Read The Great Arab Conquests Online
Authors: Hugh Kennedy
The Great Arab Conquests (34 page)
And so it was that Yazdgard came to the great frontier city of Merv. Merv had long been the eastern outpost of the empire against the Turks of the steppes. It was an enormous and very ancient city. At its heart was the old
ark
or citadel, a huge, roughly round construction of mud brick, with the vast sloping walls characteristic of Central Asia. It dated back to the Achaemenid times if not before. To this the Seleucids had added a vast rectangular enclosure which now contained the residential quarters of the city. It was also defended by a massive rampart, crowned by fired-brick interval towers. The tops of the defences had recently been strengthened by the addition of galleried walls with arrow slits. It could have held out against the Arab invaders indefinitely. Within the walls, the city was a maze of narrow streets and one-storey mud-brick houses. Traces of a Buddhist temple have been discovered and there must have been Zoroastrian fire-temples as well. We know there was a Christian community which was to play its role in the unfolding tragedy.
ark
or citadel, a huge, roughly round construction of mud brick, with the vast sloping walls characteristic of Central Asia. It dated back to the Achaemenid times if not before. To this the Seleucids had added a vast rectangular enclosure which now contained the residential quarters of the city. It was also defended by a massive rampart, crowned by fired-brick interval towers. The tops of the defences had recently been strengthened by the addition of galleried walls with arrow slits. It could have held out against the Arab invaders indefinitely. Within the walls, the city was a maze of narrow streets and one-storey mud-brick houses. Traces of a Buddhist temple have been discovered and there must have been Zoroastrian fire-temples as well. We know there was a Christian community which was to play its role in the unfolding tragedy.
The reaction of the Marzban of Merv to the arrival of his fugitive sovereign was to try to get rid of him as soon as possible. He made an alliance with the neighbouring Turkish chief, the ancient enemy, against Yazdgard. The monarch got to hear that troops were being sent to arrest him and left the city secretly at night. The exhausted king eventually took refuge in a watermill on the Murghāb river, which watered the Merv oasis, and it was here that the last of the Sasanians was done to death. What exactly happened that night can never be known,
33
but the great Iranian epic, the
Shahnāmah
, suggests what transpired, and the poet Firdawsi uses it to conclude his great epic of Persian kingship.
34
33
but the great Iranian epic, the
Shahnāmah
, suggests what transpired, and the poet Firdawsi uses it to conclude his great epic of Persian kingship.
34
According to the
Shahnāmah
, after the defeat and death of Rustam at Qādisiya, Yazdgard consulted the Persians. His adviser, Farrukhzād, suggested that he should flee to the forests of Narvan, at the south end of the Caspian Sea, and prepare a guerrilla resistance, but the king was not convinced. The next day he sat on his throne, put his crown on his head and asked advice from the nobility and the priests. They were not in favour of the plan and the king agreed: ‘Am I to save my own head and abandon Persia’s nobility, its mighty armies, the land itself, and its throne and crown? ... In the same way that the king’s subjects owe him allegiance in good times and in bad, so the world’s king must not abandon them to their sufferings while he flees to safety and luxury.’
Shahnāmah
, after the defeat and death of Rustam at Qādisiya, Yazdgard consulted the Persians. His adviser, Farrukhzād, suggested that he should flee to the forests of Narvan, at the south end of the Caspian Sea, and prepare a guerrilla resistance, but the king was not convinced. The next day he sat on his throne, put his crown on his head and asked advice from the nobility and the priests. They were not in favour of the plan and the king agreed: ‘Am I to save my own head and abandon Persia’s nobility, its mighty armies, the land itself, and its throne and crown? ... In the same way that the king’s subjects owe him allegiance in good times and in bad, so the world’s king must not abandon them to their sufferings while he flees to safety and luxury.’
The king then proposed that they go to Khurasan: ‘We have many champions there ready to fight for us. There are noblemen and Turks in the Chinese emperor’s service, and they will side with us.’ Furthermore Mahuy, the lord of the marches there, had been a humble shepherd until Yazdgard had raised him to fortune and power. Farrukhzād, the wise counsellor, was not convinced, arguing that he should not trust men ‘with a lowly nature’, a typical example of the aristocratic mind-set of the Sasanian nobility. The king set out for Khurasan, accompanied by the lamentations of Persians and Chinese alike. They went stage by stage to Rayy, where ‘they rested for a while, consoling themselves with wine and music’, before pressing on ‘like the wind’.
As they approached Merv, the king wrote to the governor, Mahuy, who came out to meet him with a great show of loyalty. At this point the faithful Farrukhzād handed over responsibility for his monarch to Mahuy and left for Rayy, full of gloomy presentiments and lamenting Rustam, ‘the best knight in all the world’, who had been killed by ‘one of those crows in their black turbans’. Mahuy’s thoughts turned to treachery. He wrote to Tarkhūn, ruler of Samarqand, and suggested a joint plot against Yazdgard. Tarkhūn agreed to send his Turkish forces against Merv. When Yazdgard was warned of their approach, he put on his armour and prepared to confront them. He soon realized, however, than none of his men was following him, that Mahuy had withdrawn from the fight and the king was left on his own. He fought furiously but was soon forced to flee, abandoning his horse with its golden saddle, his mace and his sword in its golden sheath. He took refuge in a watermill on one of the rivers of Merv.
