The centuries-long rivalry between Rome and the Persian world reached its last and most destructive phase in the war of 602 to 628. Called "the last great war of antiquity" in the sources, the struggle lasted twenty-six years and was fought over a vast area stretching from Syria to Egypt, from the Caucasus to the Aegean islands and to the very walls of Constantinople. The region of Pontus in northeastern Anatolia was not one of the war's principal battlegrounds, but it took part in events as a rear area where Emperor Heraclius prepared his counter-offensive and wintered his army. Amaseia, one of the region's old cities, belonged to the same geography. Because no event is recorded that directly concerns Amaseia, the city's situation in this age can only be inferred from the general picture of the region and the empire.

Causes and Background

The previous war, which ended in 591, had been concluded when Emperor Maurice restored the exiled Sasanian prince Khosrow (Khosrow II) to his throne. In return the Persians ceded the northeast of Mesopotamia, most of Persian Armenia and Iberia in the Caucasus to Byzantium, and Byzantium ceased to pay the tribute it had paid until then. Not every detail is certain, but the result was a clear relief for the Byzantine treasury. Maurice's campaigns against the Avar and Slav raids in the Balkans, however, strained the treasury, and strict fiscal measures that cut soldiers' pay led to four mutinies. The last mutiny, in 602, arose from Maurice's order that the troops along the Danube should spend the winter living off the land. The army proclaimed Phocas, a Thracian centurion, emperor; Maurice was caught as he fled and was killed.

Khosrow II declared war on the pretext of avenging Maurice, whom he called his "friend and father." The revolt of Narses, governor of Mesopotamia, who seized Edessa against Phocas, gave the Persians an opportunity. The army sent by Phocas was defeated near Dara, and the fortress fell in 605. Narses is said to have been burned alive on Phocas's orders when he tried to return to Constantinople to discuss peace. The incident damaged both the prestige and the military credibility of the Phocas regime. In 608 the elderly Heraclius, Exarch of Carthage, rose in revolt; his son, the younger Heraclius of the same name, reached Constantinople by sea in 610 and overthrew Phocas. According to tradition, Phocas, called to account, turned the same question back on the new emperor and asked whether he would govern any better.

The Years of Persian Ascendancy

Taking advantage of the civil war in Byzantium, the Persians first took the frontier cities of Armenia and Upper Mesopotamia. Mardin and Amida (Diyarbakır) fell in 609 and Edessa in 610; Theodosiopolis (Erzurum) is also known to have surrendered to the Persians in 609 or 610. It is told that in 608 the general Shahin raided as far as Chalcedon, but some scholars doubt that the raid took place. In any case, by about 610 all the Byzantine cities east of the Euphrates were in Persian hands. Shahin advanced into Cappadocia and took Caesarea. Phocas's son-in-law Priscus besieged the city for a year, but Shahin's troops slipped out of the blockade and burned Caesarea. This failure reinforced Heraclius's distrust of the commanders of the previous regime.

The weight of the war then shifted to Syria. Near Antioch, Byzantine forces under Heraclius and Nicetas were defeated by Shahin; the Persian army plundered the city, killed the patriarch of Antioch and deported part of the population. Byzantine defence also collapsed at the Cilician Gates, and Tarsus and the Cilician plain were left to the Persians. This defeat effectively split the empire in two: the land link between Constantinople and Anatolia on one side and Syria, Palestine and Egypt on the other was cut. Damascus, Emesa and Apamea fell in 613. In 614 Jerusalem was taken after a siege of three weeks by the Persians and the Jewish groups acting with them. Ancient sources put the number killed at between 57,000 and 66,500; about 35,000 people were deported to Persian lands, and many sacred relics, the True Cross among them, were carried off to Ctesiphon. These figures may be exaggerated, and the accounts of the Jews' role are thought to have arisen largely from the panic of the period.

