From the Parthian Empire to the Sassanids
After Alexander died in 323 BCE, one of Alexander's former generals, Seleucus, began a dynasty whose rule extended from Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia through Persia all the way to Bactria. Seleucus appointed a governor for Bactria, whom he largely ignored.
In this vast area there was the usual problem of warrior migrants. People from steppe lands east of the Caspian Sea were intruding into northern Persia and absorbing Persian culture. The Seleucus dynasty did little if anything to stop these migrants, seeing them as no significant threat given the vastness of his empire. The migrants founded their own towns, and around the year 250 BCE one of them founded a Persian-style hereditary monarchy called the Arsacids.
In 246 BCE, the governor of Bactria formally declared independence. He allied Bactria with the empire of Chandragupta's Buddhist grandson, Ashoka. Drawing mainly from Greek and Macedonian support, the Seleucids continued to control Syria, Mesopotamia and Palestine, but only parts of Persia. Colonies that Alexander had founded in Persia and Bactria remained Greek islands in a sea of eastern peoples. And in these colonies, Greek and Macedonian ways were being diluted by the taking of Asian women as wives.
Parthian Warrior
Around 238 BCE, the Arsacids conquered territory ruled by a Macedonian or Greek satrap, Andragoras. From this territory, identified as Parthia, the Arsacids seized Hyrcania, an area along the southern shore of the Caspian Sea. The Seleucid monarchs tried to retake Parthia, but war between the Seleucids and Rome allowed Parthian rule to continue.
The Parthians expanded farther under their King Mithridates. Around 141 BCE, the Parthians seized the Seleucid capital of Seleucia, on the bank of the Tigres River in Mesopotamia. The Parthians took control of much of Mesopotamia. Their rule extended to the Caucasus mountains and to the eastern border of what today is Iran and beyond into what today is Turkmenistan a couple of hundred kilometers short of reaching the Oxus River. Seleucid power had vanished in military defeats
The Parthian Empire Replaced by Sassanid Rule
Like other vast empires, expansion was a burden. From around 130 BCE, Parthian rule contended with invasions by various nomadic tribes. And beginning in 105 BCE, Parthian rule from the center weakened. A handful of Parthian noble families contended with the Parthian monarchs for power.
Around 32 BCE, the Parthian king, Phraates IV, fought a rebellion that had the support of the nobility. By 25 BCE that revolt had failed, but in the decades that followed the nobility was able to put a person of their choosing on the throne, and dynastic instability followed. The Arsacid dynasty survived, but centralized power was weak and provincial rulers held sway. The Parthian empire was going the way of other empires.
During the war between Marcus Aurelius and the Parthians (162–66) a "great pestilence" devastated the Romans and also threw the economy of the Parthian empire into decline. The Parthian empire fractured as local potentates claimed independence. Parthian rule held only in Mesopotamia.
In Persia, nobles and villagers sought protection from roaming bands of brigands and the small armies of local despots. In the mountainous desert in southwestern Persia a military leader named Ardashir saw opportunity. He ventured out with his army and overran several neighboring cities. He overran the lands of other Persian potentates in the southwest – Persis. He either defeated them or let them join him. In the year 208 he was crowned King of Persis. In 224 he met the Parthian army in a great battle and defeated it, and in the coming years he moved against the Parthian rule that remained in Mesopotamia.
Ardashir and the Zoroastrian Priesthood
Ardashir, founder of the Sassanid dynasty who reigned from 224 to 242
After deposing the last Parthian King, Ardashir sought recognition and association of his rule with religious authority. He chose association with the Zoroastrian high priest, Tansar. Tansar wrote to potentates of various regions calling on them to accept Ardashir as their new king. Ardashir pleased the Zoroastrians. He gave the Zoroastrian priesthood the attention they thought they deserved. He announced that religion and kingship were brothers. With the Zoroastrian priests on his side he said that his rule was the will of God. The Zoroastrian priesthood felt empowered. The Zoroastrians looked forward to converting non-Zoroastrians. Ardashir claimed that his family was linked to the old Persian royal family of Cyrus the Great. He took the title of King of Kings and spoke of his revitalizing the Achaemenid Empire. He gave rise to use of "Iran" in place of Persia, and he named his dynasty after his grandfather, Sassan. He established his rule in the old Parthian capital at Ctesiphon, on the Tigris River.
To restore that great empire that had existed prior to Alexander's conquests, he moved troops northward into Roman ruled Syria and into Armenia – which led to the war against the Roman Empire that came during the rule of Severus Alexander.
