Chapter Three – Reconquest & Rebellion
Extract taken from an English translation of the Writing Of Mazdak.
(1831)
Whence you go among the foreigners they will ask many things of you. Give with both hands and receive gratefully. But never give them your faith, or loyalty, for that alone belongs to Ahura-Mazda. And you shall keep these ideals, that he hath sent down; that you shall not kill another man for such is the way of coveters and sinners, that you shall share all that you possess no matter how much you cherish it, especially with the sick and the despised and the poor, that you shall respect your women and women shall be respectful unto your men whom you lay with, that you shall never harm animals or other living things for sport or to glut your appetite or pleasure for all these things Ahura-Mazda hates.
Extract from a VoiceCentre video, “Mazdakism: What You Need To Know Pt. 2”, by user PJHist.
(2018)
So last week we learned about Mazdak the man, the times in which he lived in, and the early history of Mazdakism up until its adoption as Persia’s state religion in 531. Today, we’re going to be looking at some of the most important beliefs held by Mazdakites of all stripes. As we briefly covered last time there are two states of being in Mazdakism: Asha and Drug. Followers of Mazdak believe that banishing Drug is the most vital task in a man’s life.
There is a lot of disagreement on how exactly a person is supposed to do this with the only consensus being that you should live your life according to four rules, called tenets. The original Writings of Mazdak, which are the holy books of the two main denominations of Mazdakites, the Jangists and the Orthodox, are based on identify four central tenets, which must be obeyed at all costs.
- You must not kill another man.
- You must share everything you have, especially with those that society despises.
- You must respect everyone regardless of their sex.
- You must never eat meat.
Orthodox and Jangists both have very different interpretations of these tenets but that is, unfortunately, beyond the remit of this episode since this split didn’t solidify until about the year 630 …
Extract taken from Religion: The Briefest Possible History by Zoe Alvarez.
(1982)
Mazdakism has always been a decentralized religion. In part, this is due to its origins as a grassroots movement in Persia, and in part due to Mazdakism’s proliferation among the steppe nomads of Asia. There is no central authority though the Jangist sect maintains a leader in Iran known as Judge and Advisor to the Poor. But his role remains purely that of an advocate and respected leader, he does not dictate church policy.
Mazdakite mobeds are usually selected by the communities they come from rather than imposed from above, the way that a Parish Priest might be. They are ordained by being bathed in a water temple by a Chief Mobed. These mobeds will then annually elect, amongst themselves, a Chief Mobed for a particular region. For example, in Dublin, there are three water temples of the Jangist Mazdakite sect, the Mobeds of which then select a leader to be the Chief Mobed of Dublin. This Chief Mobed is tasked with advocating for this region and keeping the Advisor of the Poor up to date on local affairs. It is said that this model can be traced back to Persia during the 6th and 7th centuries, though primary sources on this matter remain unreliable at best.
Extract taken from Sasania: Her Rise, Her Fall by Zoreh Kian.
(1982)
I was raised in a Jangist Mazdakite household, and this naturally shaped my political beliefs. My mother and I would pray before a small coal burner, behind which we kept a small picture of Mazdak my grandfather had painted. My father helped maintain a small water temple, though much to the horror of my conservative grandmother the spring was manmade.
Extract taken from Religion: The Briefest Possible History by Zoe Alvarez.
(1982)
In both Zoroastrianism and Mazdakism,
atar, or holy fire, refers to the invisible presence of Ahura Mazda in everyday life. In both religions, clean water and fire are seen as purifiers. Accordingly, fires were kept lit in major fire temples by the Zoroastrian faithful. In contrast to this, Mazdak sponsored the construction of water temples, so that people might wash away their sins just as Jamasp I had been purified in the Tigris.
Water temples are the holiest places in Mazdakism. Built on natural springs, they usually consist of a large foundation surrounded by a shallow pool in which believers can pray and bathe. In keeping with the Mazdakite view that asha was a state to which people had to actively strive and purify themselves, ritual bathing is very important. Mazdakism holds that there are two kinds of matter: Asha and Drug. Asha represents purity of thought and action, whilst Drug represents deceit, disorder, and evil. It is believed by followers of Orthodox Mazdakism that bathing in the spring water in these temples can repel Drug and the wild animals and bad luck associated with it. This is a practice that dates back to the reign of Jamasp I.
Extract taken from Italy in the Dark Ages: 476 to 1290 AD by Lawritz Arglitz.
(1966)
Why did the Italians, who had once welcomed the Greeks with open arms, turn their hearts against Byzantium? Much had changed in the six years since Belisarius first landed his fleet. Plague and famine had turned northern Italy into a hell beyond imagining. The four Byzantine commanders – John, Bessas, Cyprian, and Mundus – despised each other, and squabbled constantly. The only man they all respected, Belisarius, had departed and with him went any central authority among the Roman forces. Their primary concern was plundering the country of its wealth. Their rapacity makes one sick for being a man, and the suffering of the common people was appalling.