In 618 Shahrbaraz entered Egypt, and after a year of resistance Alexandria fell around 619. The loss of this rich province, untouched by war for three centuries, cut Constantinople's grain supply, and the free bread distribution in the city was abolished in 618. In Anatolia the Persians took Chalcedon in 617 and could now see Constantinople from the opposite shore; Ancyra fell to them in 620 or 622, and Rhodes and some of the eastern Aegean islands in 622-623. This constant pressure on Anatolia lasted for years, and the sources report that at that time Heraclius considered moving the government to Carthage. In the same years the Avars and Slavs in the Balkans had seized cities such as Belgrade, Niš and Sofia, and had destroyed Salona in 614.

Pontus and Helenopontus

The name Pontus covers the coastal strip south of the Black Sea and its interior extending to the Pontic Mountains. Around 302 BC the region was the land of the kingdom founded by Mithridates Ktistes, a kingdom that reached its peak under Mithridates VI, who fought Rome for many years. Pompey ended this kingdom in 64 BC and Amaseia entered the Roman order. Strabo describes the city in detail as it was between 60 BC and AD 19. In the second century Amaseia received the titles "metropolis" and "first city."

With Diocletian's administrative reorganisation of about AD 295, Pontus was divided into three separate provinces. The western Galatian Pontus was later named Helenopontus in memory of Constantine's mother Helena; its capital was Amisos (Samsun), and it included cities such as Sinope, Amaseia, Andres, Ibora and Zela. In the east the capital of Cappadocian Pontus was Trebizond, and the centre of Pontus Polemoniacus in the middle was Polemonion. When Justinian reorganised the region in 536, Polemonion and Neocaesarea (Niksar) were joined to Helenopontus, while Zela was given to the province of Armenia II. In the age of Heraclius the administrative framework to which Amaseia belonged was this Helenopontus. The city was also an important Christian centre; Asterius, bishop of Amaseia (died about 410), and the warrior saint Theodore (died before 319) are figures in the Christian memory of the region.

In the Byzantine order Pontus was in time attached to the Armeniac Theme. The date of foundation of these large military-administrative units is disputed. Older theories connect the themes with the age of Heraclius; most recent research holds that they took shape later, under Constans II. It therefore cannot be said that the army wintering in Pontus in 622 consisted of theme soldiers; it was the field army that Heraclius had re-equipped in those years.

Heraclius's Counter-Offensive

From about 615 Heraclius prepared the state for war. The weight of the silver coinage was reduced and the inscription "May God help the Romans" was placed on it. The plague that broke out in 619 narrowed the tax base further; officials' salaries were halved, taxes were raised and forced loans were imposed. The Church offered the gold and silver-plated objects in Constantinople as a war loan, and precious metal was stripped from monuments and from Hagia Sophia. Some historians regard this undertaking as a forerunner of the Crusades; scholars such as Walter Kaegi object to the label, noting that religion was only one component of the war.

Heraclius left Constantinople on the day after Easter (4 April) in 622, leaving his young son in the guardianship of Patriarch Sergius and the patrician Bonus. He gathered the army in Anatolia, most probably in Bithynia, and spent the summer drilling it. He tried to raise the soldiers' morale by carrying the image of Christ "not made by human hands" as a standard and by speeches stressing the religious side of the war. In the autumn he marched into Cappadocia and threatened the Persian lines of communication running from the Euphrates valley into Anatolia. This move forced the Persian forces under Shahrbaraz to withdraw from their forward lines in Bithynia and Galatia toward the east, to block the road to Iran.

What followed is not known with certainty, but it is accepted that in the autumn of 622 Heraclius won a crushing victory over Shahrbaraz. According to the account, the emperor noticed that Persian troops lay hidden in ambush and pretended to retreat during the fighting. The Persians, who came out of cover and chased him, were scattered by a sudden attack of Heraclius's elite Optimatoi. Thus Anatolia was spared further Persian invasion. At the same time the Avar threat in the Balkans had grown; Heraclius had to return to the capital, and he left his army in Pontus to spend the winter. This detail shows the twofold importance Pontus had throughout the war. On the one hand the region was under threat from Persian raids; on the other it was a region that remained in the empire's hands and where the army could find shelter.

