Balāsh/Palāsh (484-487)

One month after king Piruz’s death, Balāsh occupied the throne. Sufrāy decided to avenge his king’s death. He prepared a strong army and sent a message to the Hephthalite king, announcing his arrival to take revenge of the senseless death of his king. Khushnawaz, who by now had occupied Marv and Herat, pleaded innocence, saying that it was Piruz who had broken the truce and hence displeased God. However, he showed readiness to fight Sufrāy.

Sufrāy and his son Zaremeher attacked and quickly decimated the Hephthalite army. The battlefield was lined with dead bodies. A defeated Khushnawaz requested Sufrāy to stop the attack and offered to give him back everything taken from the Iranians and free the prisoners. Sufrāy accepted the proposal and asked him to release crown prince Kobad, princess Piruz-dokht and high priest Ardeshir. Sufrāy and Kobad then returned to Iran amidst triumphant celebrations arranged by Balāsh. A few years later Sufrāy asked Balāsh to vacate the throne and hand it over to Kobad who according to him was a better administrator. Balāsh grudgingly acceded to this request.

Kobad I (first reign) (487-496)

Kobad shifted his capital from Istakhra to Ctesiphon. In the initial years of his reign, he had to contend with the Turkik Khazars who had established their kingdom between the Don and Volga rivers. They came through the Caucasus passes and raided Armenia, Albania and Azarbaizan. Kobad was successful in crushing the Khazar forces. To check their invasions, a fortress was built at the place of their entry.

In 510 CE, Sufrāy, content with life, shifted back to his hometown Shiraz, confident that Kobad would always be grateful to him for making him the king. However, some evil courtiers instigated Kobad by telling him that Sufrāy was more powerful, popular and loved than the king. He was told that Sufrāy had plans to rebel against him. The instigation worked on Kobad, and he asked Shahpur Rāzi, Sufrāy’s only enemy to go and bring Sufrāy. Shahpur took a small army and proceeded to Shiraz. When Sufrāy came to know of this he too prepared an army.

When Shahpur met Sufrāy, he told him of his king’s orders. Sufrāy was very disappointed but accepted his orders and went to him. Kobad immediately threw him into a prison and attached all his wealth and property.

Kobad’s ministers informed him that all subjects were heavily in favour of Sufrāy and were sympathetic towards him. If he was alive he would be a grave danger to the king. Hearing this, Kobad ordered Sufrāy to be executed. This act of Kobad, greatly alienated him in the eyes of his subjects and ministers.

Mazdak, the heretic

Several years into the reign of king Kobad, a Syrian by the name Mazdak, son of Bāmdād, having extreme socialistic ideas, came into the court claiming to be a prophet. In his younger days, he was a member of the Manichaean movement. He had been preaching his doctrines in western Iran since 484 CE. The basis of his teachings was the outrageous socialist idea, that there should be no individual right or affiliation to wealth, property and women, and they should be shared by all, since wealth, property and women give rise to the five vices of jealousy, anger, revenge, greed and lust.

Mazdak was a clear threat to the established Zoroastrian religion and its clergy. His teachings downplayed the role of hard work, rituals and ceremonies in the religion and instead preferred asceticism as the way of life. Mazdak had thousands of followers in a short time, most of them from the lowest rung of society. Kobad was highly influenced by Mazdak and appointed him his minister and treasurer. The execution of Sufrāy, compounded by his close proximity to Mazdak, made the clergy and nobility rise in rebellion against their king.  In 496 CE they chained Kobad in the old fort of Anoshbard in Khuzestan, and made his younger brother Jamasp, the king.

Jamasp (496-498)

Jamasp is king for two years

In 496 CE, Jamasp, the younger brother of Kobad, was made the king. Jamasp went on to fight in Armenia, where he defeated the Khazars, and conquered some of their territory. There he married an Armenian woman from a royal family, who bore him a son named Narseh. In his brief reign, Jamasp minted coins which had the fire altar on the reverse side.

The angry subjects had entrusted Kobad to Zaremeher, son of Sufrāy. However, this noble person forgave Kobad and instead pledged his support and helped him flee the prison, which made the king very repentant. He decided to repay this act of nobility in future. Since Kobad had stayed with the Hephthalite king as his hostage, he had developed strong ties with him, which helped now. He sought the help of the Hephthalite king and got an army from him. He also married his daughter. In return the Hephthalite king asked for the town of Chagan and its treasures, to which Kobad agreed.

