The deposition of Hurmuzd leaves Khusrau Parwíz and Bahrám Chúbína rivals for the throne. After abortive nego­tiations Khusrau Parwíz is compelled to flee to Rúm and Hurmuzd is put to death. On the way to Rúm Khusrau Parwíz is saved from capture by the devotion of his maternal uncle Bandwí. Bahrám Chúbína assumes the crown and frustrates a plot against himself. Khusrau Parwíz is well received in Rúm, is given Cæsar's daughter in marriage, and returns to Írán with a Rúman army. He is joined by Bandwí and others. After a severe struggle Bahrám Chúbína is forced to take refuge with the Khán of Chín in whose service he greatly distinguishes himself but as he is preparing to in­vade Irán his death is compassed by Kharrád, son of Barzín, at the instigation of Khusrau Parwíz. The Khán avenges Bahrám Chúbína whose sister, Gurdya, he asks in marriage. Gurdya escapes with her brother's partisans to Írán. Khusrau Parwíz to avenge his father puts to death Bandwí whose brother Gustaham rebels and marries Gurdya. She murders her husband at the instigation of Khusrau Parwíz who marries her himself and accords pardon to her adherents. He treats the city of Rai harshly but relents at her request. He organizes the realm. Maryam, Cæsar's daughter, gives birth to Shírwí (Kubád) on which occasion Cæsar asks for the return of the True Cross but is refused. The poet then tells of the case of the fair Shírín, who murders Maryam, and that of Bárbad, the minstrel, and of the greatness of Khusráu Parwíz. Shírwí is imprisoned, but the troops at length revolt and release him. Khusrau Parwíz is dethroned and put in ward.

Khusrau Parwíz (Chosroes II, A.D. 590–628) was contem­porary with three Eastern Roman Emperors—Maurice (A.D. 582–602), Phocas (A.D. 602–610), and Heraclius (A.D. 610– 642). The word “Parwíz” seems to be a variant of the Persian word “Pírúz” which means “victorious.” Certainly Khusrau Parwíz did more to justify such a title than any Sháh since the days of Darius Hystaspis. Egypt and the whole of the Roman possessions in Asia fell into his hands, and Persian troops were encamped wthin a mile of Constanti­nople. The genius of Heraclius, however, at length turned the tide. On all these great events the Sháhnáma is silent and the bulk of the material of the reign is made up from the Romance of Bahrám Chúbína* which leaves his sister, Gurdya, firmly established in the favour of Khusrau Parwíz though with Shírín in the neighbourhood it seems doubtful whether she would be allowed to retain her position long.* The reign is the last great one of the poem and towards the end of it

§ 4. Tabarí also states that the meeting between Khusrau Parwíz and Bahrám Chúbína took place on the Nahrawán.*

§ 5. The proverb is in the Persian Tabarí but is spoken by Khusrau Parwíz when about to combat with three Turks.* See below.

§§ 6–7. In the Persian Tabarí the three Turks are encoun­tered by Khusrau Parwíz after his return from Rúm,* not as here and in Tabari.*

§ 8. “Thou shalt not kill, but need'st not strive
Officiously to keep alive.”

probably about represents the share of responsibility that Khusrau Parwíz had in his father's murder. Bandwí and Gustaham were his maternal uncles.

§ 9. According to the Persian Tabarí Bahrám, the son of Siyáwush, had married Bahrám Chúbína's niece.*

Firdausí's description of Khusrau Parwíz' place of refuge is somewhat grandiloquent. It appears to have been a hermi­tage * or monastery.*

§§ 12. For the wife of Bahrám, son of Siyáwush, see above.

Mausíl, prince of Músh, was a member of the Mamigonian family, celebrated in Armenian history.*

§ 13. Khusrau Parwíz, on quitting Ctesiphon in his flight, crossed the Euphrates and went to Ambar, thence followed the course of the stream and recrossing it reached the Roman frontier-station of Circesium. Subsequently at the invitation of the Emperor Maurice he took up his residence at Hierapolis.*

According to the Persian Tabarí the Arab was Ijás, son of Kabísa. He was one of the chiefs of the Baní Tayy tribe* famous for its hospitality. He was made governor of Híra by Khusrau Parwíz after the execution of Nu'mán, the last prince of the dynasty, and commanded the Persians at the battle of Dhú Kár.* The Persian Tabarí omits the meeting with the merchant.

