Hormizd II.

Coin Hormizds II.

Hormizd II. († 309 ) was from 302 to 309 Persian great king from the house of the Sassanids .

Hormizd succeeded his father Narseh ; for political reasons he married a princess of the Kushana Empire . During his reign, about which little is known overall, there were probably no major fighting, although some (later) sources claim the opposite, such as the sometimes very problematic Chronicle of Arbela . He is said to have waged war against the Roman Empire , but Roman sources have nothing to report about. In any case, he was quite tolerant towards the Christians in his kingdom, but at least allowed the Manicheans to be persecuted for some time . Statements in the oriental sources also indicate tensions between the king and parts of the nobility.

When Hormizd died in 309, there was a violent confusion of the throne. Obviously, different parties fought each other, each gathering its own candidate. The king's eldest son was killed, the second blinded, the third had to flee to the Imperium Romanum , and the victorious aristocratic party instead elevated the fourth son, Shapur II , to king, who was an infant at the time, but in the following decades was to become one of the most important Sassanid kings.

literature

• Klaus Schippmann : Principles of the History of the Sasanid Empire , Darmstadt 1990, esp.p. 31.
• A. Shapur Shahbazi: Hormizd II. . In: Ehsan Yarshater (Ed.): Encyclopædia Iranica , as of December 15, 2004 (English, including references)

Web links

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predecessor	Office	successor
Narseh	King of the New Persian Empire 302–309	Shapur II.