Battle of Nahāvand

The Battle of Nahāvand (also Nihāvand or Nahāwand) (Arabic:معركة نهاوند) was fought in 642 between Arab Muslims and Sassanid armies. The battle is known to Muslims as the "Victory of Victories." The Sassanid King Yazdegerd III escaped to the Merv area, but was unable to raise another substantial army. It was a decisive victory for the Rashidun Caliphate and the Persians consequently lost the surrounding cities including Sephahan (renamed Isfahan). The Khan of the Turks later lent him some soldiers, but the soldiers mutinied in 652.

The former Sassanid provinces, in alliance with Parthian and White Hun nobles, resisted for a few more years in the region south of the Caspian Sea, even as the Rashidun Caliphate was replaced by the Umayyads, thus perpetuating the Sassanid court styles, Zoroastrian religion, and Persian speech.

Number of Arab and Sasanian forces

The History of Tabari mentions that Piruz Khosrow, the officer serving the Sasanian King Yazdegerd III, had about 100,000 men, versus a Muslim army of about 30,000. The Persians were outmanoeuvered, trapped in a narrow mountain valley, and lost many men in the ensuing rout.

Battle

Various versions are told about Nahāvand and how the battle was ensued in the early stages. Some suggest that the Muslim Arabs managed to deceive the Persians through a ruse, that Caliph Omar had died. The Persian cavalry, full of confidence, mounted an ill-prepared pursuit of the Arabs who swiftly retreated to a safe area and eventually surrounded and trapped the Persian force before assailing it from all sides and decisively defeating it.

According to a slightly different version the Arab commander Nuʿmān was able to outmaneuver his Sāsānian counterpart Fīrūzan through superior tatics rather than misleading rumors. The numerically superior Persians had been deployed in a strong defensive position. This would not normally have been a strategy favored by the loosely disciplined Sāsānian forces, drawn from decentralized sources, and their leadership of feudal nobles. Nuʿmān was accordingly able to draw out the Persians from their vantage point by skirmishing advances and then a general but cohesive retreat. During the Sāsānian pursuit Fīrūzan found his horsemen caught in extended order across a rough landscape and narrow passes. The highly motivated and well mounted Muslims then rallied and counterattacked inflicting very heavy losses on the disorganized Persians. Both Nuʿmān and Fīrūzan were reportedly killed in the final melee but the Sāsānian defeat was total.

As the historian Tabari mentions, the Persians were never again able to unite their men in such numbers and many were already talking of dissolving the Empire and going their separate ways when the battle was commencing. Many of Yazdegerd's military and civilian officials had abandoned him.

Aftermath

Nahāvand marked the dissolution of the Sassanian Imperial army, with the fall of the last of the grand marshals of the army and the rise of warlordism among the Iranians. The Emperor Yazdegerd III attempted to raise troops by appealing to other neighbouring areas such as the princes of Tukharistan and Sogdia and eventually sent his son Peroz III to the Tang court, but without any success.

Yezdegerd hurriedly fled towards the east where he was ill-treated by several Marzban (provincial governors) in the north as well as in Merv, where the governor Mahoye openly showed his hostility to the Emperor. According to non-Muslim sources, Yazdegerd failed to rally enough support in Eastern Persia where the Sassanians were unpopular with the locals. Muslim sources like Tabari reported that the province of Khorasan revolted against Sassanian rule, just as it had years earlier when it had sided with Khosrau II's uncle Vistahm. When Yazdegerd was crowned in Estakhr, Persia had in fact three Kings ruling in different regions and this province had not given its support to Yazdegerd at first.

Before Yazdegerd had a chance to receive help from the Hepthalites and Turkish tribes, he was assassinated by a local miller in Merv in 651. Thereafter, Yazdegerd's son Peroz attempted to re-establish the Sassanid empire against the Rashidun Caliphate and its successor, the Umayyad Caliphate, though the plan did not develop, as Peroz ultimately died in China.

Impact

On the long-term impact of this battle, Sir Muhammad Iqbal wrote: "If you ask me what is the most important event in the history of Islam, I shall say without any hesitation: “The Conquest of Persia.” The battle of Nehawand gave the Arabs not only a beautiful country, but also an ancient civilization; or, more properly, a people who could make a new civilisation with the Semitic and Aryan material. Our Muslim civilisation is a product of the cross-fertilisation of the Semitic and the Aryan ideas. It is a child who inherits the softness and refinement of his Aryan mother, and the sterling character of his Semitic father. But for the conquest of Persia, the civilisation of Islam would have been one-sided. The conquest of Persia gave us what the conquest of Greece gave to the Romans."