Yazdegerd II

Ḥamza of Isfahan calls him “Yazdajerd al-Layyen” and Ebn al-Balḵi “Yazdegerd-e Narm”, both meaning “the gentle”. A new legend appeared on his coins: “Mazda-worshipping majesty, the Kayanid” (mzdysn bgy kdy). According to Daryaee, this is the first time the title kay, the name of the legendary Kayanid kings, appears on coins.

Two portraits of one king come from two points of view: the Zoroastrian tradition praised a king who guarded the faith, and Christian writers saw the same king as a persecutor. Daryaee reads the title kay as a sign that Sasanian kingship was being tied to Kayanid history, the history that later appears in the Book of Kings and the Shahnameh.

“Gentle” to one group can be harsh to another. Every epithet should be read with the question: who gave it, and for whom?

In 445–446 Christians were expelled from the army. In 449 a decree in Mehr-Narseh’s name required the Armenians to return to the Zoroastrian faith. From 455 the Jews too were treated harshly.

Daryaee reads this policy as an attempt to unify the state and build a single identity, not only religious zeal. Armenia was the Roman–Persian border, and its Christianity drew it towards Rome. So faith policy and border policy were woven together.

His father Bahram V had accepted religious freedom in a treaty with Rome. Yazdegerd II went the other way: the state tried to decide people’s faith. The result was revolt, war and exile. Freedom of conscience, which frees people from fear of the state, would also have been cheaper for the state. This is our reading.

On 2 June 451, Pentecost Sunday, on the plain of Avarayr southeast of modern Maku, by the river Tłmut (Zangmar), the Persian army under Muškan Niusałavurt fought Vardan Mamikonian’s Armenians. According to Elishe, 60,000 Armenians faced 200,000 Persians with the Immortals and elephants. Vasak of Siwnikʿ and his followers went over to the Persians. The elephants decided the battle, and Vardan and eight other generals were killed.

Both our sources are Armenian. Łazar wrote around 500 and puts the defeat mainly down to defection. Elishe, whom Thomson takes to be probably a 6th-century rewriting of Łazar, gives a long literary account whose imagery comes from the books of the Maccabees. The army sizes are exaggerated. Hewsen calls the Persian victory pyrrhic and “not decisive”: a generation later Vahan Mamikonian rose again, and Balash made peace with him and made him marzban of Armenia.

Avarayr shows that force can take a field but not a conscience. Persia took the field, but a generation later had to make peace with a leader of the same house and hand Armenia to him. This is our reading.

Vardan, “Vardan the Red”, was head of the Mamikonian family, which held the command of the Armenian army (sparapet) by inheritance. He fell at Avarayr with most of the Armenian nobility. The Armenian Church venerates him as a saint.

Garsoïan (Iranica) says Vardan became in Armenian literature the martyr for the faith and the model of the “Christian Maccabees”, and the central figure of medieval Armenian history. So the picture we have of him was shaped by the literature after him. The Mamikonians were usually seen as partisans of Rome, so politics was in play too.

A hereditary command was one family’s privilege. But what Vardan fought for, a community’s freedom to keep its faith, is a right that belongs to everyone. The two should be seen apart.

Daryaee says Yazdegerd made Nishapur his base and fought the Hephthalites until 453. According to the Šahrestānīhā ī Ērān he fortified Qumes (Damghan) against the Čōl. Sebeos says that in 454 Armenian nobles were taken to Khorasan.

The enemy is sometimes called the Hephthalites and sometimes the Kidarites; the names are not clear in the sources for this period. The eastern war, begun under Bahram Gur, did not end with Yazdegerd II and led on to Peroz’s wars.

A state fighting on two frontiers paid for it from people’s taxes. The pressure on religious minorities came in the same years. The more the state fought, the less it tolerated; this is our reading.