Ardashir had Tansa collect sacred texts of the Avesta – the Zoroastrian Bible – some of which is said to have been destroyed during the conquest of Alexander the Great. In the Avesta were songs, hymns, legends, prayers, prescriptions for rituals, and formulas for cleansing one's body and soul. Tansar put Zoroastrian law into the Avesta, from which Ardashir drew his laws.
With confidence Ardashir in 230 attacked the Romans in Mesopotamia and threatened them in Syria and Cappadocia – wars that were to drag on into the 240s.
Ardashir, meanwhile, had no eperience ruling over a diversity of cultures. Under previous rulers people had acquired the habit of worshiping as they pleased and the habit of running their affairs in accordance with their religious laws, so long as they paid their taxes. Ardashir tried to reverse this. He forced Jews in his empire to live under his law, which for the Jews was a revocation of Judaic law. The Zoroastrian priesthood tried to extend their authority over the Jews. And, believing fire sacred, they limited the use of fire by Jews, including flames used in lamps. And attempting to dominate education among the Jews, they destroyed synagogues.
The Prophet Mani and his Universalist Faith
Mani the Prophet
The Silk Road ran through what had been the Parthian empire and was now Ardashir's Sassanid empire. It was a road on which ideas spread. On it, Jews who had had fled from their homeland, and after the Jews came Christians. Buddhist ideas came on it from India and mixed with Zoroastrianism. And into the mix of religious ideas arose a blend the various religions into a universalist faith: Manichaeism (pronounced mani-KEY-ism).
The founder of Manichaeism, Mani, is believed to have been the son of Parthian royalty, born in the year 216 in a village near Ctesiphon, by the Tigris River. As a young boy, Mani might have been taken by his father into a cult called the "Practitioners of Ablutions" – a cult that believed in washing away sins in baptisms. Or the group may have been the Elkesaites, a Jewish-Christian sect that arose the year 100, a group believed to have celebrated the Sabbath, practiced vegetarianism and believed in circumcision, a group that condemned the apostle Paul and criticized what it called falsehoods in Christian scripture and Mosaic law – a sect that would die out around the year 400
In the year 228, four years after Ardashir took power, when Mani was about thirteen years-old, a Parthian prince from the former Seleucid capital, Seleucia (a few miles from Ctesiphon), rose up against Ardashir but was cut down. It was said that just after this, Mani had a revelation from God, a command to leave the religious community to which he belonged. God, it was said, told him that he did not belong in that community and told him to keep aloof from impurity and because of his youth that he should avoid proclaiming his revelation publicly.
Beliefs from the variety of religious cults appeared in a new creed that Mani developed. By the time Mani grew into adulthood he saw commonality in various religions. He was trying to put the various ideas into a comprehensive whole, and he saw himself as having a universal message. When he was around twenty-five, he claimed that he was obeying an order from heaven to abandon passions and spread the truth. He consciously imitated the apostle Paul and began traveling about in Ardashir's empire. He claimed that he was the successor to prophets such as Zarathustra and Jesus, and he claimed that he was the helper promised by Jesus – as described in John 14:16. He claimed that he was the final prophet and that other religions were limited in their effectiveness because they were local and taught in one language to one people. Mani hoped that his message would be heard in all languages and in all countries.
Mani traveled to Parthia – a part of Ardashir's empire – to become a stronghold of his faith and a base for missionary expeditions into Central Asia. He went to northwestern India, where Ardashir's son was leading an army and extending Ardashir's rule. And while there, Mani strengthened the Buddhist element in his faith. He learned Buddhist organization and propaganda techniques and proclaimed that he was successor to the Buddha.
Mani sent disciples to Egypt, and he traveled as far west as the border of the Roman Empire to strongholds of Mithra worship, where he tried to associate himself with Mithraism. Mithraism – believed to have originated among the Hindus – had been popular among the Parthians and had grown in Mesopotamia, Armenia and northwestern Persia during the first centuries BCE and CE. Mani had heated discussions with Mithraic priests, and he strengthened the Mithraism in his doctrine
Mani argued also with Zoroastrians, and he compared his beliefs with theirs. In Media, where Zurvanite Zoroastrians were strongest, Mani attempted to reform their movement.
