Great uncertainty prevails as to the dates and details of the campaigns undertaken by the Anūshirawān in association with the Turks against their inveterate foes. But their result is not open to question; for about the year 560 we find the territories of the White Huns divided between the allies. The Turks then became masters of Transoxiana, while the Persians took possession of Balkh and Tokhāristān. The Oxus served as the boundary between their respective spheres of influence.[70] Then Bactria, which had been a perpetual thorn in Persia’s side, became one of its provinces, and the fate of Pīrūz was fully avenged. Anūshirawān set a seal to his friendship with the Turks by espousing their chief’s daughter; but the alliance did not produce lasting results. The Romans regarded with unconcealed apprehension the alliance between foes which threatened the existence of their Western Empire, and they sent frequent embassies to the Turkish Khākān with a view to detaching him from Anūshirawān. The reconciliation was partially successful, but the recurrence of disorders on his frontier led the Persian king to build the great city of Darband, to serve as a rallying point in repulsing Turkish attacks. After its completion we hear little of their troublesome neighbours, and Anūshirawān’s concluding years were exempt from the troubles which had overwhelmed so many of his predecessors.
On the death of Chosrau Anūshirawān in A.D. 579, Hormuz IV., his son by the daughter of the Turkish Khākān, ascended the throne. The new reign was soon clouded by war with Rome, and his own kinsmen on the maternal side. At one period Hormuz endured simultaneous attacks from four different quarters. A Turkish prince, called by Tabari, Shāba, at the head of 300,000 warriors advanced as far as Bādghīs and Herāt. The Roman emperor, with an army of 80,000 strong, attacked Hormuz in the Syrian desert. The king of the Khazars led a large force against Darband, and finally two Arab chieftains raided the Euphrates Valley. Shāba sent Hormuz a haughty message “to see that his bridges and roads were in good order, for that he intended to cross Persia on his way to the Romans.” The Persian monarch’s reply was the despatch of a nobleman of Ray, named Bahrām Chūbīn, in command of twelve thousand picked veterans, to hinder the progress of the Turks. Bahrām advanced against them by forced marches, and surprised Shāba in his camp. The Turks were routed, and Shāba perished by an arrow from Bahrām’s bow. The dead chieftain’s son was taken prisoner, and sent together with 250,000 camel-loads of booty to Hormuz. The victorious general was straightway despatched to Transcaucasia to oppose the Romans; but there he met with a crushing defeat. It is not within the scope of the present work to record all the details of the extraordinary career of Bahrām Chūbīn, who is one of the favourite heroes of Persian poetry.[71] Suffice it to state that Hormuz, in an evil hour for himself, deprived the great general of his command as a punishment for his failure in the campaign against the Romans, and then drove him into a revolt which led to his own dethronement (590). His successor, Chosrau II., surnamed Parvīz “the Victorious,” proved a despot of the true Oriental type. He began his reign by slaughtering an uncle Bendoe, to whose efforts he owed the throne of Persia. Another uncle called Bistām, who had stood by him at the crisis of his fate, escaped his clutches, and held out against him for six years with the aid of the Turks and people of Daylam, succumbing at length to treachery. But Parvīz was a brave and capable soldier; and at one period of his career it seemed as though Persia were destined to build up an eastern empire on the ruins of the Roman sway. In 613 he conquered Damascus, and in the following year Jerusalem bowed its stubborn neck to the Persian yoke.[72] But a new movement was gathering force which was destined to sweep before it the effete civilisation of Persia and Byzantium.