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Khosrau II
King of Persia
Khosrau stand on either side of the canal built to supply Shirin with the milk of goats and cows, taken from the Khamseh of Nizami
Reign	Persia: 590 AD to 628 AD
Born	unknown
Birthplace	Ctesiphon
Died	February 28, 628
Place of death	Ctesiphon
Predecessor	Hormizd IV
Kavadh II
Successor	Kavadh II as King of Persia and Byzantine Emperor Heraclius as King of Kings
Consort	Shirin, Miriam/Maria
Father	Hormizd IV
Religious beliefs	Zoroastrianism

Silver coin of Khosrau II, dating to ca. A.D. 600.

Egyptian woven pattern woolen curtain or trousers, which was a copy of a Sassanid silk import, which was in turn based on a fresco of Persian King Khosrau II fighting Ethiopian forces in Yemen, 5-6th century.

Khosrau II (Khosrow II, Chosroes II, or Xosrov II in classical sources, sometimes called Parvez, "the Ever Victorious" – (in Persian: خسرو پرویز), was the twenty-second Sassanid King of Persia, reigning from 590 to 628. He was the son of Hormizd IV (reigned 579–590) and the grandson of Khosrau I (reigned 531–579).

Biography[link]

Personality and skills[link]

Historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari describes him as:

Excelling most of the other Persian kings in bravery, wisdom and forethought, and none matching him in military might and triumph, hoarding of treasures and good fortunes, hence the epithet Parviz, meaning victorious.^[1]

According to legend, Khosrau had a shabestan in which over 3,000 concubines resided.^[1]

Ascension to the throne[link]

Khosrau II was raised to the throne by the same magnates who had rebelled against his father Hormizd IV. Soon after being crowned, Khosrau had his father blinded, then executed. However, at the same time, General Bahram Chobin had proclaimed himself King Bahram VI (590–591), exemplifying Khosrau's difficulty in maintaining control of his kingdom.

The war with the Byzantine Empire, which had begun in 571, had not yet come to an end. So, Khosrau II fled to Syria, and, subsequently, to Constantinople, where the Emperor Maurice (582–602) agreed to assist Khosrau in regaining his throne. In return, the Byzantines would re-gain sovereignty over the cities of Amida, Carrhae, Dara and Miyafariqin. Furthermore, Persia was required to cease intervening in the affairs of Iberia and Armenia, effectively ceding control of Lazistan to the Byzantines.^[2][3]

A large percentage of the leading bureaucrats, administrators, governors, and military commanders, along with the majority part of the Persian military, acknowledged Khosrau II as the King of Persia. Therefore, in 591, Khosrau returned to Ctesiphon with Byzantine aid and subsequently defeated Bahram VI at the Battle of Blarathon. Bahram fled to the Turks of Central Asia, and settled in Ferghana.^[4] However, a few years later, he was killed by a hired assassin sent by Khosrau II.^[5] Then, peace with Byzantium was concluded. For his aid, Maurice received the Persian provinces of Armenia and Georgia, and received the abolition of the subsidies which had formerly been paid to the Persians.

Military exploits and early victories[link]

Towards the beginning of his reign, Khosrau II favoured the Christians. However, when in 602 Maurice was murdered by his General Phocas (602–610), who usurped the Roman (Byzantine) throne, Khosrau launched an offensive against Constantinople, ostensibly to avenge Maurice's death, but clearly his aim included the annexation of as much Byzantine territory as was feasible. His armies invaded and plundered Syria and Asia Minor, and in 608 advanced into Chalcedon.

In 613 and 614, Damascus and Jerusalem were besieged and captured by General Shahrbaraz, and the True Cross was carried away in triumph. Soon afterwards, General Shahin marched through Anatolia, defeating the Byzantines numerous times, and then conquered Egypt in 618. The Byzantines could offer but little resistance, as they were torn apart by internal dissensions, and pressed by the Avars and Slavs, who were invading the Empire from across the Danube River.

Khosrau's forces also invaded Taron at times during his reign.^[6]

Richard Nelson Frye speculates that one major mistake of Khosrau II, which was to have severe consequences in the future, was the capture, imprisonment, and execution of Nu'aman III, King of the Lakhmids of Al-Hira, in approximately 600, presumably because of the failure of the Arab king to support Khosrau during his war against the Byzantines. (Nu'aman was crushed by elephants according to some accounts.) Afterwards the central government took over the defense of the western frontiers to the desert and the buffer state of the Lakhmids vanished. This ultimately facilitated the invasion and loss of Lower Iraq less than a decade after Khosrau's death by the forces of the Islamic Caliphs.^[7]

Turn of tides[link]

Ultimately, in 622, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (who had succeeded Phocas in 610 and ruled until 641) was able to take the field with a powerful force. In 624, he advanced into northern Media, where he destroyed the great fire-temple of Ganzhak (Gazaca). Several years later, in 626, he captured Lazistan (Colchis). Later that same year, Persian general Shahrbaraz advanced to Chalcedon and attempted to capture Constantinople with the help of Persia's Avar allies. This maneuver failed, his forces were defeated, and he withdrew his army from Anatolia later in 628.