Kársán looks like a Persian form of Circesium but is a shortened form of Káristán, a busy place. The miracle is not in the Persian Tabarí.

Warígh, as appears from the account in the Persian Tabarí,* was Rakka (Nicephorium, Callinicus) now in ruins. Some miles to the south-west of it lay the city of Reseph or Rasafa, also now in ruins, in which was the shrine of the celebrated Saint Sergius who with his consort Saint Bacchus suffered martyrdom under Maximian. The town was in consequence known as Sergiopolis. Either from a genuine but temporary impulse or from policy Khusrau Parwíz during his exile in Rúm much affected Christianity, adopted Sergius as his patron Saint and after recovering his throne still continued to send gifts to, and ask favours of, that shrine. Tabarí makes Sergius the leader of the Roman army that effected the restoration of Khusrau Parwíz.* In the Sháhnáma the hermit=Sergius.

§ 17. The terms on which the Emperor Maurice agreed to help Khusrau Parwíz included the cession of Dárá, Martyro-polis, and perhaps Nisibis.* Western authorities are silent about the marriage of the Emperor's daughter Maryam to Khusrau Parwíz, but Nöldeke points out that Shírwí's pre­eminence at the Persian court is best explained by the assump­tion that his mother was a princess. Shírín, who naturally was antagonistic to him in the interests of her own son, Mar-dánsháh, was unable to prevail against him.*

§§ 19–20. These are not in the Persian Tabarí.

§ 21. The army lent to Khusrau Parwíz by the Emperor was commanded by Narses, a Persian in the Roman service, an able general who was afterwards cruelly put to death by Phocas.* Niyátús (Theodosius) was the seven years old son, and so described in the Persian Tabarí,* of Maurice and had already been crowned by the Emperor. He may have accom­panied Narses.*

§ 23. The mission of Dárá Panáh is not in the Persian Tabarí.

§§ 24–26. Historically the events of the campaign seem to have been briefly as follows:—Khusrau Parwíz with his Roman allies marched to the lesser Zab in order to effect a junction with his native and Armenian supporters with whom were his two uncles and Mausíl. Bahrám Chúbína vainly tried to prevent this. He then offered battle with his back to the Zagros mountains but was compelled to retreat to higher ground where Khusrau Parwíz attacked him against the opinion of Narses, who, however, with his Roman troops saved the situation when Khusrau Parwíz was in imminent danger of disaster. This incident appears as the intervention of Surúsh in the Sháhnáma.* In the meantime a detachment of the allied forces had occupied Seleucia and Ctesiphon. The out­come of the situation was that Bahrám Chúbína retreated through the mountains in his rear to the neighbourhood of Takht-i-Sulaimán in order to maintain his communications with Rai and eastern Irán generally. He was pursued and after a further retirement was defeated decisively and escaped with the remnant of his forces by way of Rai and Dámaghán to the Turks.

§ 27. The Persian Tabarí lays the scene with the car­line in the neighbourhood of Hamadán. Thence Bahrám Chúbína proceeds to Rai and Dámaghán. He then defeats a mountain-chief named Káran and takes him prisoner but releases him.*

§ 30. According to Sásánian usage Khusrau Parwíz in­augurates his reign by visiting the Fire-temple at Shíz.*

§ 31. The death of Firdausí's son took place apparently about A.D. 1004.

§ 32. In the Persian Tabarí the name of the chief that domineered over the Khán was Paighú—the word used for the races of the north in Dakíkí's portion of the Sháhnáma.* He was the Khán's brother and claimed to have a better title to the throne.*

§ 34. In the Persian Tabarí it is a bear that carries off the Khán's daughter and Bahrám Chúbína rescues her.*

§ 37. In the Persian Tabarí the queen is concerned directly in the murder of Bahrám Chúbína. She is heavily bribed and provides the assassin.* So too in Tabarí.*

§ 39. The crafty Kharrád, son of Barzín, as Firdausí calls him, but whose real name was Hurmuzd Garabzín or Galab-zín, may be identical with the chief who commanded one of the Persian wings at the battle of Dhú Kár* and was killed,* but according to the Sháhnáma he was alive at the accession of Kubád (Shírwí).

