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sasanid collapse 659
payers in the royal domain but also an attempt to reintroduce direct royal
taxation in the domains of grandees, who had by now come to regard this
as a blatant encroachment upon their privileges: the nobles proved to be
the ultimate cause of his downfall. Thus Khusro II’s riches cannot be
attributed to the tax reforms of Khusro I.
vi. sasanid collapse
The last decades of the Sasanid dynasty are the story of a chain of violent
upheavals, which expose all the inherent weaknesses of the huge empire. The
reforms of Khusro I did constitute a serious attempt to cope with these weaknesses
and to re-establish the king’s position on a firmer basis. They failed in
the long run because they strove to superimpose the framework of a fully
centralized state, with a salaried civil bureaucracy and army, financed by an
efficient and easily manageable taxation apparatus, on a realm which proved
too weak to carry these heavy burdens. The political and military organization
of its vast territories was too flimsy, the economic infrastructure was too
primitive, and the social structure was fixed by traditions that could not be
easily transformed. Khusro’s own conservatism was a characteristic
reflection of these traditions, for it was Khusro who did a lot to restore the
battered nobility to its traditional powers after the Mazdakite interlude.
Warfare had always been the primary activity of the Sasanid state, but
even by its own standards the last century of its existence witnessed a sustained
intensity of campaigning that may have weakened the structures of
society. After the outbreak of war against Justin I in 527, there were only
twenty-eight years of formal peace with Rome until the conclusive victory
of Heraclius in 628 – and this is to ignore the recurrent tensions which
embroiled the Arab satellites of the rival empires, Sasanid involvement in
the affairs of the Arabian peninsula and the struggle to maintain control in
sub-Caucasian principalities such as Suania and Albania. We know much
less about the sequence of campaigns on the north-eastern frontier, but
these were probably more debilitating. Khusro’s apparent triumph over the
Hephthalites in the 550s was only achieved through alliance with the rising
Turkish federation, which now replaced the Hephthalites as Persia’s neighbours
and soon constituted a far more powerful threat during the 570s and
580s. 57 No less than Justinian, Khusro was repeatedly involved in wars on
more than one front, and the expenses of eastern campaigning probably
proved much heavier than the gains from spoils, ransoms and payments
stipulated in his treaties with Rome.
The success of the state depended ultimately on the character and reputation
of the king, and there was a recurrent danger that such a personal
57 Menander fr. 10.3; 13.5 (Blockley); Theophylact iii.6.9–14.
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