The meeting arranged for 623 with the Avar khagan at Heraclea in Thrace turned into a trap set for the emperor. Heraclius was warned at the last moment and fled, but many people from his court and a large number of peasants who had come to see him were captured. He later made peace with the Avars by agreeing to pay 200,000 gold solidi and to give several hostages, and so was able to turn his attention wholly to the Persians. Leaving Constantinople on 25 March 624, the emperor marched into Iran by way of Armenia, wintered in the Caucasus, and in 625 took Amida and Martyropolis in eastern Anatolia. In the same year he met Shahrbaraz on the Sarus (Seyhan) river near Adana. The Byzantine vanguard fell into an ambush there, but Heraclius crossed the bridge with the rearguard and turned the course of the battle. The panegyrists of the period magnified this engagement; it is thought to have been in fact a successful retreat. The army spent that winter at Trebizond, so that Pontus became Heraclius's winter base for a second time.

The Siege of 626 and the Turning Point

Khosrow II decided on a decisive counter-move and raised two new armies. Shahin was to stay in Mesopotamia and Armenia with 50,000 men to keep Heraclius from entering Iran, while Shahrbaraz's smaller army was to slip past Heraclius and descend on Chalcedon. Khosrow also arranged a joint attack with the Avar khagan. The siege of the walls of Constantinople began on 29 June 626. The Avars and Slavs were on the European side and the Persians at Chalcedon; because the Byzantine fleet controlled the Bosporus, the two allies could not pass troops to each other. On 7 August a flotilla made up of Persian rafts was surrounded and destroyed by Byzantine ships. In the same days news came that Heraclius's brother Theodore had defeated Shahin in the engagement at the Lycus, and the Avars withdrew within two days. The author of the Akathistos Hymn, written in memory of the lifting of the siege, is unknown; some scholars think of Sergius, others of George of Pisidia.

Meanwhile Heraclius showed Shahrbaraz the letters in which Khosrow ordered his death and persuaded the general to remain neutral. One of the ablest commanders of the Persian army was thus removed from the war. Heraclius also allied himself with Ziebel of the Western Turkic Khaganate (the "Khazars" of the Byzantine sources); the Turks attacked Persian Caucasia in 626, and at the siege of Tiflis the Byzantines used traction trebuchets, one of the earliest known examples. Ziebel died at the end of 628 and the marriage promised to him did not take place.

Nineveh and the End of the War

In mid-September 627 Heraclius entered the heart of Iran in an unexpected winter campaign. His army consisted of between 25,000 and 50,000 Byzantine soldiers; his Göktürk allies, unable to endure the winter conditions and Persian harassment, left within a short time. The Persian army under Rhahzadh followed him but had difficulty with supplies because the Byzantines had already used up the food sources. On 12 December 627, in a battle fought on a foggy day near the ruins of Nineveh, Heraclius feigned retreat to draw the Persians onto the plain and then turned his troops back. In the eight hours of fighting about 6,000 Persians were killed. According to the account of Patriarch Nikephoros, Rhahzadh challenged the emperor to single combat and died at his hand; Heraclius was wounded in the lip in this fight.

With no Persian army left before him, Heraclius plundered Khosrow's palace at Dastagird and recovered 300 Byzantine standards. On 6 January 628 he addressed a call for peace to Khosrow. The collapse of the bridge over the Nahrawan Canal prevented him from attacking Ctesiphon, but the Persian army had already rebelled against Khosrow. Khosrow was deposed and his son Kavad II (Siroes) took his place; Khosrow was killed in a dungeon with arrows. Kavad asked for peace, and Byzantium recovered all the territory it had lost, its prisoners, a war indemnity and, most important, the True Cross taken from Jerusalem. The Cross was set in place in a ceremony in Constantinople on 14 September 629 and then in Jerusalem in 630.

Consequences of the War

Both empires emerged from this war exhausted. The Sasanian state had already been weakened by heavy taxation, religious unrest and the growing power of provincial landholders; when Kavad died a few months later, the dynasty entered years of civil war. Ardashir III, Shahrbaraz and Khosrow's daughters Purandokht and Azarmidokht came to the throne in quick succession; only in 632, with Yazdgerd III, was stability achieved, and it was not enough to save the Sasanian state. On the Byzantine side the Balkans had largely passed to the Slavs, Anatolia had been ravaged by repeated Persian invasions, and the regained hold on the Caucasus, Syria, Palestine and Egypt had loosened after years of Persian occupation. The treasury was exhausted; it became hard to pay the veterans of the war and to recruit new soldiers. Clive Foss describes this war as the first stage of the process leading to the end of antiquity in Asia Minor.

