Hephthalite–Sasanian War of 484

Battle of Herat
Map of the Sassanid empire after the disaster against the Hephthalites, light green is the areas the Sassanids lost to the Hephthalites, however, the Sassanids later recaptured occupied land from the Hephthalites in the Battle of Bukhara,when the Sassanids and the Western Turkic Khaganate formed an alliance to defeat the Hephthalites.
Date 484 Location Herat, Afghanistan Result Decisive Hephthalite victory.
Belligerents
Hephthalite Empire	Sassanid Empire
Commanders and leaders
Khushnavaz	Peroz I  † Mihran  †
Strength
Unknown	100,000 soldiers
Casualties and losses
Unknown	Heavy

The Battle of Herat was a large scale military confrontation that took place in 484 between an invading force of the Sassanid Empire composed of around 100,000 men under the command of Peroz I and a smaller army of the Hephthalite Empire under the command of Khushnavaz. The battle was a catastrophic defeat for the Sassanid forces who were almost completely wiped out. Peroz, the Sassanid king, was killed in the action.

Context

In 459, the Hephthalites occupied Bactria and were confronted by the forces of the Sassanid king, Hormizd III. It was then that Peroz, in an apparent pact with the Hephthalites, killed Hormizd, his brother, and established himself as the new king. He would go on to kill the majority of his family and began a persecution of various Christian sects in his territories.

Peroz quickly moved to maintain peaceful relations with the Byzantine Empire to the west. To the east, he attempted to check the Hephthalites, whose armies had begun their conquest of eastern Iran. The Romans supported the Sassanids in these efforts, sending them auxiliary units. The efforts to deter the Hephthalite expansion met with failure when Peroz chased their forces deep into Hephthalite territory and was surrounded. Peroz was taken prisoner in 481 and was made to deliver his son, Kavadh, as a hostage for three years, further paying a ransom for his release.

It was this humiliating defeat which led Peroz to launch a new campaign against the Hephthalites.

The battle

In 484, after the liberation of his son, Peroz formed an enormous army and marched northeast to confront the Hephthalites. The king marched his forces all the way to Balkh where he established his base camp and rejected emissaries from the Hunnic king Khushnavaz. Peroz's forces advanced from Balkh to Herat. The Huns, learning of Peroz's way of advance, left troops along his path who proceeded to cut off the eventual Sassanid retreat and surround Peroz's army in the desert around the city of Herat. In the ensuing battle, almost all of the Sassanid army was wiped out. Peroz was killed in the action and most of his commanders and entourage were captured, including two of his daughters. The Hephthalite forces proceeded to sack Herat before continuing on to a general invasion of the Sassanid Empire.

Aftermath

The Huns invaded the Sassanid territories which had been left without a central government following the death of the king. Much of the Sassanid land was pillaged repeatedly for a period of two years until a Persian noble from the House of Karen, Sukhra, restored some order by establishing one of Peroz's brothers, Balash, as the new king. The Hunnic menace to Sassanid lands continued until the reign of Khosrau I. Balash failed to take adequate measures to counter the Hephthalite incursions, and after a rule of four years, he was deposed in favor of Kavadh I, his nephew and the son of Peroz. After the death of his father, Kavadh had fled the kingdom and took refuge with his former captors, the Hephthalites, who had previously held him as a hostage. He there married one of the daughters of the Hunnic king, who gave him an army to conquer his old kingdom and take the throne. The Sassanids were made to pay tributes to the Hephthalite Empire until 496 when Kavadh was ousted and forced to flee once again to Hephthalite territory. King Djamasp was installed on the throne for two years until Kavadh returned at the head of an army of 30,000 troops and retook his throne, reigning from 498 until his death in 531, when he was succeeded by his son, Khosrau I.

References

• Much of the information on this page was translated from its Spanish equivalent.

Bibliography

• David Christian (1998). A history of Russia, Central Asia, and Mongolia. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 0-631-20814-3.
• Richard Nelson Frye (1996). The heritage of Central Asia from antiquity to the Turkish expansion. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, ISBN 1-55876-111-X.
• Ahmad Hasan Dani (1999). History of civilizations of Central Asia: Volumen III. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publ., ISBN 81-208-1540-8.