The battle of Dhú Kár, though the forces engaged in it do not appear to have been large, was a very memorable affair. The events that led up to it are given at length in Tabarí. It will be sufficient to say here that a long series of intrigues re­sulted in the execution of Nu'mán bin Munzír by order of Khusrau Parwíz. This ended the dynasty of the princes of Híra, and Ijás bin Kabísa* was appointed the Persian governor by the Sháh who ordered him to collect and dispatch to the Persian court all Nu'mán's effects. The Arab chief, Háni bin Mas'úd, who had been entrusted with them refused to give them up. Khusrau Parwiz instructed Ijás to enforce com­pliance, and the battle of Dhú Kár, in which the Persians were overthrown, followed. Where Dhú Kár was is not clear but it was not far from the Euphrates and Kúfa, and had an all the year round water-supply which made it a great resort of the Arab tribes in the summer at which season the battle was fought. The Arabs celebrated their victory with songs of triumph, and its results and those of the Persian policy that led up to it were very important. The destruction of the dynasty of the princes of Híra, which had formed a buffer-state between the Persians and the Arabs, was a political blunder. The defeat was a display of weakness on the part of the Persians in a region at no great distance from their own capital. It gave the Arabs independence, encouraged them to make raids into Persian territory, and was a glorious and stimulating memory with which tradition soon associated Muhammad himself when the time came for the great Arab invasion of Írán. For these reasons the battle called for some notice here although there is no mention of it in the Sháhnáma. It was fought some time between A.D. 604–610.*

§§ 40–42. According to Tabarí the Khán wished to marry Gurdya to his brother who pursues and is killed by her.*

§§ 44–47. On these see NT, p. 478 seq. The story of the revolt of Gustaham seems only to be known from various versions of the Romance of Bahrám Chúbína. Bandwí ap­pears to have been killed early in the reign about the year A.D. 591. Gustaham rebelled shortly afterwards and held out till about A.D. 595.

§ 52. Shírwí seems to have been Khusrau Parwíz' eldest son but who his real mother was is unknown.* His troubles with his father sprang from Shírín's ambition on behalf of her own son, Mardánsháh.*

§§ 53–54. According to the Sháhnáma the Cross had been long indeed in the possession of the Persians. Here the carry­ing off is attributed to Ardshír not Dáráb.* Historically they took it when they captured Jerusalem in A.D. 614.* It was given back as one of the terms of peace between Heraclius and Kubád (Shírwí) in A.D. 628.

The statement that Jesus laughed upon the Cross is a corol­lary from the notion, common among the Gnostics, that he was not really crucified but some one in his stead. The more accur­ate form of the statement would be that quoted in Photius from a work called “The Journeys (or Circuits) of the Apostles” (*)aposto/lwn *peri/odoi) viz. that Christ was not crucified but another in his place, and that therefore he laughed at the crucifiers (*to\n *xristo\n mh\ staurwqh=nai a)ll) e(/teron a)nt) a)uto=u, kai/ katagela=|n dia\ to=uto tw=n staurou/ntw/n).* Muhammad in the Kurán adopted this view which of course became the belief of his followers:—“They slew him not and they crucified him not, but they had only his likeness.”*

§ 56. Shírín has been described by different authorities as of Roman, Greek, Armenian, and Persian descent. She has been identified also with Maryam, the problematical wife of Khusrau Parwíz—a view that receives no support from the Sháhnáma. There is a general agreement that she was a Christian.* According to the Sháhnáma the association of Khusrau Parwíz with Shírín began during his father's lifetime. This is affirmed also in some accounts quoted by Mír Khánd according to which Shírín was in the service of a Persian noble at whose house Khusrau Parwíz in his youth occasionally visited. There he saw Shírín, fell in love with her, and gave her a ring. The noble got to know of what was going on and ordered a servant to drown her. She saved herself, however, with the servant's connivance and took refuge with a hermit. After Khusrau Parwíz became Sháh she got the ring conveyed to him, and he carried her off to Madá'in in great state.* If Shírín really managed to retain her influence over Khusrau Parwíz for the best part of a lifetime she must have been pos­sessed of a very exceptional personality. The devotion to her of her lover, Farhád, is celebrated in Nizámí's poem of “Khusrau and Shírín” (A.D. 1180). Farhád, famous for his architectural and engineering skill, seems to be an histori­cal character. To him with some probability may be attri­buted the responsibility for Khusrau Parwíz' triumphal arch at Takht-i-Bústán* near Kirmánsháh and his palace at Mashíta (Mashetta) some twenty-five miles due east of the northern end of the Dead Sea. The date of the construction of this palace, of which the exquisitely carved stone façade is now in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum at Berlin, however, is still disputed.* Farhád is not mentioned in the Sháhnáma. In the Persian Tabarí Shírín is stated to have been a Greek, to have predeceased Khusrau Parwíz, and to have been loved by Farhád, but it is not said that she was in love with him.* Firdausí does not suggest that she was of other than Persian origin, and she is said to have been a native of Khúzistán.* Her name is derived from the Persian word for milk “shír” and so comes to mean “sweet.”

