Kavadh I.

Portrait of Kavadh I on his dinar

Kavadh I. ( Persian قباد Qobād [ ɢoˈbɔːd ]; † September 13, 531) from the family of the Sassanids was from 488 to 496 and again from 499 to 531 Persian great king .

Life

According to the information in the Chronicle of John Malalas , Kavadh died at the age of 82 and was consequently born in 449. On the other hand, Prokopios of Caesarea claims that Kavadh came to the throne very young, and Dinawari gives his age when he came to power as 15; in which case he would not have been born until 473. This would suggest that Kavadh 484, when his father Peroz I died in battle , was initially passed over in favor of his uncle Balasch , although he was the only surviving son of the fallen king. He came then in the year 488 (according to Tabari with the support of the " Hunnic " Hephthalites) to the throne, although the exact circumstances of the death of his uncle and predecessor Balash remain unclear: either he died of natural causes or he was overthrown by Kavadh.

Kavadh succeeded in skillfully playing off the two largest noble houses (the Mihran and the Karen ) against each other, so that he gained a relatively free hand in the exercise of his government. In 493 he had the overpowering noble Sukhra, who had initially dominated him, executed. However, problems arose when the so-called Mazdakite movement (see Mazdakites ) gained ground in the empire. The Mazdakites propagated a way of life that was in part (not exactly) equated in modern research with an early form of communism and was perhaps influenced by Manichaeism . Apparently they were demanding common goods and women's communities. One can most likely speak of a fundamentally religious movement with an emphatically social direction, but which also had supporters among the Persian nobility.

The role the king now played is unclear. It is usually assumed that Kavadh played a dangerous game in which he took up certain objectives of the Mazdakites (such as the disempowerment of the nobility) in order to make them serve his own interests. A revolt of the nobility swept the Mazdakites aside for a time and led to the temporary disempowerment of Kavadh (496), who was not killed, but rather thrown into a prison (the notorious "fortress of oblivion"). Instead of him, his brother (?) Zamasp became the new great king. However, Kavadh managed to flee and in 499 with the help of the Hephthalites to regain power. Years of cooperation with the Mazdakites apparently followed, until they were pushed aside, disempowered and finally persecuted bit by bit in the 20s of the 6th century - perhaps under pressure from the designated heir to the throne (later Chosrau I ). But it has also been suggested that there was no direct connection between the king's measures and the demands of the Mazdakites.

At the end of 502 fierce fighting broke out with the Eastern Roman Empire on the western border , although peace had ruled here for decades despite some tensions (see Roman-Persian Wars ). The reasons are not entirely clear; On the one hand, Emperor Anastasius seems to have believed that the Persians were too weak due to internal turmoil to pose a threat; on the other hand, the Sassanid Empire , allied with the Hephthalites, had no other enemies at that time, so that Kavadh could try to regain his crown secure by military victories over the Romans. In addition, Kavadh probably needed money to refill the royal coffers. After weeks of siege , the Persian troops personally led by the king were able to capture the important fortress Amida in January 503 and take prisoners; a large imperial army was soon able to defeat Kavadh in open field battle. In 506, after eventful, bloody battles, an armistice was finally concluded, as the Romans had meanwhile organized a successful counter-defense and devastated Persian territory and the Sassanids were also threatened by Hun attacks on their northern border. The ceasefire was limited to 7 years but lasted two decades.

After Persian-Roman relations had improved so much that Kavadh even asked Emperor Justin I around 525 to adopt his favorite son Chosrau (I), the conflict flared up again around 526. The reason this time was, among other things, Kavadh's attempt to win over the largely Christian Iberia (today's Georgia ) for Zoroastrianism or to prevent the small but strategically important area from coming under Roman influence. In the Battle of Dara , the troops of the new Emperor Justinian were able to defeat the Persians in 530, but a year later they triumphed over the Romans in the Battle of Callinicum . While the war was still ongoing, Kavadh died in 531, and his favorite and third son, Chosrau I, ascended the throne. This should lead the Sassanid Empire to its climax, but also benefited from the politics of Kavadh, who was able to considerably strengthen the central power in his last years.

The most important sources on Kavadh are Prokopios of Caesarea , (pseudo-) Joshua Stylites and Tabari .

literature

• Arthur Christensen: L'Iran sous les Sassanides . Munksgaard, Copenhagen 1944; Reprint: Zeller, Osnabrück 1971, ISBN 3-535-01195-7 .
• Geoffrey B. Greatrex : Rome and Persia at War, 502-532 . Leeds 1998.
• Nikolaus Schindel: Kawad I . In: Encyclopaedia Iranica ( online here ).
• Nikolaus Schindel: Kawad I. In: Nikolaus Schindel (Ed.): Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum . Vol. 3/1 (text volume). Vienna 2004, p. 436ff.
• Klaus Schippmann : Basic features of the history of the Sassanid Empire . Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1990, ISBN 3-534-07826-8 .
• Josef Wiesehöfer : Kawad, Khusro I and the Mazdakites. A new proposal . In: P. Gignoux et al. (Ed.): Trésors d'Orient . Paris 2009, pp. 391-409.

Web links

Commons : Kavadh I.  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

predecessor	Office	successor
Balash	King of the New Persian Empire 488–496	Zamasp

predecessor	Office	successor
Zamasp	King of the New Persian Empire 499–531	Chosrau I.