| Battle of Gol-Zarriun | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of Hephthalite–Persian Wars | |||||||||
 Turkic horsemen on the Miho funerary couch, c.570 CE. [1] | |||||||||
| |||||||||
| Belligerents | |||||||||
| Sasanian Empire First Turkic Khaganate | Hephthalite Empire | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
| Khosrow I Istämi | Ghadfar | ||||||||
  Location within West and Central Asia | |||||||||
The Battle of Gol-Zarriun, [3] also known as Battle of Bukhara, took place in c. 560 when the Sasanian Empire allied with the First Turkic Khaganate against the Hephthalite Empire.
In 484, Peroz I, the grandfather of Khosrow I Anushirvan (r. 531–579), was killed in the Battle of Herat (484) by the Hephthalites and allowed them to annex much of Khorasan from the Sasanians.
After a stable peace agreement with the Byzantines in the west, Khosrow I was able to focus his attention on the Eastern Hephthalites and avenge the death of his grandfather. Even with the growth of Sasanian military power under Khosrow's reforms, the Sasanians were still uneasy at the prospect of attacking the Hephthalites on their own and sought allies. Their answer came in the form of the Göktürks incursion into Central Asia. [4] The movement of Turkic people into Central Asia quickly made them natural enemies and competitors to the Hephthalites.
The Hephthalites possessed military power, but they lacked the organization to fight on multiple fronts. According to the account of Firdausi in the Shahname, the Hephthalites were supported by troops from Balkh, Shughnan, Amol, Zamm, Khuttal, Termez and Washgird. [5] The Sasanians and the Turks made an alliance and launched a two-pronged attack on the Hephthalites, taking advantage of their disorganization and disunity. As a result, the Turks took the territory north of the Oxus River, while the Sasanians annexed the land south of the river. [6]
The Hephthalite Empire was destroyed after the battle, and broke into several minor kingdoms, such as the one ruled by the Hephthalite prince Faghanish in Chaghaniyan. Ghadfar and what was left of his men fled southward to Sasanian territory, where they took refuge. [7] Meanwhile, the Turkic Khagan Sinjibu reached an agreement with the Hephthalite nobility, and appointed Faghanish as the new Hephthalite king. [8]
This was much to the dislike of Khosrow I, who considered the Turkic collaboration with the Hephthalites to pose a danger for his rule in the east, and thus marched towards the Sasanian-Turkic border in Gurgan. When he reached the place, he was met by a Turkic delegate of Sinjibu that presented him gifts. [8] There Khosrow asserted his authority and military potency, and persuaded the Turks to make an alliance with him. The alliance contained a treaty that made it obligatory for Faghanish to be sent to the Sasanian court in Ctesiphon and gain the approval of Khosrow for his status as Hephthalite king. [8] Faghanish and his kingdom of Chaghaniyan thus became a vassal of the Sasanian Empire, which set the Oxus as the eastern frontier of the Sasanians and Turks. [9] [2] However, friendly relations between the Turks and the Sasanians quickly deteriorated after that. Both the Turks and the Sasanians wanted to dominate the Silk Road and the trade between the west and the far east. [6] In 568, a Turkish ambassador was sent to the Byzantine Empire to propose an alliance and a two-pronged attack on the Sassanian Empire, but nothing came of this. [10]
Khosrow I, traditionally known by his epithet of Anushirvan, was the King of Kings of the Sassanian Empire from 531 to 579. He was the son and successor of Kavad I.
Kavad I was the Sasanian King of Kings of Iran from 488 to 531, with a two or three-year interruption. A son of Peroz I, he was crowned by the nobles to replace his deposed and unpopular uncle Balash.
Khosrow II, commonly known as Khosrow Parviz, is considered to be the last great Sasanian king (shah) of Iran, ruling from 590 to 628, with an interruption of one year.
Hormizd IV was the Sasanian King of Kings of Iran from 579 to 590. He was the son and successor of Khosrow I and his mother was a Khazar princess.
Yazdegerd III was the last Sasanian King of Kings of Iran from 632 to 651. His father was Shahriyar and his grandfather was Khosrow II.
The Hephthalites, sometimes called the White Huns, were a people who lived in Central Asia during the 5th to 8th centuries CE, part of the larger group of Eastern Iranian Huns. They formed an empire, the Imperial Hephthalites, and were militarily important from 450 CE, when they defeated the Kidarites, to 560 CE, when combined forces from the First Turkic Khaganate and the Sasanian Empire defeated them. After 560 CE, they established "principalities" in the area of Tokharistan, under the suzerainty of the Western Turks and of the Sasanian Empire, before the Tokhara Yabghus took over in 625.