§ 57. A somewhat similar story is told of the Egyptian Amasis by Herodotus.*

§ 58. The murder of Maryam by Shírín is on the face of it a poetical fiction suggested by the known enmity felt by Shírín with regard to Shírwí who, as a parricide to be, is here repre­sented in an unfavourable light. His imprisonment probably was brought about by Shírín in the interests of her own son Mardánsháh and nearly had the effect desired.*

§ 60. In the Persian Tabarí Sarkash is called Sergius.*

§ 61. The palace here referred to must be the Takht-i-Khusrau whose façade and vast hall on the left bank of the Tigris some twenty-five miles below Baghdád form the finest remains of Sásánian architecture. The palace, however, seems to have been built not in the days of Khusrau Parwíz but in those of his grandfather Núshírwán and, as Firdausi states, a Rúman architect may have been employed.* Khusrau Par-wíz from about the time of the outbreak of the Roman war (A.D. 603), after the murder of the Emperor Maurice by Phocas till nearly the end of his reign, held his court at Dastagird not at Ctesiphon.*

§§ 63–65. The reign of Khusrau Parwíz bears a considerable resemblance to that of Assurbanipal (B.C. 668–626). Their seats of government were on the same historic stream—Dasta-gird and Madá'in in the former case, Nineveh and Chalah in the latter. Both reigns were long and the last great ones of their respective dynasties. The wars of both monarchs covered much the same ground—Syria, Armenia, Asia Minor and Egypt. In both cases a season of military brilliancy and territorial expansion was followed by one of cumulative dis­aster. In both cases the national resources were over-strained and in both cases the subsequent collapse came with startling suddenness.