At this low point in the king’s fortunes, the poet reflects, with that world-weary pessimism that was to characterize the work of later Persian poets like Umar Khayyām, on the harshness of fate.
This is the way of the deceitful world, raising a man up and casting him down. When fortune was with him, his throne was in the heavens, and now a mill was his lot; the world’s favours are many, but they are exceeded by its poison. Why should you bind your heart to this world, where the drums which signal your departure are heard continuously, together with the caravan leader’s cry of ‘Prepare to leave’? The only rest you find is that of the grave. So the king sat, without food, his eyes filled with tears, until the sun rose.The miller opened the mill door, carrying a load of straw on his back. He was a humble man called Khusraw, who possessed neither a throne, nor wealth, nor a crown, nor any power. The mill was his only source of living. He saw a warrior like a tall cypress seated on the stony ground as a man sits in despair; a royal crown was on his head and his clothes were made of glittering Chinese brocade. Khusraw stared at him in astonishment and murmured the name of God. He said, ‘Your majesty, your face shines like the sun: tell me, how did you come to be in this mill? How can a mill full of wheat and dust and straw be a place for you to sit? What kind of man are you with this stature and face of yours, and radiating such glory, because the heavens have never seen your like?
The king replied, ‘I’m one of the Persians who fled from the army of Turan [the Turks]’. The miller said in his confusion, ‘I have never known anything but poverty, but if you could eat some barley bread, and some of the common herbs which grow on the river bank, I’ll bring them to you, and anything else I can find. A poor man is always aware of how little he has.’ In the three days that had passed since the battle the king had had no food. He said, ‘Bring whatever you have and a sacred barsom’,
f
The man quickly brought a basket of barley bread and herbs and then hurried off to find a barsom at the river toll-house. There he met up with the headman of Zarq and asked him for a barsom. Mahuy had sent people everywhere searching for the king, and the headman said, ‘Now, my man, who is it who wants a barsom?’ Khusraw answered him, ‘There’s a warrior on the straw in my mill; he’s as tall as a cypress tree, and his face is as glorious as the sun. His eyebrows are like a bow, his sad eyes like narcissi: his mouth is filled with sighs, his forehead with frowns. It’s he who wants the barsom to pray.’ The headman duly sent the miller on to Mahuy, who ordered him to return to his mill and kill the king, threatening that he himself would be executed if he did not, and adding that the crown, earrings, loyal ring and clothes should not be stained. The reluctant miller returned and did as he was told, stabbing the king with a dagger. Mahuy’s henchmen soon appeared and, stripping off the insignia of royalty, threw the body into the river.
f
The man quickly brought a basket of barley bread and herbs and then hurried off to find a barsom at the river toll-house. There he met up with the headman of Zarq and asked him for a barsom. Mahuy had sent people everywhere searching for the king, and the headman said, ‘Now, my man, who is it who wants a barsom?’ Khusraw answered him, ‘There’s a warrior on the straw in my mill; he’s as tall as a cypress tree, and his face is as glorious as the sun. His eyebrows are like a bow, his sad eyes like narcissi: his mouth is filled with sighs, his forehead with frowns. It’s he who wants the barsom to pray.’ The headman duly sent the miller on to Mahuy, who ordered him to return to his mill and kill the king, threatening that he himself would be executed if he did not, and adding that the crown, earrings, loyal ring and clothes should not be stained. The reluctant miller returned and did as he was told, stabbing the king with a dagger. Mahuy’s henchmen soon appeared and, stripping off the insignia of royalty, threw the body into the river.
In a curious coda to the story, the poet describes how the Christian monks from a neighbouring monastery saw the corpse, stripped off their habits and pulled it out of the water. They made a tower of silence for him in a garden. They dried the dagger wound and treated the body with unguents, pitch, camphor and musk; then they dressed it in yellow brocade, laid it on muslin and placed a blue pall over it. Finally a priest anointed the king’s resting place with wine, musk, camphor and rosewater.
Mahuy, of course, was furious, saying that Christians had never been friends of Iran and that all connected with the funeral rights should be killed. He himself soon came to a bad end. Macbeth-like, he regretted his regicidal actions: ‘No wise man calls me king and my seal’s authority is not respected by the army ... Why did I shed the blood of the king of the world? I spend my nights tormented by anxiety, and God knows the state in which I live.’ His Malcolm soon arrives, in the guise of the leader of the troops of Tarkhūn of Samarqand. The treacherous Mahuy and his sons are taken and, after their hands and feet are cut off, they are burned alive.
‘After that’, the poet laconically concludes, ‘came the era of Umar, and, when he brought the new faith [Islam], the pulpit replaced the throne.’
The death of Yazdgard III was followed by the Arab occupation of Merv, which seems to have been accomplished peacefully, but the details are entirely lacking.
