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MAKING WAY for ISLAM
Khosrau. For him it was la-de-dah; if you don't give me the bits of territory I want, I'll make war. (Wikimedia Commons)
The Trinity had triumphed in Italy, but Justinian's conquest of Italy had drained Constantinople's resources. Justinian's wars had weakened his ability to protect his empire's northern frontier along the Danube River and his frontier in the east. From the steppes just west of the Don River came Bulgars, who raided, ravaged towns and farms north of Constantinople, and left again. From grasslands north of Constantinople's empire, Slavic tribes, speaking an Indo-European language, invaded Constantinople's empire. Some of the Slavs turned from plunder to seizing the lands of Latin-speaking Byzantine provincials and settling into farming in sparsely populated areas and on what had been wasteland. The Slavs were followed by those who in theory are considered to be a Mongolian people -- Avars -- traditionally herders, bow legged from the constant riding on horseback. They were warriors interested in plunder, like the Huns before them, fighting in cavalry formation, organized and disciplined.
By the time of Justinian's death in 565, much of Constantinople's imperial wealth had been spent. Justinian's successor, Justin II, was unable to prevent a Germanic people called Lombards from taking power in Italy. The Lombards had been moving south from around the Elbe River since the 400s. They reached Milan in 568, and soon after they took control of territory between Ravenna and Rome.
In 531, four years after Justinian had come to power at Constantinople, Khosrau I, of the Sassanid dynasty, took power in Persia -- at the close of decades of unrest and the communistic Mazdakite revolution. It was Khosrau and his father Khavad I who had crushed that movement. Its leader, Mazdak, met a gruesome death. Mazdakite leaders were massacred, and Khosrau drove surviving supporters of Mazdak's movement underground.
Khosrau reestablished the rigid, caste like social boundaries that had been disturbed by the Mazdakites, and he wedded his rule with what had previously been the official state church -- that branch of Zoroastrianism that saw the world divided between the force of evil and the force of good. Khosrau increased the trappings of the throne beyond the grandeur that had occurred even under the Achemaedes kings. He increased his power by curbing the powers of Persia's great aristocrats.
Under Khosrau the empire's economy recovered. Khosrau helped agriculture by reforming taxes -- putting an end to waiting for tax assessors while harvests rotted on the ground. He made taxes more equitable and brought stability among landowners and farm laborers that produced revenues needed to sustain a great army. Khosrau borrowed laws from Constantinople and India that he thought praiseworthy, and he consolidated Persia's laws. He brought to his kingdom the bath houses that had been a part of Roman society. He improved the water supply to cities and farms by building dams and canals. To increase the number of people for working in the fields and manning the frontiers, he made marriage mandatory and provided women with dowries. He spent money on assistance to orphans, including school for them and for other poor children. And into modern times some Iranians were to consider him the greatest of Sassanid kings.
Khosrau began his rule with a pact of peace with the Roman emperor Justinian of Constantinople, Justinian wanting peace to his east in order to send his armies to gain control over North Africa and Italy. Then, after Constantinople had gained power in Italy, Khosrau worried about a strengthened Roman Empire, and as his reward for making Justinian's conquests possible he asked for an outlet to the Black Sea and for the gold mines of Trebizond at the southeastern edge of the Black Sea, which he believed should belong to Persia. When Justinian refused, Khosrau broke his treaty with Constantinople and declared war. Meanwhile he had reorganized the army, turning it from an ill-trained feudal institution into a competent force capable of fighting prolonged campaigns.
For three years Khosrau sent raids into Constantinople's empire -- into Syria -- gaining ransoms for leaving some cities alone and massacring much of the population of Antioch in response to their defiance and sarcasm. After 545, he received tributes in gold from Constantinople as a bribe to stay on his side of the border, and he turned his attention to the Hephthalites to his east, whom he saw as Persia's greatest threat. He sent his army against them, and between 558 and 560, with the help of Turkish peoples in the east, he destroyed them.
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Copyright © 2009 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.