Manichaean Doctrine and Organization
Mani believed that his views were the most advanced and the sum and perfection of all religious wisdom. With worldly knowledge having become a greater part of religious thought, this included positions on the origins of the universe, anthropology, history, botany, zoology and geography. Like the Zoroastrians and Zurvanites his movement had an encyclopedia. He proclaimed belief in the Buddha and acknowledged the god of the Zoroastrians. He proclaimed belief in Jesus Christ and that he had taken the best of the New Testament and cleansed it of accretions and falsifications. And, like the Christian Marcion, he rejected Judaism's Old Testament.
Mani saw himself in agreement with the Zoroastrian belief that the universe was in a battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil. But where Zoroastrians saw their god Mazda as stronger than the force of evil, Mani held that the forces of evil dominated the world and that redemption – the triumph of good – would come only with a determined struggle by a select group of devotees. Mani saw the eating of flesh as the first great sin of Adam and Eve (Gehmurdand Murdiyanag). And he believed that redemption for humanity would come by abstaining from eating meat and by fasting. He taught that someday a final purification would occur, that the earth would be destroyed, that the damned would collect into a cosmic clod of dirty matter and that the kingdom of goodness and light would separate from the kingdom of evil and darkness. This, he claimed, would come as the result of people rejecting evil.
Mani organized his followers into three groups. The first group was called The Elect. The Elect lived ascetically and devoted themselves to redemption: to separating the kingdoms of light and darkness by living as purely as possible, living ascetically, and by fasting on Sundays and Mondays. They ate mainly fruit and drank fruit juice, believing that fruit contained many light particles, that water was not heavenly like fruit juice because it was simply matter. In the pursuit of redemption the Elect was forbidden to eat or to uproot plants, to cut down any tree or kill any animal, and, like Buddhist monks, the Elect was obliged to follow complete sexual abstinence and marriage.
Mani's second group was a compromise or accommodation with worldly realities. This group was called the Hearers. They followed Mani's teachings but they also did what was forbidden for the Elect: they worked in the making of food, and they had sex and created children. They furnished the elect with food and drink, led a normal life, even eating meat, but they were obliged to fast on Sunday, and like the Elect they observed an entire month of fasting prior to the principle feast of the year: the Bema festival.
The third group of Mani's followers was necessary in making Manichaeism a popular religion. They were not obliged to adhere to any religious practices. They merely had to believe.
Manichaeism Scattered
Ardashir died in 241 or 242, and he was succeeded by his son, Shapur the First. Shapur invited Mani to his coronation. He invited Mani to speak to him in person, and he granted that Manichaeism could be taught freely throughout his empire.
Off and on into the next decade, Shapur fought the Romans in Mesopotamia, Syria and Asia Minor. Shapur took Mani and Zoroastrian priests with him on his expeditions, with the Zoroastrians more favored, wearing their conical hats and white cotton robes, the white representing light and purity. With their rituals the Zoroastrian priests cleansed the conquered lands of demons, and in the conquered lands they established their fire temples to commemorate Shapur's victories. The Zoroastrian priests saw good in Shapur's warring. Mani, on the other hand, perhaps because of his broader view of culture, developed an opposition to war.
Shapur shared Mani's appreciation of different cultures. He enjoyed talks with Greek philosophers and decreed that all people, including Manichaeans, Jews, and Christians should be left free in their worship, and he persuaded the Zoroastrian priesthood to include in their Avesta works on metaphysics, astronomy and medicine borrowed from the Greeks and Indians. He created an accommodation with the Jewish leader in Mesopotamia: Samuel. And Samuel accepted that Sassanian law would be respected in Jewish courts and that taxes to the Sassanid government would be paid.
The Christians under Shapur were also tolerated. By the time of Shapur, Christians had become a noticeable minority in Mesopotamia. Christian evangelists had arrived as early as the first century, mainly in Jewish communities. More Christians arrived during Shapur's rule, with his invasion of Syria. Shapur deported the populations of Damascus and other cities that he had conquered, sending large groups of Greek speaking Christians from Syria to the provinces ofPersis, Parthia, Susiana and the city of Babylon, where they were allowed to organize their own communities and follow their own leaders.
With the spread of their communities, the Christians attempted to unite and describe diocese boundaries. Disputes arose between Christian communities that spoke Syriac and those that spoke Greek. A Christian bishop, Papa bar Aggai, at the capital, Ctesiphon, claimed patriarchal rights – as had the Bishop of Rome – and the bishop of Ctesiphon remained in rivalry for influence with the Christian leadership in Nisibis.
