Khosrow II
Khosrow II, commonly known as Khosrow Parviz, is considered to be the last great Sasanian King of Kings of Iran, ruling from 590 to 628, including an interruption of one year.
Khosrow II was the son of Hormizd IV, and the grandson of Khosrow I. He was the last king of Iran to have a lengthy reign before the Muslim conquest of Iran, which began five years after his execution. He lost his throne, then regained it with the help of the Byzantine emperor Maurice, and, a decade later, went on to emulate the feats of the Achaemenids, conquering the rich Roman provinces of the Middle East; much of his reign was spent in wars with the Byzantine Empire and struggling against usurpers such as Bahram Chobin and Vistahm.
Khosrow II began a war against the Byzantines in 602, ostensibly to avenge the murder of his ally Maurice. Persian forces captured much of the territories of the Byzantine Empire, earning Khosrow II the epithet "the Victorious". A siege of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople in 626 was unsuccessful, and Heraclius, now allied with Turks, started a risky but successful counterattack deep into the Persian heartland. Dissatisfied with the war, the feudal families of the empire supported a coup in which Khosrow II was deposed and killed by his estranged son Sheroe, who took power as Kavad II. This led to a civil war and interregnum in the empire and the reversal of all Sasanian gains in the war against the Byzantines.
In works of Persian literature such as Ferdowsi's Shahnameh and Nizami Ganjavi's Khosrow and Shirin, a famous tragic romance and a highly elaborated fictional version of Khosrow's life made him one of the greatest heroes of the culture, as much a lover as a king. Khosrow and Shirin tells the story of his love for the originally Aramean princess Shirin, who becomes his queen after a lengthy courtship strewn with mishaps and difficulties.
Name
Khosrow is the New Persian variant of his name used by scholars; in Middle Persian, his name is Husraw, which derives from Avestan Haosrauuah. The name is rendered in Greek as Chosroes and in Arabic as Kisra. He was given the epithet Abarwēz, meaning "victorious." His name in combination with the epithet Abarwēz is attested in Georgian as K‛asre Ambarvez and in Armenian as Aprouēz Xosrov.Background
Khosrow II was born in ; he was the son of Hormizd IV and an unnamed noblewoman from the House of Ispahbudhan, one of the Seven Great Houses of Iran. Her brothers, Vinduyih and Vistahm, were to have a profound influence in Khosrow II's early life. Khosrow's paternal grandfather was the famed Sasanian shah Khosrow I Anushirvan, whilst his paternal grandmother was the daughter of the khagan of the Khazars. Khosrow is first mentioned in the 580s, when he was at Partaw, the capital of Caucasian Albania. During his stay there, he served as the governor of the kingdom, and managed to put an end to the Kingdom of Iberia and make it into a Sasanian province. Furthermore, Khosrow II also served as the governor of Arbela in Mesopotamia sometime before his accession to the throne.Rebellion of Bahram Chobin
Overthrow of Hormizd IV and accession
In 590, Hormizd IV had his prominent general Bahram Chobin disgraced and dismissed. Bahram, infuriated by Hormizd's actions, responded by rebelling, and due to his noble status and great military knowledge, was joined by his soldiers and many others. He then appointed a new governor for Khorasan, and afterwards set out for the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon. The legitimacy of the House of Sasan was based on acceptance that the halo of kingship, the xwarrah, was given to the first Sasanian shah, Ardashir I and his family following the latter's conquest of the Parthian Empire. This was now, however, disputed by Bahram Chobin, thus marking the first time in Sasanian history that a Parthian dynast challenged the legitimacy of the Sasanian family by rebelling.Meanwhile, Hormizd tried to come to terms with his brothers-in-law Vistahm and Vinduyih, who according to the Syriac writer Joshua the Stylite, both "equally hated Hormizd". The two brothers overthrew Hormizd in a seemingly bloodless palace revolution. They had Hormizd blinded with a red-hot needle, and put Khosrow II on the throne. Sometime in the summer of 590, the two brothers then had Hormizd killed, with at least the implicit approval of Khosrow II. Nevertheless, Bahram Chobin continued his march to Ctesiphon, now with the pretext of claiming to avenge Hormizd.
Khosrow then took a carrot and stick attitude, and wrote a message to Bahram Chobin, stressing his rightful claim to the Sasanian kingship: "Khosrow, kings of kings, ruler over the ruling, lord of the peoples, prince of peace, salvation of men, among gods the good and eternally living man, among men the most esteemed god, the highly illustrious, the victor, the one who rises with the sun and who lends the night his eyesight, the one famed through his ancestors, the king who hates, the benefactor who engaged the Sasanians and saved the Iranians their kingship—to Bahram, the general of the Iranians, our friend.... We have also taken over the royal throne in a lawful manner and have upset no Iranian customs.... We have so firmly decided not to take off the diadem that we even expected to rule over other worlds, if this were possible.... If you wish your welfare, think about what is to be done."
