Siege of Amida
| date | 359 , 502 |
|---|---|
| place | Amida , Southeast Anatolia |
| output | Victory of the Sassanid besiegers |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
|
Ursicinus (359); Cyrus (502) |
|
| losses | |
|
very high |
high |
The two sieges of Amida (today Diyarbakır ) took place in the year 359 and from 502 to 505 in connection with the fighting between the Romans and the Persian Sassanids . The course of the first battle was described in detail by the late antique historian Ammianus Marcellinus , who himself was present in Amida. For the second siege, Prokopios of Caesarea , Joshua Stylites and the chronicle of (pseudo-) Zacharias of Mytilene are the most important sources.
The Siege of 359
prehistory
Since the Sassanid king Shapur II (309–379) had taken over the government himself, it was his declared aim to recapture the former Persian areas and cities, which had been lost to the Romans under his predecessor Narseh in the peace of Nisibis . War had been waged intermittently since the late 330s. After Schapur had defeated the Arabs in the south of his empire, he first turned to the Chionites (see also Iranian Huns ) living as nomads in the east of his empire, whom he was finally able to defeat or reach an agreement in long-term conflicts (after 350). After the Sassanids made peace with the Chionites, Shapur, with the Chionite King Grumbates and Chionite auxiliaries in his wake , marched west and began another invasion of Roman Mesopotamia.
The new war against the Romans under Emperor Constantius II began in 359 (generally see Roman-Persian Wars ). Since a direct attack on the well-organized Roman defense system on the border and especially on the key fortress of Nisibis did not appear to be very promising, Shapur attacked the strategically important, but so far hardly contested city of Amida. However, the site had recently been extremely heavily fortified by the Romans. Among other things, strong artillery was positioned on the towers of the (still impressive) walls. In addition, the city's garrison, the legio V Parthica , was quickly reinforced by six more legions in view of the advancing Persians. These came from Gaul and had been transferred to the Persian front as a punishment because they had served the usurper Magnentius .
Given the unexpected strength of the fortifications, Shapur initially hesitated whether to attack the city. However, when the only son of the Chionite king Grumbates, who was allied with the Persians, was killed by a Roman rifleman and his father swore vengeance, it was decided to attack. On the Persian side, war elephants and siege machines were also used; the latter partly came from Roman holdings and had fallen into the hands of the Persians some time before in Singara.
The siege
The 73 day siege of the city, which was protected by seven legions and auxiliary troops (probably around 15,000 men), turned out to be very costly for Shapur. The siege was described in detail by the important Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus , who himself was present in Amida as a soldier.
Shapur tried several times to storm the walls of the city with his supposedly 100,000-strong army (much more likely a strength of at most 50,000 men, since logistically more was hardly manageable) with the help of siege towers and ramps made of earth. However, the Romans repeatedly succeeded in setting the towers , some of which were armored with iron and fitted with ballista , on fire and repeatedly interrupted the earthworks with failures . Mining work on the part of the Sassanids could also be prevented by Roman troops. The besiegers recorded increasing losses. During the siege, however, epidemics also broke out in the city, which the defenders also decimated and only disappeared when the rain suddenly fell.
Finally, on the night of the 72nd day, the city walls could be conquered with the help of siege towers and the renewed use of ballistae. Ammianus was able to escape together with some companions.
After the city of Shapur had been conquered, it turned to other border fortifications and again conquered the city of Singara . The commanding Roman general Ursicinus was replaced after the city was lost. Nevertheless, the siege of Amida was able to hold back the Persian advance long enough that Shapur was by far not able to achieve all of its goals. The Roman counter-attack took place in 363 under Emperor Julian , but it ended in a catastrophe.
According to another interpretation, however, Amida was the main target of Shapur II, who knew the value of the fortress to the Romans. In this respect, the siege did not result from the death of the Chionite prince, but was intended from the beginning.
The second siege (502/503)
Amida did not fall permanently into Persian hands, but was also one of the most important Roman fortresses in the Orient. In the autumn of 502 the Sassanid king Kavadh I surprisingly invaded the Roman Empire with a large army and ended a long period of peace. In October he reached Amida and immediately began the siege of the city in which the imperial governor Cyrus was in command.
Machines of war and siege ramps were used again. At first the Roman troops were able to repel the Persian attacks, and Kavadh had already offered to withdraw for a small ransom when his men succeeded in a coup d'état in January 503 a poorly guarded tower of the western city wall near Tripyrgion: According to Prokopios and Zacharias had been given this tower to guard by a group of monks, who got drunk and fell asleep on a Christian holiday (the city's bishop had died just before the siege, which may have contributed to this lack of discipline). Persian scouts noticed this, climbed the tower and killed the monks; then they called reinforcements. Cyrus was seriously wounded by an arrow shot while trying to retake the tower and was out of command as a commander. The Sassanid troops were now able to conquer further towers and in the course of the day also one of the gates; the city subsequently fell to the attackers and was sacked but not destroyed for three days: this time Kavadh planned to occupy Amida permanently and put a strong contingent of troops in the fortress before he withdrew. He previously granted his troops their request to punish the occupation of the city for their stubborn resistance by killing every tenth man - a practice reminiscent of the ancient Roman military punishment of decimation .
The third siege (503 to 506)
From 503 onwards, the troops of the Eastern Roman emperor Anastasius Amida besieged . They managed to completely cut off the place from the outside world, causing epidemics and severe famine. The sources even report cannibalism: the residents of the city, to whom the Persians did not give any of their scarce supplies, ultimately ate starving fellow citizens. Although the Romans were able to kill Glones, the Persian commander, in an ambush, they nevertheless failed to take Amida by force; Glones' son succeeded his father as commander. Finally, in 506, the imperial magister officiorum Celer paid the starving Persians 1,100 pounds of gold, who in return evacuated Amida and received free withdrawal. In the following years the emperor had the fortifications of the city reinforced again, so that it could not be conquered again until a century later.
See also
literature
- Geoffrey Greatrex : Procopius and Pseudo-Zachariah on the siege of Amida and its aftermath (502-6). In: Henning Börm , Josef Wiesehöfer (eds.): Commutatio et contentio. Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and Early Islamic Near East. In Memory of Zeev Rubin (= series history. Vol. 3). Wellem, Düsseldorf 2010, ISBN 978-3-941820-03-6 , pp. 227-251.
- Kaveh Farrokh, Katarzyna Maksymiuk, Javier Sánchez Gracia: The Siege of Amida (359 CE). Siedlce 2018.
- Noel Lenski: Two Sieges of Amida (AD 359 and 502-503) and the Experience of Combat in the Late Roman Near East. In: Ariel S. Lewin, Pietrina Pellegrini (ed.): The late Roman Army in the Near East from Diocletian to the Arab Conquest (= BAR. International Series. 1717). Archaeopress, Oxford 2007, ISBN 978-1-4073-0161-7 , pp. 219-236.
- John Matthews: The Roman Empire of Ammianus. Duckworth, London 1989, ISBN 0-7156-2246-3 , p. 57 ff.
supporting documents
- ↑ On the invasion see Roger C. Blockley : Ammianus Marcellinus on the Persian Invasion of AD 359. In: Phoenix. Vol. 42, No. 3, 1988, pp. 244-260, doi : 10.2307 / 1088346 .
- ↑ Ammian 19: 1-9.
- ^ Katarzyna Maksymiuk: Strategic aims of Šāpur II during the campaign in northern Mesopotamia (359-360). In: Historia i Świat 7, 2018, pp. 87–97, here pp. 93f.