Chapter One - The Prophet & The Kings
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MAZDAK’S FLIGHT – A Sassanid TL
Chapter One - The Prophet & The Kings
“If those forces arrayed against it – the orthodox Zoroastrians, the rich Mobeds, and the aristocracy – had acted in unison, the one truth could have been suppressed. The Mazdakites might have been no more than a footnote in history…”
- Mobed of Dublin, Imray Farrukh, 2007
Chapter One - The Prophet & The Kings
“If those forces arrayed against it – the orthodox Zoroastrians, the rich Mobeds, and the aristocracy – had acted in unison, the one truth could have been suppressed. The Mazdakites might have been no more than a footnote in history…”
- Mobed of Dublin, Imray Farrukh, 2007
Extract taken from the Soundie-Box[1] program The History Of Byzantium, Episode 22, ‘Theodoric & Kavad’.
(January 25th, 2019.)
(January 25th, 2019.)
Hello, and welcome to the History of Byzantium,
Last week we followed Emperor Anastasius as he attempted to reform the Roman state's finances, following Zeno's unstable emperorship. Though he succeeded in balancing the books, he was unable to heel the growing religious rift between Monophysite and Orthodox Christians. Today, I’d like to take a look at what was going on beyond the empire’s borders, first in Persia, and then in the Balkans. To do that we first need to do a little bit of catch-up on Persian history.
In 484 a man named Kavad became the Shah of Shahs. Son of the admirable King Peroz, Kavad replaced the tottering administration of his uncle Balash. The state he had inherited was in marked decline. The Persians had lost a costly war against the Hepthalite White Huns in the east. As tribute Huns demanded a great deal of treasure annually, which coupled with drought and famine, had led to a social crisis.
Kavad, correctly, judged that his country was on its way to a revolution. Increasingly the rural peasantry had become alienated from the nobles that ruled them. The great houses and clergy controlled the treasury and military, leaving the king as a mere figurehead. Kavad undertook a sweeping series of reforms. To do this, he entered into an alliance with one of the most fascinating men in world history.
We don’t know when or where Mazdak was born. Few Mazdakite documents remain to us from that time, what we do know is that he led a movement in rural Persia calling for the communal ownership of wealth and property. He called for a loosening of marriage laws, to the benefit of the lower classes and impediment of the aristocracy. In time, this movement would grow into one of the largest religions in the world.
Kavad exploited Mazdak shamelessly. Embracing his ideals, he flung open the royal granaries and began parcelling out land to poor peasants. To the great houses and the clergy, it was nothing short of a declaration of war. In 496, there was an attempt to overthrow Kavad which the King suppressed with the help of his ally, the military commander Siyawush[2].
To pay for the reforms he intended to implement, and as a means of rallying his divided nation against a common enemy, Kavad decided that it would be expedient to attack the Byzantines. A quick, decisive war would see his armies cover themselves in glory and secure much-needed plunder. However, Mazdakite teaching precluded any acts of violence, and so a suitable pretence for a defensive war was required.
Kavad requested subsidies from the Byzantines which old hand-at-the-grindstone Anastasius naturally rejected. Arguing that this was an attack on Persia’s honour, the Shah deemed this justification enough for war. The offensive began in 503 with an invasion of Armenia. The undefended city of Theodosiopolis was taken and looted, then Kavad crossed the Taurus mountains, after which time he captured the city of Martyropolis and extracted heavy tribute. Finally, he laid siege to the city of Amida through the winter, which proved a more difficult exercise than he initially hoped, holding out for three months.
On the Byzantine side, Anastasius responded cautiously to this act of aggression, as he did with most things. He ordered troops into Armenia and told them to push the enemy back to the Persian border. Despite Byzantine counter-attacks, Amida would remain in Persian hands for the remainder of the war. Throughout 503 the Byzantines suffered defeat after defeat, their only victory coming in 504 when Kavad’s attack on Edessa was turned back.
In 505, the Huns invaded from across the Caucuses, and Anastasius signed a hasty peace, handing Amida to the Sassanids and agreeing to an annuity. As my Mazdakite listeners will know, this is the moment that, according to the Writings, Kavad’s heart first turned on Mazdak. If I might quote directly, ‘ Kavad went among the Westerners and saw the great hoarded wealth and it darkened his heart with greed.’
Though, if he did indeed turn his heart against Mazdak, he did not begin to show it until the mid 520s…
Extract taken from Great Land Battles by Lord John Summerton.
(1997)
(1997)
Over the first two decades of the 500s, Persia underwent a social revolution unmatched in scale. The power of the land-owning dehqan was broken forever. A new religious office was created the advocate and advisor of the poor, a title still proudly born by the leaders of various Mazdakite sects, whose role was to provide aid to the needy.
The army was reformed; four frontier regions were created under local commanders, and an office created to ensure soldiers were properly provisioned. Most importantly an effort was made to encourage promotion from the ranks, and to break the power the upper-class aristocrats held over the top positions in the armed forces.
The Seven Great Parthian clans’ lands were redistributed among the peasants. Royal granaries now became the people’s granaries, and peasant councils were established to allot food for distribution to those in need. A similar system was worked out for the great estates, which were now to be run collectively by the peasants. All these reforms were fine in theory, but they produced institutional chaos throughout the 510s.
From 524 onwards, tensions had been growing between Kavad and his sons. A succession crisis emerged, between the king’s elder son Jamasp and his favourite son Khosrow. Jamasp was a fanatical Mazdakite, a respected warrior, and had secured the backing of the peasantry as well as the Prophet Mazdak himself. On the other hand, Khosrow, an orthodox Zoroastrian, had become a rallying point for aristocratic resistance to the king’s reforms.
