Beate Dignas & Engelbert Winter - Kaveh Farrokh

36 Enforced resettlement of prisoners 255
Chronicle of Se ert, PO iv 220–1
In the eleventh year of his reign ˇ Sāpūr son of Ardaˇsīr entered the land of the
Byzantines, where he remained for some time laying waste to many towns. He
defeated the emperor Valerian and took him prisoner, taking him to the land
of the Nabataeans, where he fell ill from grief and died. Then (and) the bishops
whom the wicked Valerian had exiled returned to their sees. When ˇ Sāpūr
left the Byzantine lands he brought with him captives whom he settled in Iraq,
Ahwaz, Persia and in the cities founded by his father. He himself founded three
cities, giving them names derived from his own. The first of them lies in the
land of Maiˇsan, he named it Sod Sapor, and is now called (this is) Deir Mahraq.
The second one is in Persia and is still (up to our time) called ˇ Sāpūr. He also
rebuilt Gundēˇsāpūr, which had been demolished and called it Antiˇsāpūr. This
name is a mixture of Greek and Persian and it means: ‘you are the opposite of
ˇSāpūr’. He founded a third city on the Tigris river and he gave it the name
Marw Habur and currently this is Ukbura and its surroundings. In these cities
he settled a number of captives, distributing among them lands to cultivate and
houses to live in, and because of this the number of Christians in Persia increased.
Monasteries and churches were built. Among the settlers were priests taken captive
in Antioch who settled in Gundēˇsāpūr. They elected Azdaq from Antioch as
their bishop because Demetrius, patriarch of Antioch, had fallen ill and died of
grief.
The author gives a detailed list of the Persian territories and cities where the
Roman prisoners were settled. According to the chronicler the resettlements
led to an increase of the Christian population in the Sasanian Empire. 52
Tabarī also talks about the deportations under ˇ Sāpūr I.
Tabarī, Ta rīh i 827–8
Then he passed from there (Nisibis) to Syria and Roman Anatolia and conquered
a great number of cities. It is said that Cilicia and Cappadocia were among the
territories that he took, and that he besieged a king who happened to be in Anatolia
called Valerianus in the city of Antioch, captured him, and took him together with
a large group that was with him and settled them in Gundēˇsāpūr. It is mentioned
that he forced Valerianus to build the dam at Sostar at a width of one thousand
cubits. The Roman had it constructed by a group sent to him by the Romans. He
made ˇ Sāpūr promise to release him after he had finished building the dam. It is
said that he took from him great wealth and that he set him free after he cut his
nose off. It is also said that he killed him.
Tabarī’s words suggest that there were many skilled workers among the
Roman prisoners. In fact, among the Roman prisoners who were settled
52 On the Christianisation of Sasanian Iran after the deportations and on the consequences of this
development for the Roman–Sasanian relations see Decret 1979: 91–152 and Wiesehöfer 1993: 369.