Given no time to recover, the two states faced the attack of the Arabs, united by Islam, in the 630s. The Sasanian state collapsed quickly and was destroyed entirely. Byzantium lost Syria, Armenia, Egypt and North Africa, and was left with a core made up of Anatolia and a few footholds in the Balkans and Italy. Yet unlike the Persians it survived, and it repulsed the two Arab sieges of Constantinople in 674-678 and 717-718.

What Can Be Said About Amaseia

The known sources for the war do not separately record what happened to Amaseia. The Persian armies' routes into Anatolia are described around the lines running through Cappadocia, Galatia and Bithynia to Chalcedon; no firm document has been produced showing that cities in the interior of Pontus were besieged or plundered. Statements that the city suffered a Persian attack or that its people took refuge in the fortress at this time therefore rest on inference, not on documents. The inference is reasonable: the fortress on the rock of Harşena, set among the steep cliffs of the Yeşilırmak valley, was a natural refuge and could have been a shelter for the settled population in the insecurity of the war years. Even so, this is a possibility and cannot be presented as a fact confirmed by the sources.

What stands on firmer ground is the regional framework. Amaseia was one of the cities of the province of Helenopontus, and when Heraclius wintered his army in Pontus it is reasonable to think that the camp relied on the settlements of the region. No record is known that shows whether the city contributed to the army's supply or lodging. This war of the seventh century falls before the ages of insecurity that Amaseia would live through in later centuries as a frontier and transit city. The city remained under Byzantine rule for about seven centuries, until it was taken by the Danishmendid Turkmen lords in 1075.

A Note on the Sources

The sources for the war are predominantly Byzantine. Among contemporary Greek texts the Chronicon Paschale, written around 630, the poems of George of Pisidia and the sermon given by Theodore Synkellos during the siege of 626 stand out. Because the Persian archives were lost, there is no contemporary Persian source; al-Tabari's history draws on sources that are now lost. The Armenian history of Sebeos and Syriac records are also important. The Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor provides the skeleton of the war, but like many later sources it probably draws on a common source going back to Theophilus of Edessa. For this reason all dates, especially those between 602 and 620, are approximate, and independent witnesses are few. The years in this article should be read with that caution.

Chronology

591: The previous Byzantine-Sasanian war ends; Maurice restores Khosrow II to his throne.

602: Maurice is killed and Phocas becomes emperor; Khosrow II declares war.

605: The fortress of Dara passes into Persian hands.

610: Heraclius overthrows Phocas and becomes emperor.

614: Jerusalem falls; the True Cross is taken to Ctesiphon.

618-619: Egypt passes into Persian hands.

622: Heraclius launches his counter-offensive, defeats Shahrbaraz and winters his army in Pontus.

624: Heraclius turns toward Iran and the Caucasus.

625: The engagement at the Sarus; the Byzantine army winters at Trebizond.

626: The Persians and Avars besiege Constantinople; the siege ends in failure.

12 December 627: The Battle of Nineveh.

628: Khosrow II is overthrown and Kavad II makes peace.

629-630: The True Cross is brought to Constantinople and to Jerusalem.

Bibliography

Other sources

  • Byzantine-Sasanian War of 602-628 (general course and assessment of the sources).
  • Heraclius (Heraclius's life and the campaign of 622).
  • Pontus (region) (administrative history of Pontus and Helenopontus).
  • Shahrbaraz (the Persian commander Shahrbaraz).
  • Battle of Nineveh (627).
  • Amasya (the Roman and Byzantine periods of the city).
  • Walter Kaegi, Heraclius: Emperor of Byzantium (2003).
  • Dodgeon, Greatrex and Lieu, The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars, Part II (2002).

Online sources