Against this, Totila offered to redistribute the land of the aristocracy, rebuild the cities, free the slaves, and return the Pope to Rome. It was an egalitarian and reforming ideology, and in the wars to come this King of Goths would demonstrate considerable humanity, that put his foes to shame.
Many Mazdakite scholars believe Totila’s policies represent one of the early Christian responses to the spread of Mazdakism. But I am personally skeptical of this train of thought as it reminds one of those odious western scholars who claim Mazdakism is an attempted Zoroastrian response to Christianity.
Extract taken from TITAN OF WORLD HISTORY: Vol. II From the Fall of Rome to the War of the Polish Succession by Adelaide de Temps and Farhan Ali.
(1967)
Italy (530-549 cont’d)
543. Extensive plague outbreaks in Italy and demoralization of Byzantine troops after the departure of Belisarius lead to a Gothic resurgence. Battle of Florence sees Totila win the first major Gothic victory in three years. Totila then marches on Ravenna.
544. Fall of Ravenna; Isaurian Byzantine soldiers open the gates to the Gothic army. Battle of Bononia sees a numerically superior force led by Mundus defeated. Mundus dies of wounds shortly thereafter and four Byzantine commanders vie for power.
545. Totila bypasses Rome and moves most of his forces into southern Italy where there are few Byzantine garrisons.
546. Goths take Rome. Narses appointed Exarch (Leader) of Italy and sets up his court in Naples.
547-549. Desultory fighting. Goths seize swathes of central and southern Italy, and Byzantium retains control of Otranto, Naples, and Tarentum.
Italy (550-570)
550. Germanus arrives in Tarentum with 35,000 troops and defeats a Gothic fleet off the coast. Steady Byzantine reconquest begins. Rome retaken from Totila the Lesser.
551. Plague outbreak ravages Byzantine armies in Italy. Ravenna besieged by the vanguard of the Byzantine Army. Byzantine troops are overstretched and demoralized. Narses dies of the plague.
552. Totila rallies 20,000 men and moves against the now depleted Byzantine army. Totila bypasses Ravenna, leaving a small force behind to screen his rear and moves against Rome.
Extract taken from Italy in the Dark Ages: 476 to 1290 AD by Lawritz Arglitz.
(1966)
Germanus decided to make his stand in Rome. She was but a shadow of her former glory; filled with crumbling buildings, and a population one-quarter of what it had been at the time the conquest began. But she was the capital of the old empire, nevertheless. Germanus concentrated his best troops within the walls, which were by this point, ‘piles of stones tottering constantly on the brink of collapse, or so says Procopius. He conscripted the male population and had the women and children sent south to Naples. Many would never return.
On March 1st 553 the Goths’ banners were sighted by sentries on the walls. Germanus ordered fires lit, and teams of musicians to play atop the ramparts, to welcome the invaders. The next day Totila sent men to scale the walls. Once inside they found hard fighting; Germanus used the cramped streets to his advantage, drawing his men up into tight ranks.
Despite heavy Gothic losses, the Asinarian Gate was taken by the 5th, and Totila lead the greater part of his host inside. Fighting raged for two days straight on the banks of the Tiber, with men packed in formation so tightly, that their bodies could not fall when they were slain. Totila himself received multiple stab wounds whilst he skirmished with Germanus’s frontline.
By the twelfth day of fighting, the Romans had been pushed back towards the city centre, forming up in ordered lines, convinced they were about to meet their deaths. Yet, the Third Battle of Rome, did not end in a massacre. As the last defenders gathered atop the Capitoline Hill, the Goths took down their tents, dipped their banners, and withdrew. Totila, who had led the war of resistance for ten long years, was dead of his wounds. Worse still, news reached the camp of an invasion force that had crossed the Alps and was ransacking north Italy. Totila the Lesser, the King’s son, succeeded his father and led the army north.
The men who had ridden to the Greeks’ salvation were Germans. The Alemanni had become the subjects of the Franks in 496. Under Duke Butilinus many of them had participated in the invasion of Italy in 539, with the Frankish King Theudebert’s blessing. Impressed by stories of their fighting prowess General Narses employed Butilinus and seven thousand Alemanni as federate troops.
It was they who would finally defeat the last Gothic army in the field. The Alemanni caught Totila the Lesser at Mugello valley north of Florence. The last Gothic King of Italy died with a curse on his lips. After this, surviving enemy troops were rounded up and marched back to Rome. In 558, Butilinus accepted a large sum of gold and silver, 10,000 pieces each if contemporary sources are to be believed, and lead his Alemanni home. They would return, in force, some years later…
Extract taken from TITAN OF WORLD HISTORY: Vol. II From the Fall of Rome to the War of the Polish Succession by Adelaide de Temps and Farhan Ali.
(1967)
Spain (550-560)
550. King Agila of the Visigoths is murdered by the usurper Athanagild, and the city of Cordoba subsequently declares itself to be in rebellion. Justinian launches an intervention, 30,000 men led by Belisarius, to find the killers and bring them to justice. They land at Guadalete.
