Khosrau had been at the top of the world.
Now, he lay tossing and turning on a bed far from his royal palace,
surrounded by an army that couldn't even stand, much less raise a sword.
And as word of Khosrau's illness traveled home, it reached the ears of his son, Anush Zad.
Music (Birth of the People)
Anush Zad had been locked in prison.
Not the Fortress of Oblivion, there were too many Kavadh shaped holes in that particular jail.
No. A different prison just outside Ctesiphon.
The young man had been caught getting busy with some of Khosrau's wives,
and was locked away as punishment.
Well briefly.
It turns out that jail breaking skills ran in the family.
Just like the Mazdakites had flocked to Kawus a decade prior,
Christians in Khosrau's court began flocking to his Christian son Anush Zad.
But here Khosraus's reform efforts came to his rescue.
Even though the army he'd led against Rome was now devastated by plague,
He still had plenty of loyal soldiers serving back home.
When one of them brought word of Anush Zad's rebellion,
Khosrau sent the man back with two objectives;
kill the Christians and capture my son.
The fight was bloody.
Khosrau's generals quickly overpowered Anush Zad, who had little military experience,
but the young man refused to be captured.
He died fighting alongside his followers, who were quickly rounded up and put to the sword.
Khosrau prided himself on his open-mindedness,
and once boasted that he had not rejected anyone for belonging to a different religion or people,
but while he continued to defend Christianity's right to exist within his empire,
he began to view certain Christians as political threats.
Those who had supported Anush Zad seemed to demand a ruler who shared their faith,
and already Khosrau had seen two territories on his western border try to leave his empire to join Christian Rome.
The political power of Christianity threatened to overwhelm Iran and Khosrau had to stop it.
Plague had forced him to make peace with Justinian,
but that very peace allowed him to turn his attention toward Justinian's allies.
Christians from Ethiopia had crossed over into Yemen decades before,
and during the war Justinian had tried to convince them to attack Iran across the Persian Gulf.
They would have don it too, if they didn't have so many of their own civil war issues to deal with.
Khosrau seized this opportunity
He marched his army into Yemen, pushed back the Ethiopians, and installed a loyal Arabic King.
In a single move, he not only managed to push Justinian's allies out of the region and replace them with his own,
but he also locked down the last sea route to India.
Now both Rome and Africa would have to go through his ports and pay his taxes
if they wanted luxury spices, silks, and teas from the east.
Unfortunately Khosrau's control of the eastern trade soon put him at odds with his own allies.
You remember those Hephthalites who killed Khosrau's grandfather?
Kavadh had eventually sought revenge for that offense by waging several wars against them-
after using their help and technology to secure his own throne, of course.
But as always, it fell to Khosrau to finish the job.
He teamed up with the northern Turks to attack the Hephthalites from multiple directions,
and together they wiped the Hepthalite empire off the face of the earth.
Khosrau took a chunk out of their old southern territory and left the rest to the Turks,
so they could form their own new kingdom in the north.
The Turks settled right in and started trading with merchants from the Silk Road.
They wanted to follow Iran's lead and sell their new luxury goods to the Romans at a huge markup.
But to get to Rome they would have to go through Iran.
They naturally assumed that their old ally Khosrau would be cool about this, and give them a lower tax rate.
But Khosrau did not 'be cool'. He had just secured the last few silk trade routes for his empire.
Why would he want to give up that monopoly?
So he sent the Turks away empty-handed.
And naturally, they were furious,
but the Turks had learned a few tricks during their time allied with Khosrau.
They sent a message to Rome proposing that the two of them team up to form a pincer around Iran.
Exactly like Khosrau had urged them to do to the Hephthalites.
Now, Justinian had passed away at this point, and left the throne to his nephew, Justin the second,
and Rome wasn't doing so hot.
All of the looming problems of Justinian's grand and ambitious reign had collapsed on to his nephew.
The treasury was empty,
The army was stretched thin,
and Justin was just not the same savvy operator his uncle had been.
Justin resented the annual tribute that Justinian had agreed to pay Iran for guarding the Caucasian gates,
and destroying Iran seemed like the best solution-
which maybe it would have been,
if he'd had a competent army, or money, or any advantage at all, really.
The one advantage he'd expected to have didn't materialize.