The fall of Merv and the death of the last Sasanian marked the end of the first phase of the Muslim conquest of Iran. Virtually the whole of what is now the territory of modern Iran, along with some areas in the Caucasus and Turkmenistan, had now acknowledged Muslim overlordship in one form or another. The fall of the great Sasanian Empire had been swift and decisive. Despite the great reputation of the ancient monarchy, attempts to revive it were few and ineffectual. The old political order had gone for good, but much of Iranian culture survived the conquests. The Arabs had defeated the Sasanian armies. They had secured tribute from most of the major cities and had control of most, but by no means all, of the great routes, but that was about it. The only major Muslim garrison seems to have been at Merv, on the north-eastern frontier, and even here the troops were sent on rotation from Iraq for some years, rather than being permanently settled. For the first half-century of Muslim rule, there was no extensive Muslim presence, no Muslim new towns were founded, no great mosques built. ‘Conquest’ was often a form of cooperation with local Iranian elites, as was the case at Qumm and Rayy. Many areas, such as the mountain principalities of northern Iran, were entirely outside Muslim control, and the direct road from Rayy to Merv remained unusable because of the threat they posed.
The fall of Merv may have marked the end of the campaign against the Sasanians and the establishment of Muslim hegemony in what is now Iran, but there was much more fighting before Arab rule became a reality in many areas of the country. Throughout the late seventh and first decades of the eighth century, Arab armies were pushing into unknown territory on the fringes of the Iranian world.
An interesting example of these secondary conquests can be seen in the case of Gurgān and Tabaristān. The story is a complex one but does illustrate how many different factors could be involved in the Muslim conquest of an area, and above all the interplay between existing political powers and the Arab incomers. Tabaristān was the mountainous region on the southern shore of the Caspian Sea, Gurgān the lower area to the east where the heights of the Iranian plateau gave way to the steppe land and deserts of Central Asia. At the time of the initial conquests, the rulers of these areas, the Sūl of Gurgān and the Ispahbādh of Tabaristān, had entered into treaty arrangements with Arab commanders which effectively allowed them to remain in control of their own domains. By the beginning of the eighth century, as Muslim rule in the rest of Iran strengthened, this position began to look increasing anomalous. They posed a clear threat to communications between the Arab base in Merv and the west, and it was not until after 705 that the Arabs were able to use the direct road from Rayy to Merv, rather than the much longer southern route through Kirman and Sistan.
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Local resistance was also weakened by the tensions between the Turks of Dihistān on the desert margins, led by the Sūl, and the settled inhabitants of Gurgān.
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Local resistance was also weakened by the tensions between the Turks of Dihistān on the desert margins, led by the Sūl, and the settled inhabitants of Gurgān.
In 717 Yazīd b. al-Muhallab, the newly appointed governor of Khurasan, decided to launch a major military expedition in these areas. Yazīd’s predecessor as governor, Qutayba b. Muslim, had achieved great fame for his conquests in Transoxania, and there is no doubt that Yazīd wanted to emulate him and show that he could lead armies against the unbelievers and reward them with abundant booty. He is said to have gathered 100,000 men from Khurasan, and the Iraqi military towns of Kūfa and Basra.
36
The first objective seems to have been the town of Dihistān, an isolated outpost of settlement in the deserts of Turkmenistan. He blockaded the city, preventing the arrival of food supplies, and the Turks, who formed the bulk of the defenders, began to lose heart. The
dehqān
in command wrote to Yazīd asking for terms. He asked only for safety for himself and his household and animals. Yazīd accepted, entered the city and took booty and captives; 14,000 defenceless Turks, who were not included in the amnesty, were put to the sword.
37
36
The first objective seems to have been the town of Dihistān, an isolated outpost of settlement in the deserts of Turkmenistan. He blockaded the city, preventing the arrival of food supplies, and the Turks, who formed the bulk of the defenders, began to lose heart. The
dehqān
in command wrote to Yazīd asking for terms. He asked only for safety for himself and his household and animals. Yazīd accepted, entered the city and took booty and captives; 14,000 defenceless Turks, who were not included in the amnesty, were put to the sword.
37
In another version of the story, the Sūl of Dihistān retired to his fortified stronghold on an island at the south-east corner of the Caspian. After a siege of six months, the defenders became ill with the bad drinking water and the Sūl opened negotiations and agreed terms. As usual, there are admiring descriptions of the booty, including sacks of food and clothes. Yazīd himself acquired a crown and immediately passed it on to one of his subordinates. Crowns were frequently worn by members of the Iranian aristocracy but were regarded with deep suspicion by the more pious and austere Muslims, who considered them typical of the pomp and vanity of the Persians. Perhaps because of this, the subordinate protested that he did not want it, and the officer gave it to a beggar. Yazīd heard about this and purchased the crown back from the mendicant.
After the defeat of the Sūl, Yazīd was able to occupy much of the settled land of Gurgān without major resistance, especially as some at least of the local Iranian population were happy to accept Arab support to protect them from the Turks. Yazīd then turned his attention to mountainous Tabaristān. The local ruler, the Ispahbādh, had summoned allies from the mountainous provinces of Gīlān and Daylam further to the west.
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