Bahram VI Chobin

Late in 588, while the war with Rome went on, Hephthalites subject to the Western Turks invaded Khorasan and reached Badghis and Herat. The council of war made Bahram commander. He moved fast, defeated the Western Turks, took Balkh, crossed the Oxus and killed the Great Khagan of the Eastern Turks with his own arrow. Then he advanced to the Brazen Hold at Baykand near Bukhara.

Shahbazi says the Sasanian-based accounts must be corrected by Sebeos and by the work of Marquart and Czeglédy. The name “Saveh Shah” in the Shahnameh is wrong; Chinese records give the khagan another name. The 12,000 horsemen are a reported figure.

Bahram saved the land from invasion and was rewarded with disgrace. When a king drives out his greatest servants for fear of their popularity, no one sees their life or property as safe in his service.

Bahram became king at Ctesiphon in 590 (at Nowruz 591, says Howard-Johnston). He claimed that Ardashir had usurped the Arsacid throne and that he was restoring the Arsacids’ right. He also used an apocalyptic belief: Zoroaster’s millennium was ending and a saviour, “Kay Bahram Varjavand”, was due. Many hailed him as that saviour. His coins are dated years 1 and 2.

Many nobles and priests chose the young Khosrow. Shahbazi gives several reasons for Bahram’s failure: the Roman army, the betrayal of his brother Gordoy, the capture of his family, the bureaucrats’ refusal to cooperate, the hostility of nobles unwilling to serve one of their equals, and his religious tolerance, which angered the priests. Khosrow answered with propaganda: he remitted half the year’s poll tax, gave riches to the fire temples and turned the prophecy round, so that Bahram became the “false pretender from Khorasan” and he himself “Parvez”, the victorious king.

The Sasanian crown rested on blood, not consent. Bahram showed that this basis could be challenged, but both sides sought legitimacy in lineage and prophecy, not in law or the people’s consent. Khosrow’s tax remission also shows that the tax burden was a tool in the contest for loyalty. This is our reading.

In return for territorial concessions, Khosrow obtained 40,000 Roman troops and came to Azarbaijan, where Mushel’s Armenians and the Iranians of Bendoy and Bestam awaited him. Bahram arrived too late with a smaller army. After three days of battle, Bendoy won his men over with promises of safety. Bahram fled east with 4,000 men, defeated a Karen army at Qumes and took refuge with the Turks. There he was murdered on Khosrow’s orders.

Shahbazi says it was not Khosrow but his superior Roman troops who defeated Bahram. The place and length of the battle are disputed: Howard-Johnston puts it near Ganzak and has it last one day. Bahram’s chivalry in letting Khosrow’s supporters leave unharmed turned against him.

The king of Iran won back his crown with a foreign army and at the price of territory. In a civil war between claimants, the people and the borders pay the bill.

Bahram’s memory lived on in a Pahlavi romance, the Bahrām Čōbīn-nāma. Jabala b. Sālem translated it into Arabic, and, mixed with another account favourable to Khosrow Parvez, it found its way into Dinavari, Ferdowsi, Balʿami and the Nehāyat al-arab. Arthur Christensen reconstructed its main form in 1907. Bahram was also credited with a manual on archery. The Samanids traced their descent to his son Noshrad.

The romance is literature, not a report. In it Bahram descends from the Arsacids and from Kay Arash. Shahbazi says it was written while Bahram’s memory was still alive, and its reflection in the Shahnameh counts as one of the masterpieces of Persian literature.

Two accounts of one man survived: the “lowly usurper” of Khosrow’s official history, and the “just hero” of the romance. A historian who reads only one has heard only the winner’s voice.