Featured dossier
Hormizd IV: the king who fought the nobles and lost
Hormizd IV was the son and heir of Khosrow I Anushirvan. He wanted to curb the nobles and the priests and ease the burden of the common people, but his harshness and killings turned everyone against him. He refused peace with Rome, and war went on through his whole reign. In the end the nobles deposed and killed him.
- years of reign
- 11
- regnal years on his coins
- 12
Map: the reign of Hormizd IV
Administration & economy579 CE1 of 8
Heir of Anushirvan
Khosrow I had made him heir. The sources say Khosrow’s other sons were from women of low birth, while Hormizd’s mother was a Turkish princess.
Certainty: DisputedEastern sources make Hormizd’s mother a daughter of Sinjibu, khagan of the Turks, and the Shahnameh calls him “Torkzād” (son of a Turk). Shahbazi says this is chronologically impossible: Hormizd was born around 540, long before the Turks became Persia’s neighbours. Marquart suggested his maternal grandfather was the khagan of the Khazars, whom sources often call Turks.
BattleCampaignBuildingAdministration & economyReligionArrow keys, Home/End and Space work.
Three separate layers
Each section has three layers: “Historical evidence” is only what the sources say; “Philosophical interpretation” is our reading by the standard of property and liberty; “Modern cultural meaning”. Quotations come only from published translations, with references.
Historical evidencePhilosophical interpretationModern cultural meaning
Dossier · 1
The king against the nobles
Hormizd hoped to outdo his father in justice and took the side of the lower classes. To control the nobility he turned to harshness, humiliation and execution. To cut costs he reduced the army’s pay by a tenth. The Zoroastrian priests asked him to persecute the Christians; he answered that he wanted all his subjects to practise their religion freely. Later sources say he killed many priests, even the chief mowbed, and thousands of nobles.
His effort was on the whole justified, but the unhappy outcome shows that he was not the man to reach such lofty goals with peace and competence
The contemporary sources condemn him harshly. But Nöldeke thought this unfair: to him Hormizd was a well-meaning ruler who meant to restrain the nobles and priests and ease the people’s burden, but lacked the skill to reach that aim. The numbers of the killed in later sources may be exaggerated.
Hormizd wanted freedom of religion for all, an early step toward freedom of conscience. But a king who kills nobles without trial makes life and property unsafe for everyone. The lower classes gained nothing either, and in the end they too turned against him. Good intentions without law and lasting institutions are not enough.
Dossier · 2
The endless war with Rome
Khosrow I died while negotiating peace with Rome. Hormizd broke off the talks and demanded “tribute”. The Romans also angered him by accepting an impostor who claimed to be a son of Khosrow. The war ran through his whole reign: Mesopotamia, Armenia, Kurdistan. Neither side gained a lasting advantage.
the Romans and the Persians would have made peace, had not Ḵosrow left this life and his son, Hormisdas, a truly wicked man, assumed the crown
Menander, a Roman contemporary, blames the war on Hormizd. That is the judgment of an enemy. But Shahbazi too accepts that Hormizd was inflexible in diplomacy and sometimes showed poor judgment.
Ten years of war meant ten years of taxes, levies and ruined borderlands. Farmers and merchants on both sides paid for the king’s pride.
Synthesis
Hormizd IV wanted to be a just and strong king, but he quarrelled with the nobles, the priests and the army all at once. He kept up the war with Rome and repaid Bahram Chobin, saviour of the east, with ingratitude. Bahram’s revolt and the nobles’ plot brought him down. The story of his Turkish mother and his son’s part in his murder are disputed.
Bibliography
- A. Sh. Shahbazi, Encyclopaedia Iranica, Hormozd IV (2004). https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hormozd-iv/
- A. Sh. Shahbazi, Encyclopaedia Iranica, Bahrām VI Čōbīn (1988). https://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bahram-the-name-of-six-sasanian-kings/bahram-vi/
All photos are from Wikimedia Commons; licence and author were checked on each file page.
Khosrow I, his fatherBahram Chobin, the rebel generalKhosrow II, his sonThe Sasanian dynasty