Shapur II.

Shapur II coin

Shapur II ( Persian شاپور Shāpūr [ ʃɔːˈpuːr ]; known in Arabic as Ẓulaktāf ; * 309 ; † 379 ; his reign was just as long), also Sapor II. or Sapur II., was a Persian great king from the ruling house of the Sassanids . His very long reign was marked by a protracted struggle against the Roman Empire and by almost 40 years of persecution of Christians .

Shapur II was able to achieve some territorial gains during his reign. Alongside Shapur I and Chosrau I, he is considered one of the most important Sassanid great kings and was able to strengthen the empire again after a period of weakness and largely secure the borders; his three direct successors were less fortunate.

Life

Childhood and youth

Around the year 300 the Sassanid Empire , which suffered a severe defeat against the Romans in 298, got into a time of turmoil. When King Hormizd II died in 309, power struggles broke out at the court, and eventually Persian nobles killed his eldest son, blinded the second son, and captured the third, Hormizd. A little later he fled to the Romans. The throne was reserved for a supposedly unborn child of one of the wives of Hormizd II: Shapur II. This is considered to be the only king in history who was crowned in the womb. According to Tabari, the crown was placed on the mother's stomach during the coronation ceremony. Shapur II was therefore a born king; however, several researchers assume that the later sources are exaggerating at this point and that Shapur was probably an infant when he was made ruler.

The affairs of state were initially taken over by his mother, her new husband Bahram von Kuschan and the Persian magnates. At the age of 16 he was enthroned (probably for the 100th anniversary of the Sassanid dynasty), even if there are only a few sources about his youth, which also emerged much later and have a strongly legendary character. As a small child, Schapur is said to have made wise decisions and thus demonstrated his suitability to rule. At the same time, however, the sources cannot hide the fact that the Sassanid Empire was threatened by internal disintegration and external attacks while it was immature.

Religious politics

When Shapur personally took over the government, he proved to be an energetic ruler. According to later tradition, under his reign the state was restructured into a regular caste system . The power of the priests was curtailed and at the same time Zoroastrianism was promoted by the king, the collection of the Avesta (collection of Zoroastrian religious writings) was completed. Critics and apostates of Zoroastrianism were punished, the religion should strengthen the position of the king. As a reaction to the Christianization of the Roman Empire under Constantine the Great , the Christians in their own country were persecuted (for political, not primarily for religious reasons also formulated by Shapur) after the attempt to transform the Catholic of Seleukia-Ctesiphon into a Christian independent from Constantinople Building church had failed. (For more on Shapur's persecution of Christians, see also the articles on the martyrs Simon bar Sabbae and Pusei .)

The wars of Shapur

See also: Roman-Persian Wars

Shapur II had acquired his first military experience fighting the Arabs who had repeatedly invaded Mesopotamia . But Schapur should above all turn to Rome, the enemy in the west. Persia and the Roman Empire, as the two great powers of that time, were hostile to each other. In 337, probably shortly before the death of Constantine the Great, who had planned a great campaign against the Sassanids, Shapur II broke the peace that his grandfather Narseh had made with Diocletian in 298 (or 299) and a war began, which was to last 26 years (337–363). The Persians, who had had to cede considerable areas to the Romans, had been dissatisfied with the peace of 298; Shapur therefore sought to regain the lost territory.

We are relatively well informed about these struggles. Above all the important Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus , who as an officer partly took part in the fighting himself, but also Zosimos and Sozomenos as well as later Arabic and Persian sources report on these fighting.

Shapur II initially succeeded in annexing Armenia , which until 298 had belonged to the Persian sphere of influence. Soon afterwards he tried, with varying degrees of success, to conquer the great Roman forts in Mesopotamia in order to regain lost territory here as well. The fighting took place mainly around the strategically important places Singara , Nisibis , which Shapur II besieged three times in vain, and Amida , whereby the Romans suffered a setback at Singara (probably 344); A Persian prince was killed in the apparently very bloody battle.

Although the generals of Emperor Constantius II (337 to 361), the middle son of Constantine and after his death Emperor of the Eastern part of the Roman Empire, lost several battles, Shapur II made little progress overall. His military strength was apparently insufficient to secure the conquered territories permanently, especially since Constantius operated a very clever defensive strategy, while in Armenia Roman influence was initially restored. It was crucial that the Romans could hold most of the strategically important fortresses.

The fighting between Rome and Persia was interrupted when around the year 350 the Sassanid Empire in the east was attacked by nomadic tribes, among whom the “Hunnic” Chionites (see Iranian Huns ) are mentioned by name. Shapur operated (as a found inscription proves) in 356 against the invaders from the region of today's Kabul . After heavy fighting continued, the Chionites were forced to make peace. The King of the Chionites, Grumbates , even joined Shapur II in his struggle against Rome. Chionite auxiliary troops were with Schapur when he again undertook a campaign against the Romans in 359.