Kobad I (second reign) (498-531)

Kobad regains throne

After peacefully regaining the throne, Kobad prepared an army of forty thousand soldiers, and with the help of Zaremeher marched into Ahwaz, and then into the capital city of Ctesiphon. Jamasp peacefully yielded the throne back, and thus Kobad regained his crown in 498 CE. The Iranian people requested him not to harm the young Jamasp. In due course, Kobad’s queen gave birth to a beautiful boy who was named Khushru. As he grew up, he was entrusted to teachers for his royal training.

In the second part of his rule which lasted for about thirty years, Kobad had to always be alert for incursions from three fronts, Hephthalites from the east, Romans from the west and Arabs from the south.

First Byzanto-Persian war

In 502, Kobad himself launched a full-scale invasion of Byzantine during the rule of emperor Anastasius (491-518), as the Roman emperor had stopped paying taxes. This resulted in the first Byzanto-Persian war.

Initially, the city of Theodosiopolis fell and then Amida fell in 503 after an eighty day siege. However Kobad was not able to hold on to Amida for long. The Roman emperor sent re-inforcements and Kobad had to surrender Amida in 504. In 505, a seven year peace treaty was concluded with the Romans.

Second Byzanto-Persian war

In 526 CE, when Kobad was busy fighting the Hephthalites, some of the Roman commanders made encroachments in Iranian territory. The king complained to the Roman emperor Anastasius, but he did not help, and after his death, Julian, the emperor that followed, too did not pay heed. So Kobad marched into Lezica, and then into Mesopotamia in 527, and defeated the Romans. In 527 Kobad had to battle in Mesopotamia with the Arabs, the Huns and the Romans, all at the same time.

Emperor Justin died in 528 and his nephew Justinian became the emperor. There was a war between Persian commander Firuz and Roman commander Belisarius at the fort of Dara, in which the Romans won with the help of Massagetae soldiers. Till 531, battles continued with the Romans in Armenia, Georgia and Lazica with changing fortunes.

Kobad fought the Hephthalites almost continuously for ten years. But after that, they were defeated so emphatically, that their power in Iran diminished drastically and they were not heard of much.

Death of Mazdak

The influence of Mazdak and his socialist teachings had to be tolerated by Kobad and his court. Once Mazdak’s chief followers plotted against the king, planning to have him replaced by one of the princes, who was their disciple and hence would be their puppet. They were planning to make Mazdakism the state religion. When Kobad became aware of this plot, he feigned readiness for abdication, called all the leading supporters of Mazdak for a meeting and had all of them murdered.

Prince Khushru, now a young man, was not at all impressed by Mazdak’s ideas. Moreover, Mazdak also made a claim on Kobad’s queen, who was Khushru’s mother, which greatly infuriated Khushru. Mazdak complained to the king that his son was not accepting his teachings. On being summoned, Khushru told his father that he would reveal the hollowness of Mazdak’s teachings and prove his treachery in six months. In the meanwhile Khushru minutely studied the teachings of Mazdak and challenged him to an open debate.

Mazdak was defeated in the debate, his lies were exposed and he was sentenced to death along with his three thousand disciples.

From 524 to 528, Kobad allowed Khushru to unleash a campaign of persecution against the Mazdakites. Some followers fled to Syria, Arabia and Rome. Khushru systematically tried to destroy the traces of Mazdakism.

But the long exposure of the Iranian society to Mazdak’s teachings had already done considerable damage. The philosophy of Mazdak had been so widespread that it continued for a long time even after his death. A few of Mazdak’s followers are believed to have existed in Afghanistan and nearby places till recent times.

Kobad’s religious policy

Kobad had a tolerant religious policy. He represented himself as an advocate of orthodox Zoroastrianism.  However he did not harm the Christians under him either, and they practiced their religion without any persecution.

Like his predecessors, Kobad too built had Atash Behrams and had them maintained well. On many of his coins the fire altars figure prominently on the reverse.

End of Kobad I

Kobad’s long reign was marked by internal fighting and contending with Mazdak on one side, and fight with the Romans, Huns and Arabs on the other. He fought bravely till the very end in all his battles, and himself directed the forces in most of them. He ruled for forty years and passed away at the age of eighty two, after which he was ceremoniously laid to rest in the Dakhma.