Heraclius turned the disaster of Jerusalem into the first holy war, literally a crusade to regain the True Cross. ‘Our danger,’ he declared, ‘is the harbinger of everlasting life … Let’s sacrifice ourselves to God … Let’s win the crown of the martyrs.’ He marched fast towards Khusrau, surprising him and driving him into an ignominious retreat, then burning the great Zoroastrian shrine of Adur-Gushnasp, vengeance for Jerusalem. Early in 625, Heraclius contacted the Turkish khan, Sipi, nephew of their supreme khagan Tong, to propose an alliance. He manoeuvred brilliantly against the overconfident Persians, ambushing Royal Boar, who fled naked on horseback, leaving behind his gold shield and even his bejewelled sandals.
To the west, Khusrau the Victor now ordered the last battle to conquer the Great City, an endgame of the End of Days. As he had warned Heraclius, ‘Could I not destroy Constantinople?’ Royal Boar advanced to Chalcedon; the Avars and another tribe from the east, the Slavs, arrived on the European side, rowing into the harbour, wheeling up siege engines to the Theodosian Walls. The situation looked desperate. Yet the Romans managed to foil any transfer of Iranians to the European side. As the Persians watched across the Bosphoros, the Avars attacked the walls, but, aided by the Virgin Mary patrolling the ramparts, the Romans repelled them and they withdrew.*
Far away in Iraq, Heraclius, now in alliance with 40,000 Turks under Sipi, outmanoeuvred three Iranian armies, killing Shahin. Khusrau now feared Royal Boar, ordering his deputy to kill him, but Heraclius intercepted the letter and sent it to the general himself. A secret understanding was reached and Royal Boar set up court in Alexandria. In 627, Heraclius met Sipi at a summit outside Tbilisi and promised the shamanist khan his daughter. Leaving Sipi to besiege Tbilisi, Heraclius galloped towards Ctesiphon.
Panic struck the Persian capital. The shah was blamed. ‘How long shall we fear and tremble before this bloody king? Didn’t many of our brothers perish on countless occasions in thousands by all manner of tortures, some even by drowning, at his command?’ Khusrau ordered all his prisoners to be murdered – the last straw. The Victor had ridden Iranshahr into the dust. His elder son Kavad II betrayed ‘that evil man’ his father, who escaped in disguise but was hunted down. The grandees spat on him; sixteen of his sons were murdered in front of him, then he was shot with arrows. His widow Shirin refused to marry her stepson Kavad and was murdered too. The plague flared again, killing Kavad II – just as Royal Boar arrived to make himself shah. He restored the True Cross to Heraclius, who betrothed his son to Royal Boar’s daughter – a couple who could one day rule the world. But his usurpation was resisted: Royal Boar was assassinated. Two daughters of Khusrau were enthroned, but one was strangled, the other poisoned. In Medina, the Muslims observed the downfall of Persia, ‘where women now rule’, and appreciated the apocalyptic significance as Heraclius celebrated the success of his holy war by bearing the True Cross into Jerusalem. In Ctesiphon, a Sasan prince, grandson of Khusrau and Shirin, the eight-year-old Yazdgard, was installed on the throne in 632 just as the Turks swooped in to destroy Persia.
Yet suddenly the Turks vanished. At the other end of the Eurasian steppe, as Heraclius was joining forces with the Turks and Muhammad was adapting his own concept of holy war, the new emperor of the Tang dynasty was making his own Turkish deal.
The rise of the Tang started with a dangerous rhyme.
TAIZONG AND THE KING OF TIBET
In 614, a poem circulated in China declaring that someone called Li would kill the emperor, who therefore executed thirty-three Li – and, unsurprisingly, one of the few who were not killed considered his position. In 617, Li Yuan, the partly Turkic duke of Yuan, and his second son, the future Taizong (born Li Shimin), decided to rebel not just out of self-preservation but also to fulfil that prophecy of ‘Heaven’s conferment’. ‘If we don’t take what is conferred,’ said the father, ‘calamity will befall us.’
Peasant risings had destroyed the Han but during their rule they had resettled many steppe nomads within the empire, fostering a multi-ethnic empire, while the Indian religion of Buddhism had become popular, coexisting with traditional Chinese beliefs.*