Kavad was at a crossroads. On the one hand, he was greatly concerned about the fate of his reforms if Khosrow succeeded him, yet he adored the boy. In the end, the heart won out and Khosrow became his father’s closest advisors during the final years of his life. It was at his urging that Kavad began the forced conversion of the Armenians in the years 525-527 that would do so much to bestir Roman aggression.
Kavad died in 528. It is widely suspected that Khosrow had him killed, though nothing is certain. What is clear is that Khosrow benefited from his death. Supported by the majority of the aristocracy, who saw his ascent as an opportunity to regain their old privileges, Khosrow was crowned in Ctesiphon. Communal farms were broken up, peasant leaders killed, and the Sassanid Army was mobilised in preparation for a war with Byzantium. Khosrow hoped such a war would unite the people behind him, just as they had united behind his father during the Anastasian War.
In the summer of 528, King Tzath of Lazica converted to Christianity and lobbied Constantinople for aid. Khosrow pre-empted a Roman response by invading Armenia and putting every Christian in the province to the sword. The Roman Emperor Justinian I responded by unleashing Belisarius.
The disposition of forces in Armenia would, on paper, appear to favour the Persians. Khosrow had 45,000 men at his back including 1,500 Immortals, the famous armoured horsemen. Belisarius meanwhile commanded only 30,000 men, 5,000 horse archers, and a detachment of Hunnic cavalry.
Yet when these two armies met on the shores of Lake Van, the Persians were broken. Khosrow was a wily commander and he inspired loyalty in his men. Why then did he suffer such a catastrophic defeat? We must consider the disposition of either side’s fighting men.
Khosrow’s force multiplier was, of course, the Immortals. Armoured, with terrible metal faces emblazoned on their helmets, they fought with whips and great swords. They had been since the empire’s foundation the backbone of the army. Belisarius knew and recognised this and gambled that if he were able to dispense with them, the rest of the Persian host would break. And it was the Hunnic mercenaries that came to him with a way to do it.
Belisarius ordered a shallow covered trench dug across the plain, along the axis where the Persian forces were advancing. Along this trench was laid a thick chain. When Khosrow’s vanguard was sighted, the Byzantine cavalry charged the Persian centre and made a mock retreat. The Immortals thundered down after them. Once the Byzantines had withdrawn across the trench, the chain was pulled taut, tripping and breaking the legs of the Immortal's horses, sending their riders flying. At this point, the Byzantine and Hunnic horse archers turned and fired into their prone enemies.
The majority of Khosrow’s infantry were of poor quality. Peasant soldiers armed with substandard weapons, the Roman historian Procopius derides them as ‘the slaves of their overlords.’ Indeed, many among them no doubt wondered at the fate of their communal farms if Khosrow was victorious in Armenia, which can hardly have been a comforting thought. When the Immortals fell, they broke and ran.
The disorganised retreat of the Persian Army was harried by Belisarius’s horsemen. By the time the mountain passes closed up with snow at year’s end, he proudly proclaimed that there was not a single Persian left alive in the whole country. The next year, Belisarius would pursue his broken enemy into Persia Proper, before eventually being turned back in 531 at the Battle of Arbela.
Khosrow fled back to Persia, hoping to raise an army and make for the fortress of Daraa. Jamasp returned from exile with a Hephthalite cavalry army at his back in 529. Khosrow stepped up his persecution of the Mazdakites in an effort to win further orthodox Zoroastrian support, but it was not to be. Jamasp captured and killed his brother at Ctesiphon and claimed the throne for himself. Further Mazdakite reforms continued apace thereafter.
Extract taken from an English translation of the Writing Of Mazdak.
(1831)[3]
(1831)[3]
In Ctesiphon, the old seat of oppression, the Usurper King Khosrow had taken one hundred virgin believers, drank of their blood, and buried them upside down. Khosrow summoned Mazdak to Ctesiphon, writing, ‘You will find trees there that no-one has ever seen, and no-one ever heard of even from the mouth of the ancient sages.’ But Mazdak had been forewarned of the Usurper’s treachery and he and his followers decamped to the safety of Zamasp’s [4]camp on the banks of the Tigris.
Informed of his brother’s deceit, Zamasp did make ready for war. His banners upstanding and his men resolute, he sought the Prophet’s advice. He asked if he could uptake swords against Khosrow, for the killing of another is forbidden and hated by Ormazd. Mazdak assured him of the righteousness of his cause. And then the Prophet Mazdak bathed Zamasp in the waters of the Tigris, and with it were all the sins of Zamasp washed away.
Zamasp met his brother by the city of Ctesiphon. There, he promised Khosrow peaceable living, comely women, and a long and private life if he laid down his arms. Khosrow answered that he promised Zamasp death, deprivation, and slavery, that he would cast his body into the sea upon victory.
For five days and five nights did battle rage at Ctesiphon. Such was the deprivation of the common soldier that on the fifth day the sun did not rise at all, and the stars did wander darkling. Till at last Zamasp charged, breaking the Usurper’s host. And Khosrow was slain, and he spat from his mouth his soul which tumbled into the fires of eternal perdition.
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[1] ITTL equivalent to a radio.
[2] Our POD. In OTL the rebellion was successful and Kavad expended blood, treasure, and all the goodwill he had towards the Mazdakites getting it back. During his second reign, he and Khosrow ruthlessly suppressed them. ITTL he is a true believer, and their ideas never really fall out of favour whilst he reigns.
[3] Lord Caruvthen’s 1831 translation to be precise. The Writings are a history and theological treatise of the Mazdakite religion published in late 13th century China by an unknown author.
[4] The name by which Jamasp is commonly known in western countries.
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