, once settled in Virgān, Poyuka would be a vassal of the Aršaka and the Wïrnauñi the way Armin had been to Roma and the Aršaka, and if he tried to defy his younger brother, he would have to answer both to Walāxš II and Polïka. To top it off, he promised half of the gold promised him by the Šāhān Šāh to several prominent Dāha chiefs if they went home… a less than modest price considering what they had already reaped in Aryān.
Now, the Kucan army, which was of an unspecified number to the Aršaka at the time, had been divided in half – one half was in Western Sagēstan under the command of the king, while the other was camped at Saddarwāzehā under the command of Śpālu Şēśïke, some 430 miles north as a crow flies, but 595 as the horse rides… and if the reports were to be believed, the army was made up almost entirely of horse, camel, and elephant units. The spring rains however, had provided enough water for the king to move his army from Kirmān north to the cities of Yazd and then Gabay, from which it seemed as though his intent was to rendezvous with his cousin, probably near Rhaga, and make a push for Haŋmadān. According to the terms of the agreement, Poyuka would be allowed to pillage the Bactrian towns on the Yakšarta before crossing it, drawing the Kucan general north, which the Kucans would have left guarded by the indigenous Parthawi forces while their army was camped further west. Simultaneously, Šāhān Šāh would attack them from the rear, and what remained of the Parthawi armies would have gotten the message that their ruler was there and would take up arms against their Kucan subjugators. It would be a slaughter, ideally, and the Kucan king would be forced to return to Baxlo with his tail between his legs.
The plan was perfect, except that Polïka knew better than to think that the Aršaka would allow Walāxš II to cough up yet another province for the purpose of maintaining his throne, not with Mesopotamia all but having fallen to Roman control. Following another foreign invasion, the people of Aryān would be wipped into a panic, and the nobility would see to it that Walāxš II would not live to honor the agreement. The Šāhān Šāh knew this very well, though he also feared not only for his own life, but that of his son, Bagdāt, whose life would be in very real danger if he were to die. Subsequently, the agreement between the two rulers, which was hard won by Polïka, was that viable monarchical alternatives to Walāxš II were going to have to die. If they didn’t, than the agreement could not stand, because the stability of Poyuka’s petty kingship over Virgān could not be guaranteed, and he would surely ride for Asmarakand and put his nephew in chains… if not kill him, plunging the Wïrnauñi into civil war, and not only risking the hard earned winnings of the passed several years, but the livelihood of the nation itself, which could fall to the tribes further south.
Gēhāngir would have liked to have had more time to consider, but the coming spring rains that the Kucan king and his army would be mobile again, having already taken Yazd, and so, with a heavy heart, Gēhāngir made the arrangements for his brothers' individual murders, as well as that of his young uncle, Šāhpuhr…
Ever the schemer, although at least unwillingly, Gēhāngir spaced out the murders rather cleverly. Narsaxw was given a poisoned falconeering glove, Spandāt, who was strangled in the night, and an assassin was even set upon the Šāhān Šāh himself which had been hired by Māhburzin of House Kārēn so as to illicit young Šāhpuhr’s defensive instincts once again. Šāhpuhr tragically died choking on his own blood after taking a knife to the lung, while Gēhāngir stabbed the assassin more than a hundred times with his dinner knife in a not-entirely-insincere fit of rage and sadness while also making sure to plant a forged message from his brother, Jāmāsp, who was immediately arrested and imprisoned, and would await trial for his crimes while Gēhāngir rode to meet the Kucans.
Both the Šāhān Šāh and the Wïrnauñi king had criticaly misjudged the Kucans, as their entire plan hovered on the idea that they would respond to their rear being harassed – they didn’t. See, to the Kucans, the entire invasion Aryān was not empire building, but merely a protracted raid. So, when Poyuka crossed the Yakšarta, Śpālu Şēśïke, who had already shipped much of the loot from his adventures in Marɣ and Mihrdātkard back to Tarmið in Baxlo, did something quite unexpected. Smelling the plan from the start, Śpālu pretended to retreat so as to draw the Šāhān Šāh east. Once he had received word that the Parthawi were nearing Saddarwāzehā, he took advantage of the spring rains to move his cavalry army across the length of the Dašt-i-Khawir (Dasht-e-Kavir) and rendezvous with his cousin at Gabay, which surrendered upon their simultaneous arrivals. The two armies left a contingent in the city, including the elephant units, and then rode hard and fast for Haŋmadān, which was largely unfortified, full of riches, and open to attack.
By the summer of 78, the Aršaka royal family was at the weakest in its history, and the Kucans had carried enough riches from Aryān back to Baxlo that they might have been able to purchase the Sapta Sindhavah.