Following the Khazar invasion of Transcaucasia in 627, Heraclius defeated the Persian army at the Battle of Nineveh and advanced towards Ctesiphon. Khosrau II fled from his favourite residence, Dastgerd (near Baghdad), without offering resistance. Meanwhile, some of the Persian grandees freed his eldest son Kavadh II (he ruled briefly in 628), whom Khosrau II had imprisoned, and proclaimed him King on the night of 23–4 February, 628.^[8] Four days afterwards, Khosrau II was murdered in his palace, or perished in a dungeon after suffering for five days on bare sustenance—he was shot to death slowly with arrows on the fifth day.^[9] Meanwhile, Heraclius returned in triumph to Constantinople. In 629 the True Cross was returned to him and Egypt was evacuated. The Sassanid Empire, from the greatness it had reached ten years earlier, sank into anarchy and was conquered by the armies of the first Islamic Caliphs beginning in 634.

The assassination of Chosroes, in a Mughal manuscript of ca 1535, Persian poems are from Ferdowsi's Shahnameh

In art[link]

The battles between Heraclius and Khosrau are depicted in a famous early Renaissance fresco by Piero della Francesca, part of the History of the True Cross cycle in the church of San Francesco, Arezzo. Khosrau has been painted in the Ajanta Frescoes.

See also[link]

• Shirin Beloved wife of Khosrau
• Khosrow and Shirin A Persian love story depicting a ménage à trois between Khosrau and Shirin as king and queen, and Farhad as Shirin's lover
• Barbad Khosrau's favorite court musician
• Shabdiz Khosrau's highly admired horse
• Non-Muslim interactants with Muslims during Muhammad's era
• Muqawqis, Ruler of Alexandria
• Behistun inscription
• Behistun palace
• Babai the Great

References[link]

•  Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Chosroes". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Edward Walford, translator, The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius: A History of the Church from AD 431 to AD 594, 1846. Reprinted 2008. Evolution Publishing, ISBN 978-1-889758-88-6. [1] — a primary source containing detailed information about the early reign of Khosrau II and his relationship with the Romans.
• Continuité des élites à Byzance durante les siècles obscurs. Les princes caucasiens et l'Empire du VIe au IXe siècle, 2006

Footnotes[link]

Coin of Yazdgerd III, Sakastan mint, Dated RY 11.

Yazdegerd III or Yazdgerd III (also spelled Yazdiger or Yazdigerd, Persian: یزدگرد, "made by God") was the twenty-ninth and last king of the Sassanid dynasty of Iran and a grandson of Khosrau II (590–628). His father was Shahryar, whose mother was Miriam, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Maurice.^[1] Yazdegerd III ascended the throne on 16 June 632 after a series of internal conflicts.

Life and reign[link]

Yazdegerd was born in central Iran, reigned as a youth and had never truly exercised authority. The Muslim conquest of Persia began in his first year of reign, and ended with the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah. Yazdegerd sought an alliance with Emperor Heraclius, who was an old rival of the Persian Empire.

Following the battle of al-Qādisiyyah, the Arabs occupied Ctesiphon, and the young king fled eastward into Media going from one district to another, until at last he was killed by a local miller for his purse at Merv in 651.^[2]

The legend is that he was killed by a miller who robbed him of his clothes and jewellery, but there is a strong suspicion that the governor of Merv, was the real culprit.^[3]

Ferdowsi a contemporary of Mahmud of Ghazni recounts the killing of Yazdegerd by the miller at the behest of Mahuy Suri war of nizak tarkhan and

Zoroastrian calendar[link]

The Zoroastrian religious calendar, which is still in use today, uses the regnal year of Yazdegerd III as its base year. Its calendar era (year numbering system), which is accompanied by a Y.Z. suffix, thus indicates the number of years since the emperor's coronation in 632 AD.

Family[link]

Yazdegerd's son Peroz II fled to China. His daughter Shahrbanu is believed to be the wife of Husayn ibn Ali; his other daughter Izdundad was married to Bustanai ben Haninai, the Jewish exilarch. The Bahá'í religious leader Bahá'u'lláh's ancestry can be traced back to Yazdegerd III.^[5][6]

See also[link]

• History of Arabs in Afghanistan
• Siege of Herat
• Mahuy Suri

References[link]

• Genealogy of the Byzantine-Persian royal lineage
•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

Notes[link]

Ahmad Wali (Pashto/Persian: احمد ولی‎) is a popular Ghazal singer from Afghanistan. He began his career in the 1970s, becoming popular in his native country before he was forced to flee by political upheaval in Afghanistan. He continued his work after resettling in Germany, performing throughout Europe and the United States.

Background[link]

The son of a Police Commander, Wali was born in Kabul.^[1] He began exploring music as a Tabla player at the age of 12, gradually expanding into singing. While a student at Habibia High School, he recorded a demo tape. This came to the attention of Radio Kabul director Ustad Zaland, who wrote the song "Chashman -e -Abee" for Wali. This and the Wali-penned tune "Mah-ruye-tu" brought him to the public eye. Wali performed live in Afghanistan until after his high school graduation, when he joined an international performance in Iran.

Career[link]

At that early stage in his career, Wali had not yet committed to life as a professional musician, and he enrolled in the Kabul Police Academy.^[1] He continued performing, however, and soon committed to music, being taken as a student by classical musician Ustad Sarahang. He developed a following in Afghanistan, with frequent appearances on television and radio as well as live performances.

After the Saur Revolution of 1978, life in Afghanistan became difficult, and in 1980, shortly after the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, Wali—then a well-known musician in his homeland—fled the country with a forged passport.^[1][2] Wali's forged passport got him as far as India, where he obtained a Visa to Germany by faking an illness.^[2]

In Germany, Wali continued his career, performing there and throughout Europe and the United States.^[1]

References[link]