Julian's Persian campaign

Rome and Persia finally entered into peace talks, the remarkable content of which (“brother” address of the two monarchs) was passed down to Ammianus Marcellinus (Ammian 17.5). However, negotiations brought no result, and Shapur put 359 a siege to the fortress of Amida, after 73 days of that siege finally fell; here Chionite troops under Grumbates are occupied. Shapur II then conquered Singara and other fortifications the following year. Nevertheless, Constantius avoided an open decisive battle, so that Shapur, perhaps influenced by an unfavorable oracle, finally stopped the fighting. Constantius was now planning a counter-offensive and therefore requested troops from Gaul to reinforce it. This was the trigger for a revolt of the Roman legions in Gaul, which proclaimed the Caesar Julian the Apostate to be anti-emperor. A civil war was imminent when Constantius died in late 361.

In 363 the new emperor Julian advanced on a badly planned but very large-scale campaign with a strong army of around 65,000 men to the Sassanid capital Ctesiphon , a little southeast of today's Baghdad. Julian's rule was unsettled, and he hoped to gain prestige by defeating the archenemy in the east. Apparently he even intended to appoint his own Persian king by the grace of Rome. Shapur II had expected the attack in the north and first had to move south, his local commander avoided open combat, and the Roman offensive came to nothing. Julian made serious strategic mistakes and led his army into the middle of the desert. After the arrival of the great royal army, the Persians stood there for battle and were initially defeated at Maranga - but by no means decisive. Julian was killed again a few days later. His successor Jovian , chosen by the soldiers , felt compelled, if he did not want to accept the annihilation of the entire Roman army in enemy territory, to conclude a peace that was very detrimental to the Romans (see Peace of 363 ). The territorial gains of Diocletian had to be ceded again and Rome had to promise not to support the hitherto allied Armenia . This was a shame for the Romans. Shapur II, on the other hand, was able to record a great success; No Persian king had been granted a comparable triumph for over 100 years. Ultimately, the border in Mesopotamia was to remain essentially unchanged for the next 230 years, since both great powers were basically able to come to terms with it.

Armenian policy

Shapur II had briefly conquered Armenia in 338. After his renewed invasion (around 368) he forced the Armenian king Arshak II , who was allied with the Romans, to commit suicide. But even after this success, Shapur did not have Armenia in hand, as Queen Pharandzem and her son Pap claimed the capital Artogerassa . When trying to set two defectors, Artabannes and Kylakes , on Pharandzem, Shapur failed. In the end, the Persian expedition army fell. Fearing a campaign of revenge by the Persians, Pap fled to the Roman Emperor Valens (364–378). As a Roman client king , the Armenian was supposed to return to his homeland under Rome's protection. The emperor entrusted this task to the newly appointed military commander-in-chief for Armenia, Terentius . Shapur saw this as a breach of contract, stormed Artogerassa and had Pharandzem cruelly executed while Pap fled temporarily to the mountains. When Valens wanted to arrest the king's son in honor in 373, he fled again. For the Romans, Pap had now become a danger because it was feared that it might overflow to the Persians.

In the autumn of 374 Pap was invited to a banquet at the successor of Terentius, Traianus, at which the Armenian was killed. King Varazdates, who was then supported by Rome in Armenia, was able to hold on to 375-377 amid political and military conflicts in which the Persians reappeared. There was renewed fighting between the Romans and Persians. A great campaign in the Orient that Valens planned was only thwarted by the appearance of the Goths on the Danube and the beginning of the so-called migration of peoples , as the emperor now had to turn his attention to the Danube border, where he fell in 378 in the Battle of Adrianople . Soon after Shapur's death there was then in 384 or (more likely) 387 a diplomatic solution for Armenia, which was divided between the Romans and the Sassanids (see also Persarmenia ).

literature

• Touraj Daryaee: Sasanian Iran 224-651 CE. Portrait of a Late Antique Empire. Mazda Pub., Costa Mesa (Calif.) 2008, pp. 43ff.
• Touraj Daryaee: Sapur II . In: Ehsan Yarshater (Ed.): Encyclopædia Iranica (English, including references)
• Katarzyna Maksymiuk: Strategic aims of Šāpur II during the campaign in northern Mesopotamia (359-360). In: Historia i Świat 7, 2018, pp. 87–97.
• Nikolaus Schindel: Shapur II. In: Nikolaus Schindel (Ed.): Sylloge Nummorum Sasanidarum. Vol. 3/1 (text volume). Vienna 2004, p. 211ff.
• Klaus Schippmann : Basic features of the history of the Sassanid Empire. Darmstadt 1990.
• Engelbert Winter , Beate Dignas: Rome and the Persian Empire. Two world powers between confrontation and coexistence. Berlin 2001.

Remarks

1. ↑ Theodor Nöldeke: History of the Persians and Arabs at the time of the Sasanids. From the Arab Chronicle of Tabari. Translated and provided with detailed explanations and additions . Leiden 1879, p. 51 f. ( Digitized version of the University and State Library of Saxony-Anhalt, Halle ).
2. ↑ See Engelbert Winter, Beate Dignas: Rom und das Perserreich. Two world powers between confrontation and coexistence. Berlin 2001, p. 105ff.
3. ↑ Alexander Demandt: History of late antiquity. The Roman Empire from Diocletian to Justinian 284–565 AD. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-57241-8 . P. 94.

predecessor	Office	successor
Hormizd II.	King of the New Persian Empire 309–379	Ardashir II.