THE RULE OF YEZDEGERD I

H1is successor, Yezdegerd I, a son of Sapor II or Sapor III, seemed to have been designated as heir to the throne or otherwise invested with some sovereign dignity even during the life-time of Bahram IV, for his name appears on coins in conjunction with the king’s.

2For all that he was far from being a Christian, and did not scruple to visit with severe chastisement the blind zeal which led Bishop Abda of Susiana to violate Zoroastrian sanctuaries. But the measure of toleration which he extended to Christianity was enough to rouse the hatred of the Persian priesthood, while the warlike nobility were probably ill pleased by his earnest desire to maintain peace with Rome. In the summer of 408 he concluded a firm treaty of peace and alliance, by which he seems to have undertaken a formal guarantee for the reign of the emperor Theodosius II, then a minor. He set a trustworthy vassal king over Persian Armenia in the person of his son Sapor. We have every reason to regard him as a skilful ruler for his time and country. But he was not well pleasing to the god of Persia. Wherefore he caused him to die suddenly in marvellous wise in far Hyrcania. We prosaically interpret this miracle to mean that he was murdered by the despotic nobles (probably late in the summer of 420); even as his three predecessors had been violently deprived of their sovereignty, and two of them murdered.

3After his death, his son Sapor hastened from Armenia to the capital, no doubt intending to become king of the empire, but was murdered by the great nobles, for the latter were so exasperated against Yezdegerd that they resolved to exclude his sons from the succession. They chose a distant relative of his, Chosroes by name, to be their king. But another son of Yezdegerd, Bahram by name, contested his claim to the throne. During his father’s life-time this son had lived, presumably in a sort of banishment, with al-Mundhir (Alamundaros) the Arab king of Hira (west of the Euphrates and on the borders of the desert), a powerful vassal king. The latter supported Bahram’s pretensions with all his might, and this is probably the first time that the Arabs effectively interfered in the course of Persian history.