The Turks never got their army together to support Rome's attack.
But Justin wanted this war now and Khosrau's growing distrust of the Christians in his empire soon provoked it.
In an effort to prevent any more of his border territories from switching sides,
Khosrau sent an administrator to the Christian province of Greater Armenia
with orders to strengthen Zoroastrian worship there.
Despite the objections of the Armenians, who had long ago been promised a religious freedom,
Khosrau's official built a new Zoroastrian Fire Temple.
The Armenians reached out to Justin, asking if he would support them switching sides,
and of course he would.
So they launched their war in the most dramatic way possible;
The Armenians killed Khosrau's official and Justin immediately halted his tribute to Iran.
Khosrau cracked his knuckles at this and replied,
All right kiddo. Let me show you why your uncle learned never to mess with me.
Once again the armies of Iran swept into eastern Rome.
Khosrau relished this chance to finish what he'd started thirty years ago,
and despite being seventy years old now, he led the armies himself.
They swept up towns along the border while Justin's troops languished in a siege in an Armenian city not far from Dara.
Furious that his army had accomplished so little while Iran had conquered so much,
Justin abruptly fired his general and left his troops in a panic.
They abandoned the siege and fled, leaving their weapons and equipment behind.
Khosrau sauntered over to the abandoned war camp,
picked up those weapons with a "thank you very much",
and set off to conquer Dara.
Been 72 years since the Romans built that fort in violation of the treaty they once had with Iran,
and to Khosrau that meant that it was well past time that Dara fell.
He spared no expense
He diverted an entire River and cut all of the aqueducts to break the city's water supply.
Then he carved rocks from the mountains themselves
to build ramparts that would let his troops storm over the wall.
Dara, that monument to Roman treachery and stubborn defiance,
Finally fell.
When Justin heard about this loss, it broke him.
He descended into madness, literally snapping at the attendants who tried to nurse him back to health.
During a rare moment of lucidity, Justin's wife Sofia convinced him to appoint his general, Tiberius, as Co-Emperor.
She also negotiated a short truce with Khosrau, and bought Rome time to stabilize.
In return, Khosrau got to have free reign in Armenia, which the truce now left unprotected.
He quickly moved his army over there and began sacking cities,
while Tiberius struggled to put his army back together.
It took five years, but he did it.
He was finally ready to take on Khosrau.
The old Shah was so preoccupied leading his troops over in Armenia
that this newly rejuvenated Roman force caught him by surprise.
They circled his camp at night and forced him to flee,
abandoning his pavilion and all of the riches he'd gathered.
His retreat path led across a river, but while Khosrau crossed safely on the back of an elephant,
many of his troops were swept away.
Only by wreaking havoc and setting fire to the towns on the other side of the river
did he manage to throw off the Roman pursuit and escape to the safety of Iranian land.
The shame of this defeat compelled Khosrau to pass a new law,
forbidding future Shahs from leading armies into battle.
He returned to Ctesiphon and let his generals take the lead.
The excited Roman generals pushed their advantage but they pushed too far,
handing an easy victory back to Iran that stabilized the war.
Both sides sought peace at this point.
An embassy from Tiberius was on its way to Iran for approval of the final terms,
but before it even reached Ctesiphon, Khosrau died of old age.
Khosrau had built upon the groundwork laid by his father to remake an empire and create an Iranian Golden Age.
But that Golden Age ended with him.
His son rejected the peace terms with Rome and went back to war.
He quarreled with the Arabic allies who had so long guarded Iran's southern border.
The Turks saw this long-awaited opportunity and struck at his overextended armies.
In the end, even the courts turned against Khosrau's son and overthrew him.
In the decades that followed the Sasanian dynasty struggled to maintain the vast army Khosrau had built.
They struggled to support the centers of learning Khosrau had cherished.
And ultimately they fell.
Not to Rome, and not to Christianity,
but to the Muslims, a new force that rose up from the south.
And here perhaps, Khosrau found his legacy.
Because while his descendants had failed to keep the empire together,
the Muslims studied his way of governing Iran and adopted it.
They admired his university and brought its wisdom back with them to Baghdad.
But that is a story for another day.
Thanks for watching.
Music (The Immortal Soul)
Captions done by some random guy on the internet who goes by ZachStarAttack