Peroz of Persia

Peroz ( Persian : پیروز Pīrūz [ piːˈruːz ], "the victorious") was a Persian crown prince, son of the last Sassanid great king Yazdegerd III. and brother of Prince Bahram . He is also known partly as Peroz III. (since he never gave up his claim to the throne) and died in exile at the Chinese imperial court before 679.

Life

After the Arabs broke into the Persian Empire in 636 and had already inflicted a serious defeat on the Sassanids in the Battle of Kadesia , a Persian delegation was sent to the court of the Tang emperors in 638 to request Chinese support against the Arabs. However, the Emperor Taizong refused. In 661 Peroz again asked the Chinese for support, which was again refused; Peroz probably maintained a last remnant of Persian rule in Sistan at this time . He had coins minted and was recognized by the Chinese as ruler, because at the beginning of 662 he was appointed King of Bosi by the Chinese imperial court , making him a de facto Chinese vassal. Peroz was finally forced to flee by the Arabs around 670 and was allowed to establish a court in exile in the Chinese capital Chang'an in the following years . The Tang Emperor Gaozong received Peroz kindly, who also received permission to build a Persian temple. It is unclear whether it was a fire temple or perhaps a Christian church, since many of Peroz's followers were apparently Christians and he allegedly married a Christian.

In 677, the Tang emperor sent a force against the Arabs to help Peroz come to power, but the undertaking failed: the army only got as far as Kuqa . Peroz died around this time in Chang'an; According to a Chinese source, he was dead in 679. He himself and later his eldest son Narseh had been appointed governor of Iran by the Chinese emperor. A larger Persian minority also remained in Chang'an and can be traced back to the 9th century, with the many Christians among them acting as mediators of Christianity in China, as the Nestorian stele erected in 781 shows.

The mention in Chinese sources ( Jiu Tang-shu [Ancient History of the Tang] or Xin Tang-shu [New History of the Tang], the latter source correcting the former on this point) that Peroz fled to the Turks with her Aid fought against the Arabs and only went to Chang'an later cannot be clearly classified; maybe this is related to another person. Peroz 'son Narseh apparently tried to mobilize the Turks against the Arabs. It seems that for years after the conquest of the Sassanid Empire, the exiled Persians had hope of eliminating Arab rule, at least in eastern Iran, which ultimately did not succeed.

literature

• Domenico Agostini, Sören Stark: Zāwulistān, Kāwulistān and the land Bosi - On the question of a Sasanian court-in-exile in the southern Hindukush. In: Studia Iranica 45, 2016, pp. 17–38.
• Matteo Compareti: The last Sasanians in China . In: Eurasian Studies 2, 2003, pp. 197-213, ISSN  1722-0750
• Denis C. Twitchett , John K. Fairbank (Eds.): The Cambridge History of China , Vol. 3: Sui and T'ang China, 589-906 AD, Part 1 . CUP, Cambridge 1979, p. 280, ISBN 978-0-521-21446-9 .
• Ehsan Yarshater (Ed.): The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 3: The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods, Part 1 . CUP, Cambridge 1983, pp. 176f. and 547, ISBN 0-521-20092-X .

Remarks

1. ^ Matteo Compareti: The last Sasanians in China. In: Eurasian Studies 2, 2003, here p. 206.
2. ↑ Domenico Agostini, Sören Stark: Zāwulistān, Kāwulistān and the land Bosi - On the question of a Sasanian court-in-exile in the southern Hindukush. In: Studia Iranica 45, 2016, p. 18f.
3. ^ Matteo Compareti: The last Sasanians in China. In: Eurasian Studies 2, 2003, here pp. 207f.
4. ^ Matteo Compareti: The last Sasanians in China. In: Eurasian Studies 2, 2003, here p. 207 and note 49 (p. 208).
5. ↑ See now R. Todd Godwin: Persian Christians at the Chinese Court: The Xi'an Stele and the Early Medieval Church of the East. London / New York 2018.
6. ↑ See Yarshater (ed.), Cambridge History of Iran , Vol. 3. Cambridge 1983, pp. 176, 547.