551. The Battle of Seville ends in a numerically superior Visigothic force defeated by the Byzantine Army, with heavy casualties on both sides. Athanagild withdraws to Mérida. The fleet under Justin departs Italy and takes Cartagena.
552. Battle of Mérida ends in an overwhelming Byzantine victory. Athanagild is killed by his bodyguards. Alaric III takes the throne in Toletum but lacks popular support.
553. Indecisive fighting. Alaric III is unable to rally Gothic resistance, Belisarius’s troops struggle with difficult terrain, and morale is low.
554. Siege of Toletum. Alaric III surrenders the city to Belisarius and agrees to go into exile.
555-557. Brutal shudoushi warfare on the part of the Visigoths. The majority of northern Spain remains in Visigothic hands.
558. Visigoths besiege Toletum.
Extract taken from Great Land Battles by Lord John Summerton.
(1997)
Jamasp I began raising an army in the winter of 558. He had been in power almost three decades and in that time he had overseen wide-reaching reforms, made the government wealthy and strong, and kept peace on his frontiers. But all of it came with a cost, an annuity to the hated Hephthalites who had murdered his grandfather and besmirched Persian honour. The Battle of Margus, which saw the power of the White Huns broken forever, was to be his crowning triumph.
Crucial to his victory were the Göktürks. This confederation of Turkic peoples had recently moved into Central Asia. They sought Persian assistance against the Hephthalites in early 559 and in this he saw an opportunity. He withheld the annual payment of tribute, and the Hephthalites declared war. Rallying a force, between 18,000 and 25,000 contemporary sources differ, and invaded Hephthalite territory early the next year.
The two sides met at Margus, in present-day Lower Turkiyland, June 560. Jamasp hit upon a cunning strategy. He had his weakest units form up on his left flank, supported by the Turks. When the Hephthalites charged, and the left-wing faltered, they plunged into the breach. The Turks then came up to take them in the rear. Despite another day’s heavy fighting, most Hephthalite forces were killed or scattered.
It was a stunning victory and the magnum opus of Jamasp’s reign. In one way, however, he failed to learn from the mistakes of his grandfather Peroz. He had insisted on riding with the Turks when they took the Hephthalites in the rear. When the army advanced the men were suddenly disheartened. There, amid the bodies of his men, lay the King of Kings of Persia…
Extract taken from Sasania: Her Rise, Her Fall by Zoreh Kian.
(1982)
Jamasp I ruled for thirty years. In that time he created the first standing army with professional soldiery loyal to the king, revolutionized the economy, and brought his country forward in great leaps and bounds. And yet, under his rule, he neglected kingly duties in order to study Mazdak’s teachings, allowed valuable opportunities to exploit Byzantium’s weakness pass him by, and showed exceeding clemency to those who intended him harm. In this respect Jamasp II would exceed his father.
When he heard the news of his old enemies’ death, Justinian I is said to have wept. Jamasp II was alike his father in many ways. Both were strong and athletic, practiced, and respected soldiers. Yet, where his father was deeply concerned with religious matters and never strayed from Mazdak’s teachings, Jamasp II was more pragmatic. Whilst he probably respected the tenet of non-violence, he also understood that his father had let valuable opportunities to weaken his enemies pass by due to his rigid adherence to it.
As soon as he had assumed the throne Jamasp II began planning for a war with Byzantium. From his perspective, the Romans had never been so vulnerable. Numerous wars in the colonies were bleeding the empire’s treasury dry, her armies spread thin across the frontiers, and sporadic flare-ups of plague continued to dog her major cities.
The excuse he needed would present itself handily in 564. Justinian I was a true believer in the Roman ideal, he had expanded Byzantium to heights not seen since the days of Augustus, set down a law code in the
Corpus Juris Civilis that would be used for centuries to come, and exhausted the empire with his over-ambitious conquests of the former provinces. And in 564 he died.
Immediately, his family began jockeying for position. The favourite among the masses to succeed him was Germanus, the hero of Italy. The matter became more complicated, however, when Justinian’s adoptive nephew Justin attempted to seize the throne. His forces were swiftly defeated but Justin escaped and traveled to Ctesiphon, where he sought aid from Jamasp II. Dutifully the Shah of Shah’s declared war and went tearing off into Syria.
Extract taken from TITAN OF WORLD HISTORY: Vol. II From the Fall of Rome to the War of the Polish Succession by Adelaide de Temps and Farhan Ali.
(1967)
Italy (550-570 cont’d)
555-563. Instability, famine, and societal collapse ravage Italy.
564. The Lombards under King Alboin invade Italy. Byzantine response stymied by the Persian invasion of Syria.
565-566. Lombard troops sweep south. Romans hold major urban centres and fortresses whilst the Lombards seize the countryside.
567. Treaty presented to Butilinus offering him an annuity from Rome as well as the title of Patrician in return for aid against the Lombards. A 9,000-strong Alemanni army invades northern Italy in April.
568. Butilinus catches Alboin by surprise as he is crossing the Po River. The Battle of the Po River sees the main Lombard army in Italy destroyed.