The account given by Firdausí of the causes that led to the fall of Khusrau Parwíz and of the fall itself may be amplified from other authorities thus:—In A.D. 626 the Sásánian Em­pire, though it had suffered shrewd blows in the previous campaigns of Heraclius, was still after nearly a quarter of a century of warfare far from being worsted. It was not Khusrau Parwíz but Heraclius that made several vain attempts to bring about peace. The Persian army under Shahrbaráz (the Guráz of Firdausí) still occupied Chalcedon, divided only by a mile, but an impassable mile, of sea from Constantinople. The Persians had good cause to deplore their lack of sea-power. To get over this difficulty they made arrangements for a mixed horde of Avars, Slavs, and other tribes, who had no straits to cross, to attack Constantinople. That city was besieged accordingly but proved impregnable to the resources of the barbarians. Heraclius, meanwhile, contented himself with operations in Lazica but his brother, Theodore, worsted the Persians in Asia Minor. In this connexion we have an in­stance of the way in which Khusrau Parwíz treated his un­successful generals. The defeat of the Persians on the occasion in question seems largely to have been due to the effects of a severe hail-storm. Khusrau Parwíz, however, was very wroth and when the Persian commander died of despondency shortly afterwards he had the body embalmed and sent to him to be maltreated.* In A.D. 627 Heraclius determined on a Winter-campaign against his enemy's capital. He defeated the Persians near Nineveh on December 12th and then marched on Dastagird, some seventy miles above Ctesiphon, where Khusrau Parwíz had held his court for the previous twenty years in consequence, it is said, of a prediction made to him when besieging Dárá in the days of the Emperor Phocas that he would perish on the next occasion that he entered Ctesiphon.* Nevertheless he retreated thither, abandoning Dastagird to its fate, and then crossed the Tigris to Bih-Ardshír (Seleucia), taking with him Shírín, two sons of his by her, and three daughter-wives.* His eldest son, Shírwí, and his other sons were in internment at 'Akr Bábil, a state-prison near Babylon.* At Bih-Ardshír the Sháh armed his personal attendants etc. and sent them to reinforce the defeated Persian army which had made no effective stand since the battle of Nineveh. These combined forces, with two hundred elephants, took up their position on the river Arba, a short distance from Ctesiphon and broke down the bridges.* On January 7th A.D. 628 Heraclius advanced from Dastagird, which he had devastated, and three days later encamped within twelve miles of the Arba. He sent George, the leader of the Armenian contingent, to reconnoitre the Persian position and on his report retreated northwards to the neighbourhood of Lake Urumiah where he passed the rest of the Winter. Shortly before he had made another of his appeals to Khusrau Parwíz for an accommoda­tion: “I follow thee and am instant for peace, for I do not of mine own will consume Persia with fire but because I am forced thereto by thee. Now therefore let us throw down our arms and welcome peace. Let us put out the fire before all is burned.” The Sháh refused the offer to the exasperation of his people* with whom he was already very unpopular be­cause, according to Tabarí, he despised them and treated their great men without regard, had given the barbarian Farruk-hánzád, son of Sumai, power over them, and ordered the execution of the captives, and intended to put to death the Persian troops defeated by Heraclius.* He had also, it seems, sent instructions for the putting to death of the Persian general Shahrbaráz, but the bearer of the letter was taken by the Romans. Heraclius informed Shahrbaráz who falsified the letter by making the order apply to forty other chiefs as well as to himself and read out the dispatch as altered to the as­sembled Persian leaders. In their wrath they renounced their allegiance to Khusrau Parwíz, made terms of peace with Heraclius, and decided to quit Chalcedon and return home.* Khusrau Parwíz also had managed to offend his native Christ­ian subjects. In earlier days he had been disposed favourably towards them, and we have seen how he placed himself under the special protection of S. Sergius,* while his wife, Shírín, was a Christian of the Nestorian persuasion. She was, how­ever, lured over to the Monophysites and used her influence against the Nestorians who in consequence were not allowed to choose a Catholicus. A very highly esteemed Nestorian named Yazdín was chief tax-collector. After his death Khus-rau Parwíz seized his property and did not bestow by way of compensation the vacant post on Yazdín's son, Shamtá, who also was a Nestorian and afterwards took a prominent part in the revolt against the Sháh. Towards the end of the reign the Monophysites also had cause for complaint against Khusrau Parwíz. Generally speaking, too, all Christians must have been horrified at the sack of Jerusalem and the carrying off of the True Cross.* There was therefore no lack of dis­content throughout the army and nation generally. The retreat of Heraclius, however, at a moment when the state seemed threatened with imminent peril, might have staved off matters for a while had it not been for the question of the succession. It is said that Khusrau Parwíz when he fled from Dastagird to Ctesiphon was suffering from dysentery and wished to secure the crown for his son Mardasas (Mardánsháh), the offspring of Shírín.* Shírwí, the Sháh's eldest son, who was in internment with many of his brothers, was therefore in a situation of imminent peril. A conspiracy was formed to make him Sháh and rescue the captives in the prisons. Among the conspirators were two sons of Shahrbaráz, Shamtá, son of Yazdín, and Mihr Hurmuzd, the son of a former governor of Nímrúz who had fallen a victim to Khusrau Parwíz' jealous suspicions.* A party of the nobles hastened to 'Akr Bábil and brought Shírwí by night to Bih-Ardshír (Seleucia) where, at the bridge of boats, which it would be important to seize, he was met by others of the conspirators. The prisons were thrown open, and that night Khusrau Parwíz heard the shouts that hailed Shírwí as “Kubád Sháhánsháh.” When the rebels approached the palace in the early morning the royal body­guard fled and Khusrau Parwíz escaped into his garden which was called “The Garden of the Indians” but was discovered shortly and taken prisoner. The date, according to our reckon­ing, was February 25th, A.D. 628.*