Byzantine Persian wars (602-628)

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• published: 25 Apr 2013
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The Byzantine--Sassanid War of 602--628 was the final and most devastating of the series of wars fought between the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire and the Sassanid Empire of Persia. The previous war between the two powers had ended in 591 after Emperor Maurice helped the Sassanian king Khosrau II regain his throne. In 602 Maurice was murdered by his political rival Phocas. Khosrau proceeded to declare war, ostensibly to avenge the death of Maurice. This became a decades-long conflict, the longest war in the series, and was fought throughout the Middle East and eastern Europe: in Egypt, the Levant, Mesopotamia, the Caucasus, Anatolia, and even before the walls of Constantinople itself. While the Persians proved largely successful during the first stage of the war from 602 to 622, conquering much of the Levant, Egypt, and parts of Anatolia, the ascendancy of emperor Heraclius in 610 led, despite initial setbacks, to the Persians' defeat. Heraclius' campaigns in Persian lands from 622 to 626 forced the Persians onto the defensive and allowing his forces to regain momentum. Allied with the Avars, the Persians made a final attempt to take Constantinople in 626, but were defeated there. In 627 Heraclius invaded the heartland of the Persians and forced them to sue for peace. By the end of the conflict both sides had exhausted their human and material resources. Consequently, they were vulnerable to the sudden emergence of the Islamic Rashidun Caliphate, whose forces invaded both empires only a few years after the war. The Muslim forces swiftly conquered the entire Sassanid Empire and deprived the Byzantine Empire of its territories in the Levant, the Caucasus, Egypt, and North Africa. Over the following centuries, half the Byzantine Empire and the entire Sassanid Empire came under Muslim rule.