Bahram V (Bahram Gur)

Bahram’s mother was said to be Shushandukht, daughter of the Jewish exilarch. Bahram grew up at the court of the Lakhmid kings of Hira, Noʿman and his son Mundhir. Iranica (Bosworth) says Hira was a meeting point of three cultures: Sasanian Persia, Nestorian Christianity and Arabian paganism.

Klíma says Bahram had “probably” been sent to Hira after a disagreement with his father. The Shushandukht story is “was said to”. That Bahram reached the throne with Arab help shows how close the Lakhmid–Sasanian bond was.

Bahram grew up where several faiths and languages lived side by side. Perhaps the religious-freedom treaty after the war of 421 was not unrelated to that experience; this is our reading, not a report of the sources.

History (Klíma): the nobles meant to keep Yazdegerd’s sons from the throne. They killed Shapur, the eldest, and made Khosrow king. Bahram came to Ctesiphon with Mundhir’s army. The nobles negotiated and accepted him, on condition that he right his father’s misrule. He left the administration to his father’s officials, above all Mihr-Narseh, the grand minister.

The lions story appears in the Shahnameh and other Sasanian-based sources. Iranica calls it “Persian tradition”. Mundhir’s army was Bahram’s real backing; the lions story tells the same victory in the language of divine favour.

The nobles accepted Bahram on a condition: to right his father’s misrule. This is the nearest thing to a “contract” between ruler and elite in this period. But the people were not a party to it; the pact was between the king and the nobles.

Soon after his accession an enemy invaded eastern Iran. Bahram left Narseh as regent, went from Nisa via Marv to Kušmēhan, fell upon the enemy and won. From the booty he made offerings to the fire temple of Adur Gushnasp, and made Narseh governor of Khorasan.

Klíma (1988) calls the enemy the “White Huns (the Hephthalites)”. Grenet (2022) is more careful: the Kidarites “might have been already involved” in Bahram’s eastern wars, “but their name does not appear” in the sources for his reign. So the enemy’s name is disputed; this page calls them “eastern invaders”.

The war booty went to a fire temple, not to those in the east whose homes and goods were lost in the invasion. The victory was defensive, but its wealth was shared between the king and the faith.

Many Armenian Christians had appealed or defected to Rome, and the refusal to hand them over led to war in 421. Mihr-Narseh commanded the Persian army, but the engagements were indecisive. A treaty followed: Christians in Iran and Zoroastrians in Rome had freedom of religion, and Rome contributed to defending the Caucasus passes against the Huns. Bahram then deposed the Armenian king and appointed a Persian marzban.

Procopius has another story: the Roman general Anatolius walked on foot to Bahram, and Bahram, struck by the respect, turned back and granted peace. Dewing dates this to 441, when the Persian king was Yazdegerd II; so the date and king of the story are disputed.

A treaty guaranteeing religious freedom on both sides is rare in the ancient world. But this freedom was agreed by two states for each other’s minorities; it was not yet an individual right, but a concession in a bargain between two powers.

Iranica (Klíma) says Bahram remitted taxes and debts at festivals, raised musicians in rank and brought thousands of Indian minstrels (luris) into Iran. He loved hunting; his name Gōr, “onager”, is said to come from his shooting of a wondrous wild ass. These made him one of the most popular kings in Iranian history. No monument of his survives.

Nizami’s Haft Peykar (late 12th century, c. 1197) is a romanticized biography of Bahram. According to de Blois (Iranica), Nizami, as often happens, mislocates Hira in Yemen. The seven domes and seven princesses, the shepherd and his dog, and Bahram’s vanishing into a cave are all story. De Blois says the book’s message is justice: Bahram becomes a true hero only by leaving the pleasures of the domes and hearing the complaints of the victims of tyranny.

In the Haft Peykar an evil minister empties the treasury, and the king restores justice only by hearing seven victims of tyranny. The 12th-century poet says what we know today: a ruler busy with pleasure leaves the people’s property in the hands of his officials.