Flight
Bahram Chobin, however, ignored his warning—a few days later, he reached the Nahrawan Canal near Ctesiphon, where he fought Khosrow's men, who were heavily outnumbered, but managed to hold Bahram Chobin's men back in several clashes. However, Khosrow's men eventually began losing their morale, and were in the end defeated by Bahram Chobin's forces. Khosrow, together with his two uncles, his wives, and a retinue of 30 nobles, thereafter fled to Byzantine territory, while Ctesiphon fell to Bahram Chobin. Bahram Chobin declared himself king of kings in the summer of 590, asserting that the first Sasanian king Ardashir I had usurped the throne of the Arsacids, and that he now was restoring their rule.Bahram Chobin tried to support his cause with the Zoroastrian apocalyptic belief that by the end of Zoroaster's millennium, chaos and destructive wars with the Hephthalites/Huns and the Romans occurs and then a savior would appear. Indeed, the Sasanians had misidentified Zoroaster's era with that of the Seleucids, which put Bahram Chobin's life almost at the end of Zoroaster's millennium, he was therefore hailed by many as the promised savior Kay Bahram Varjavand. Bahram was to re-establish the Arsacid Empire and commenced a new millennium of dynastic rule. He started minting coins, where he is on the front imitated as an exalted figure, bearded and wearing a crenellation-shaped crown with two crescents of the moon, whilst the reverse shows the traditional fire altar flanked by two attendants. Regardless, many nobles and priests still chose to side with the inexperienced and less dominant Khosrow II.
In order to get the attention of the Byzantine emperor Maurice, Khosrow II went to Syria, and sent a message to the Sasanian occupied city of Martyropolis to stop their resistance against the Byzantines, but with no avail. He then sent a message to Maurice, and requested his help to regain the Sasanian throne, which the Byzantine emperor agreed with; in return, the Byzantines would re-gain sovereignty over the cities of Amida, Carrhae, Dara and Martyropolis. Furthermore, Iran was required to stop intervening in the affairs of Iberia and Armenia, effectively ceding control of Lazistan to the Byzantines.
Return to Iran
In 591, Khosrow moved to Constantia and prepared to invade Bahram Chobin's territories in Mesopotamia, while Vistahm and Vinduyih were raising an army in Adurbadagan under the observation of the Byzantine commander John Mystacon, who was also raising an army in Armenia. After some time, Khosrow, along with the Byzantine commander of the south, Comentiolus, invaded Mesopotamia. During this invasion, Nisibis and Martyropolis quickly defected to them, and Bahram Chobin's commander Zatsparham was defeated and killed. One of Bahram Chobin's other commanders, Bryzacius, was captured in Mosul and had his nose and ears cut off, and was thereafter sent to Khosrow, where he was killed. Khosrow II and the Byzantine general Narses then penetrated deeper into Bahram's territory, seizing Dara and then Mardin in February, where Khosrow was re-proclaimed king. Shortly after this, Khosrow sent one of his Iranian supporters, Mahbodh, to capture Ctesiphon, which he managed to accomplish.Image:Roman-Persian Frontier in Late Antiquity.svg|left|thumb|upright=1.35|Map of the Roman-Sasanian frontier during Late Antiquity, including the 591 border that was established between the two empires after Khosrow II's victory over Bahram Chobin.
At the same time a force of 8,000 Iranians under Vistahm and Vinduyih and 12,000 Armenians under Mushegh II Mamikonian invaded Adurbadagan. Bahram Chobin tried to disrupt the force by writing a letter to Mushegh II, the letter said: "As for you Armenians who demonstrate an unseasonable loyalty, did not the house of Sasan destroy your land and sovereignty? Why otherwise did your fathers rebel and extricate themselves from their service, fighting up until today for your country?" Bahram Chobin in his letter promised that the Armenians would become partners of the new Iranian empire ruled by a Parthian dynastic family if he accepted his proposal to betray Khosrow II. Mushegh, however, rejected the offer.
Bahram Chobin was then defeated at the Battle of Blarathon, forcing him to flee with 4,000 men eastwards. He marched towards Nishapur, where he defeated a pursuing army as well as an army led by a Karenid nobleman at Qumis. Constantly troubled, he crossed the Oxus river, where he was received honorably by the Khagan of the Turks, who was most likely Birmudha—the same Turkic prince that Bahram Chobin had defeated and captured a few years earlier during his wars against the Turks. Bahram Chobin entered his service, and was appointed as a commander in the army, achieving further military accomplishments there. Bahram Chobin became a highly popular figure after saving the Khagan from a conspiracy instigated by the latter's brother Byghu. Khosrow II, however, could not feel safe as long as Bahram Chobin lived, and succeeded in having him assassinated. The assassination was reportedly achieved through distribution of presents and bribes between the members of the Turkic royal family, notably the queen. What remained of Bahram Chobin's supporters went back to northern Iran and joined the rebellion of Vistahm.