With good reason the Moslems called the triumph of Nehavend the “victory of victories.” It completely shattered the empire of Persia. The Arabs had a long contest before them, until they had really conquered all the provinces of the vast monarchy, but it consisted of isolated struggles in which there could be no doubt of the ultimate issue, as their enemies had lost all cohesion. Many towns and districts had to be subjugated again and again, because they were constantly rebelling. The most obstinate resistance appears to have been offered in Persia proper, especially about Istakhr, the cradle of the empire of the Sassanidæ and the centre of its religion. Many of the great provincial nobles and some of the lesser entered into friendly agreement with the Arabs. They one and all met them on the footing of independent sovereigns.
King Yezdegerd meanwhile led a wretched life. He could not summon up courage to set his life on the stake for his crown and empire. He fled from one satrap to another. He seems to have stayed longest at Istakhr, the home of his race. The outward pomp of royalty was left him, coins were still struck in his name, but as soon as he became a troublesome guest he was sent away. At length he took refuge in the extreme northeast, and there he was miserably murdered, in the neighbourhood of Merv. The circumstances of his death, which took place in 651 or 652, are not exactly known, but it seems tolerably certain that Mahoe, satrap of Merv, had a hand in it. [For the traditional account see page 154, this volume.]
The similarity of the circumstances under which the Achæmenid and Sassanid empires perished forces itself upon our notice, a similarity which, though apparently fortuitous, indicates a great correspondence in character. As the battle on the Granicus first fully showed the formidable nature of the enemy, as Issus cost the king his western provinces and Gaugamela rent the empire asunder without thereby making the victor master of all its several provinces, so it came to pass nearly one thousand years later, with the battles of Buwaib, Kadisiya, and Nehavend. And as the fugitive Darius was slain, in the northeast, not by enemies but by treacherous nobles, so it was with Yezdegerd, who was no more a hero than he. The Persian nobility did not exhibit so gross a lack of patriotism and loyalty in the case of the Arabs as in that of Alexander; the vivid consciousness of religious differences and the ruder manners of the Arabs made adherence to them more difficult; but there was no lack of traitors of high rank nor of renegades among the greater and lesser nobles. The complete subjugation of the Persian monarchy took the Arabs much longer than it had taken the great Macedonian, but on the other hand its effects were much more lasting; Hellenism touched the mere surface of Persia, but Iran has been thoroughly permeated by Arab religion and Arab characteristics.
[652-750 A.D.]
A fragment of the Sassanid empire continued to exist for some time longer. The hereditary crown-generals (Shahpat, Ispehbedh) of Khorasan, of the house of Karen, withdrew into the mountain country of Tabaristan (Mazanderan) and there reigned for more than one hundred years, though they occasionally found themselves under the necessity of paying tribute to the caliph. They remained faithful to the religion of Zoroaster. The era which they struck upon their coins begins, in all probability, with the death of Yezdegerd, and they thus seemed to have looked upon themselves as the direct succession of the last Sassanid king.[b]
FOOTNOTES
[30] [Or according to Von Gutschmid, 227; see chapter I.]
Bronze Hinge from Antique Chest