The Zoroastrians, meanwhile, were offended by Christian beliefs, foremost by the belief in a god that was the creator of all rather than the creator just of goodness. The Zoroastrians were offended also by the Christian belief that Jesus was both a god and born of an impure, earthly woman, and they were offended by the idea that a god could be crucified and die. The Christians on the other hand, drawing from their Jewish tradition and the law of Moses, were offended by the Zoroastrians not condemning marriages between close relatives.
Mani's Martyrdom
Shapur I died sometime between 270 and 273 and was succeeded by his son, Hormizd. Mani received from Hormizd the same permission to teach that Shapur had granted him. But after only a year in power, Hormizd died, and he was succeeded by another of Shapur's sons, Bahram. As practicing a religion was a privilege granted by the king rather than a right, Manichaeism, Christianity and Judaism were threatened by the whims of any monarch. Mani was probably aware of the danger that came with Bahram's accession to power, for he decided to leave for the east, to the Kushan people around Bactria, where he could count on protection. But Bahram prohibited Mani's travel.
Another Campaign of Purification
During the rule of Ardashir, a Zoroastrian priest, Katir, had led a crusade to purify Zoroastrianism, to obliterate what he saw as heresies. He had succeeded in having Zurvanist myths purged from the Avesta, and he had Zoroastrian doctrines inscribed on the face of cliffs, the inscriptions to number over seven hundred in the decades to come.
Katir had been elevated to high priest, and with Bahram's support he launched an attack on the Manichaeans. Manichaeism was criticized for not identifying itself with the Sassanid Empire, and Persia's landed elite saw Manichaeism as a threat because its power base was people of the cities and merchants. A bill was presented to Bahram with accusations against Mani, and Mani was ordered to present himself to Bahram at the royal residence. Mani's arrival there created a great sensation. The King spoke to Mani with hostility, and Mani asked whether he had done anything evil. The king responded with rage and reproached Mani for various ethical transgressions. The king was most displeased by Mani's dislike of war. Mani, in turn, spoke of his services as an exorcist. The king stopped Mani's attempt to defend himself and ordered Mani and three of his followers chained and sent to prison. There, Mani died in less than a month and became a martyr to his followers. The year was 276.
Persecution of Mani's followers followed his execution, and many of them scattered. Manichaeism had already reached Syria, Palestine and Egypt. It then spread into Armenia and to Sinkiang, where it would become the state religion of the Uigur Turks.
In the Roman Empire, often at war with the Persian Empire, the Manichaeans were seen as representatives of a foreign power and as dangerous aliens. That Mani had not been a supported of the Persian Empire's wars was overlooked, and the Romans persecuted the Manichaeans, while Christians were also being persecuted. And without the backing of the brute power of a major state, Manichaeism would all but disappear.
Shapur II to Bahram V, Persecutions and Tolerance
The ninth Sassanid king, Shapur II, began to rule in name from the day he was born, in the year 309. In 337, the Roman emperor Constantine died, followed by Shapur in his late 20s observing Constantine's sons fighting among themselves. Shapur II wanted to prove himself, and he broke the forty-years of peace that had been established with Rome. He led his armies into territory inMesopotamia and Armenia that his predecessors had lost to the Romans, and he acquired a reputation as a brave warrior with god-like power.
His war against the Romans lasted to 350. That year he had to break of war with the Roman Empire to fight an invasion by the Huns from the East. By 357 he had defeated the Huns, and he forced them into an alliance. Two years later he resumed his war against the Roman Empire and advanced to Ctesiphon. In 363 his opponent the Roman emperor Julian (the Apostate) was killed. Then Shapur pushed the Romans out of Nisibis and nearby territory. Julian's successor, the Christian Emperor Jovian, made peace with Shapur, giving back to Persia all the Mesopotamian territories taken from them as well as Nisibis and Singara. And Jovian gave Shapur the territory of Armenia. Shapur forced the Armenian king, Arsaces III, to commit suicide, and then he tried to introduce Zoroastrian orthodoxy into Armenia, resisted by Armenia's nobility.
Manichaeans were scattered and it was past Katir's time. The Zoroastrian priesthood was still hostile toward religious rivals, including Christians. They viewed Christianity as the work of the devil just as Christians view rival religious views. Persecutions against Christians within the Sassanid Empire were on going, with Christians reported as welcoming martyrdom. The survival of Christianity under the Sassanids appeared threatened, but the same slowness and inefficiency that had taken place in Rome's attempted extermination of Christianity was being repeated under the Sassanids.