Xionites, Chionites, or Chionitae were a nomadic people in the Central Asian regions of Transoxiana and Bactria.
The Kidarites, or Kidara Huns, were a dynasty that ruled Bactria and adjoining parts of Central Asia and South Asia in the 4th and 5th centuries. The Kidarites belonged to a complex of peoples known collectively in India as the Huna, and in Europe as the Chionites, and may even be considered as identical to the Chionites. The 5th century Byzantine historian Priscus called them Kidarite Huns, or "Huns who are Kidarites". The Huna/Xionite tribes are often linked, albeit controversially, to the Huns who invaded Eastern Europe during a similar period. They are entirely different from the Hephthalites, who replaced them about a century later.
Bahrām Chōbīn or Wahrām Chōbēn, also known by his epithet Mehrbandak, was a nobleman, general, and political leader of the late Sasanian Empire and briefly its ruler as Bahram VI.
The First Perso-Turkic War was fought during 588–589 between the Sasanian Empire and Hephthalite principalities and its lord the Göktürks. The conflict started with the invasion of the Sasanian Empire by the Turks and ended with a decisive Sasanian victory and the reconquest of lost lands.
Chaghaniyan, known as al-Saghaniyan in Arabic sources, was a medieval region and principality located on the right bank of the Oxus River, to the south of Samarkand.
Bagha Qaghan was the seventh Khagan (587–588) of the Eastern Wing of Göktürks during the turmoil inside the khaganate. He has been erraneously associated with Šāwa, Sāva, or Sāba in Persian sources.
The Muslim conquest of Transoxiana, also called the Arab conquest of Transoxiana, was part of the early Muslim conquests. It began shortly after the Muslim conquest of Persia enabled the Arabs to enter Central Asia. Relatively small-scale incursions had taken place under the Rashidun Caliphate, but it was not until after the establishment of the Umayyad Caliphate that an organized military effort was made to conquer Transoxiana, a region that today includes all or parts of Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan. The campaign continued under the Abbasid Caliphate, and gradually saw the Islamization of the region.
The Principality of Chaghaniyan, known in Arabic sources as al-Saghaniyan, was a part of the Hephthalite Confederation from the 5th to the 7th century CE. After this, it was ruled by a local, presumably Iranian dynasty, which governed the Chaghaniyan region from the late 7th-century to the early 8th-century CE. These rulers were known by their titles of “Chaghan Khudah”.
The term Iranian Huns is sometimes used for a group of different tribes that lived in Central Asia, in the historical regions of Transoxiana, Bactria, Tokharistan, Kabul Valley, and Gandhara, overlapping with the modern-day Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Eastern Iran, Pakistan, and Northwest India, between the fourth and seventh centuries. They also threatened the Northeast borders of Sasanian Iran and forced the Shahs to lead many ill-documented campaigns against them.
Kadagistan was the name of an eastern Sasanian province in the region of Tokharistan, established by Khosrow I after his victory over the Hephthalite Empire in 557. The capital of the province was Warlu, a city located in the valley of the Kunduz River.
Faghanish was a Hephthalite prince, who was the ruler of Chaghaniyan in the mid-6th century. Originally a subordinate of the Hephthalite king, he became a vassal of the Sasanian Empire in c. 560 after the Hephthalite Empire was broken into several minor kingdoms when they suffered a crushing defeat to a combined Sasanian-Turkic army at Gol-Zarriun.
Balalyk tepe, in former Bactria, modern Uzbekistan, is a Central Asian archaeological site with many mural paintings. It was the site of a small fortified manor belonging to a princely Hephthalite clan. It is generally dated a bit later than the painting at Dilberjin, from the late 5th century to the early 7th century CE, or from the end of the 6th century to the early 7th century CE. The paintings of Balalyk Tepe are part of a "Tokharistan school", which also includes Adzhina-tepe and Kafyr-kala. They are succeeded chronologically by the Sogdian art of Penjikent.
The Tokhara Yabghus or Yabghus of Tokharistan were a dynasty of Western Turk–Hephtalite sub-kings with the title "Yabghus", who ruled from 625 CE in the area of Tokharistan north and south of the Oxus River, with some smaller remnants surviving in the area of Badakhshan until 758 CE. Their legacy extended to the southeast where it came into contact with the Turk Shahis and the Zunbils until the 9th century CE.
The siege of Tbilisi (627-628) was a siege by the Byzantine Empire and Western Turkic Khaganate in 627-628 against Prince Stephen I of Iberia, the Sasanid vassal ruler of Sasanian Iberia.
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