Shapur II died at age 70 in the year 379. He was succeeded by his brother and then his son, Shapur III, in 383. Shapur III failed to continue the persecutions of Christians. He freed Christian prisoners, believing they would be of greater value to him pursuing their crafts and paying taxes. Shapur III died in 388 and was succeeded by his son, Bahram IV. In 399, Bahram was succeeded by his brother, Yazdegerd I. Yazdegerd respected diversity and wanted peace between the religions of his realm and helped Christians rebuild their churches destroyed during the persecutions. Yazdegerd sponsored a council meeting of Christian bishops and other Christian ecclesiastics to mend their internal quarrels, and the council created rules and an organizational structure to unite Christians within the empire. The Zoroastrian priests were displeased. They spoke of "Yazdegerd the Wicked."
The Zoroastrians had more luck with Yazdegerd's son, Bahram V, who became known for his prowess in hunting game and women. Bahram V attempted to win and maintain good will for himself among the Zoroastrians, and, in 421, the persecution of Christians resumed. Many Christians fled westward to the Roman empire, and Bahram sought their extradition. But the Roman emperor at Constantinople, Theodosius II, himself a Christian, refused Bahram's request.
Bahram V responded with another war against the Roman empire. Constantinople overpowered Persia's forces in a series of skirmishes. Bahram made a 100-year peace with Constantinople in which he agreed to grant freedom of worship for Christians in the Sassanid Empire in exchange for Constantinople granting freedom of worship for Zoroastrians under its rule.
Invasion, Famime and a failed Communist Revolution
During the reign of Bahram V trouble came as it was for the Romans: migrating foreign armies. The invaders were called Hephthalites, or White Huns, descendants perhaps of those the Chinese called Xiongnu. From the desert in central Asia they penetrated Sassanid territory to the Oxus River. Bahram V repelled the invasions, but in the second half of the 400s the Hephthalite invasions continued. Many successions later, in 484 the Hephthalites feigned a retreat, luring the new Sassanian king, Firuz, his cavalry and much of the Sassanid nobility, into a concealed pit. The Hephthalites slaughtered them all. Then they captured the king's family and treasury and forced the new Sassanid king, Balash – the brother of Firuz – to pay them tribute.
After military defeat came drought and famine, and with this came political unrest. In 488, Balash, who had been elected by nobles, was deposed by nobles and blinded. He was replaced by Kavad, a son of Firuz. Unrest among the Persians grew into rebellion, which was joined by the country's major workers' guilds – a movement led by a priest named Mazdak (or Zaradust-e Khuragan).
Communist Revolution
Mazdak's movement was a religious sect that had been founded by his father. His father had directed his followers to enjoy life and to satisfy their appetites in food and drink but to do so in a spirit of friendship and equality. He had directed them to aim also at good deeds, to extend hospitality to others, to avoid dominating others or inflicting any kind of harm on others, and especially to avoid shedding the blood of others. Following his father as leader, Mazdak proclaimed that he had been sent by God to preach that all men are born equal. He proclaimed that no one had a right to possess more than did another. He claimed that he was reforming and purifying Zoroastrianism and quoted from the Avesta, claiming that God had placed the means of subsistence on earth so that people could divide them equally. He claimed that people had strayed from this as some had sought domination over others, as the strong had defeated the weak and had taken exclusive possession over property. He described the world as having been turned from righteousness by five demons: Envy, Wrath, Vengeance, Need and Greed.
Mazdak called for distributing to the community the contents of the granaries belonging to the nobles. He proclaimed that whoever had an excess of property or women had no right to them. Mazdak's followers began plundering the homes and harems of the rich. His uprising was strong enough that the new Sassanid king of kings, Kavadh I, feared it, and for the sake of staying in power Kavadh sided with it. Kavadh approved Mazdak's call for intermarriage between aristocratic women and peasant men. The Nobles, outraged over Kavadh's siding with the revolution, captured and imprisoned him. They put his brother upon the throne, and, after three years in captivity, Kavadh escaped and fled east to the Hephthalites.
The Hephthalites were eager to have a ruler in Persia dependent upon them, and they provided Kavad with an army. In 499, Kavadh marched to the Sassanid capital, Ctesiphon, and re-established his rule. The nobles fled to their estates, and the century ended with rebellion still triumphant. But the communist revolution was not to hold power long. Zoroastrian priests and eventually Khavad and his son managed a counter-revolution. In 528, leading followers of Mazdak were massacred, and in following years other followers were persecuted and driven underground
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