S2E13: The Aksumite-Persian War

Hello everyone. I hope you enjoy this week's episode on the Aksumite-Persian war. While this war is often overlooked by contemporary historians, it played a consequential role in world history. The Aksumite-Persian war would have a massive impact not only on Ethiopia, Persian, and Yemeni history, but would even have an impact on the rise of a certain Arabian religion whose rise would mark the end of antiquity and the beginning of the medieval age in the Near East. 

Our war begins due to dynastic fallout in the then-independent kingdom of Aksumite Arabia. In 570, Abraha, the Aksumite general who rebelled against Kaleb and created his own independent kingdom, died. Abraha struggled to designate a clear heir before his death. While he had many sons, the two who would play the most consequential role in the upcoming struggle were named Masruq and Madi Karib (sometimes also referred to by the name Yaksum).

Note: The identity of Madi Karib is sometimes contested. The mainstream scholarly opinion is that Madi Karib and Yaksum are two names for the same person, with Karib being the name used by Arabs and Yaksum being the one used by Ethiopians. However, it is worth noting that some scholars believe otherwise, and that Yaksum and Madi Karib are two distinct people. This podcast endorsed the mainstream view as espoused by Glen Bowersock in his book The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam. It's also worth noting that many accounts of the period seemingly conflate the actions of Madi Karib and the legendary king Sayf. However, because of his poor attestation in reliable histories outside of the History of Tabari, we opted to side with Bowersock's perspective that Sayf died before the invasion commenced, and that the actions attributed to Sayf during and after the invasion were instead performed by Madi Karib.

Where things went sour between two most prominent sons of Abraha is up for debate. Their struggle may have originated out of a cynical desire for the throne, or it may have been based on a staunch disagreement regarding how they would engage in diplomacy with Aksumite Africa. Masruq favored a policy of reconciliation, and sought to return Aksumite Arabia to a tributary status. Again, his motivations for why are unclear. Reconstructing the history of Masruq and Karib's feud is a bit like asking questions about the chicken and the egg. Did Masruq submit to Aksum for help against Karib's rebellion? Or did Karib rebel because Masruq submitted to Aksum? In the podcast, I chose to make something of a compromise between these views, arguing that Masruq was already planning to submit to Aksum, but that Karib's rebellion made the need to do so more urgent. However, Karib's early attempt to seize the throne failed, and he was sent into exile. 

Given that last episode focused entirely on Aksum's disastrous decline in the era preceding this war, it should not be a surprise that the Aksumite military which would fend off the Persian invasion was a far-cry from the massive armies of Kaleb and Abraha. The combined forces of Masruq's militia and the Aksumite reinforcements sent to aid him tallied approximately 10,000, a far cry from the ~120,000 raised by Kaleb in his invasion of Himyar.

Karib, on the other hand, found himself with a slight advantage. While in exile, Karib found himself in the palace of the Persian shah Khosrow II. The Persians, longtime rivals of the Aksumites, were all too happy to take the opportunity to support this rival claimant to the throne of Aksumite Arabia in an effort to undermine their enemy. There he also met Sayf ibn Dhi Yazan, a Himyarite Arab noble. Like Karib, Yazan also sought to drive Masruq out of southern Arabia. What role Yazan played in this conflict isn't very clear. Some biographies I read claimed that he played a pivotal invasion in the campaign, while others claim he actually died before the invasion succeeded. Personally, this is the theory I lean toward. The evidence of Yazan's presence in Yemen during the invasion is unreliable, and it seems to me that many biographies of Yazan seemingly blend him and Karib into the same person. Additionally, Yazan's biographies often include mythical details, such as Djinn, magic, and spirits, as well as the occasional obvious political commentary from the 15th century Egyptian authors of the biography. These details make it difficult to take the biography of Yazan seriously as a historical source compared to contemporary Persian and Aksumite writings. 

The fashion and styles of this illustration of Sayf ibn Dhi-Yazan are more reminiscent of late-medieval Egypt than late-antiquity Yemen. Look at that moustache!

While Khosrow was willing to support Karib, he clearly viewed this invasion as a huge risk. Rather than committing a true army, Khosrow instead sent an army of prisoners to accompany Karib in his war. These prisoners were from the Daylamite ethnic group, which had rebelled against Khosrow in support of a rival. The leader of these Daylamites was named Boe (pictured below with the bow in hand), who led this force of 1,000 Daylamites into Yemen. In the end, only about 800 made it to their destination (the rest were blown off course), but their forces swelled to 16,000 men with the rallying of both Karib and Yazan's supporters to the invaders' side.

This combined force met Masruq's army in Hadramawt, the eastern fringes of Aksumite Arabia. Initial clashes were mostly even, with Masruq gaining a minor advantage on his foes despite his numerical inferiority. However, the tide of the battle turned when the son of the Persian commander Boe was killed in battle. Enraged by the death of his son, Boe began targeting Masruq himself with arrowfire. One of these arrows eventually struck and killed Masruq, with the scene being depicted below in the Tārīkhnāma, a Persian manuscript.  

Similarly to the Yazan illustration, the fashion and styles depicting the death of Masruq more closely resemble the styles that the Tārīkhnāma's 10th century Persian authors would be familiar with.

Demoralized by the death of their leader, the Aksumite forces scattered. With Persian support, Karib retook the throne of an independent Yemeni kingdom, once again dominated by the region's Aksumite elites. However, the kingdom remained unstable after Karib ascended to the throne. Just three years after he retook his position, Karib's kingdom was once again invaded by an Aksumite force, allegedly led by one of Abraha's other, less prominent sons. With Karib dead, a larger Persian army led by Boe once again invaded the territory and defeated the Aksumite defenders, this time outright annexing the region into a Persian satrapy with Boe, now known by his new title of Wahriz, serving as its governor.

Earlier in the season, I realized an episode entitled the Aksumite Empire's Greatest Defeat, which focused on the failed campaign of Negus Datwinas in Southern Arabia. While I still believe that Datwinas' campaign should hold the title for Aksum's greatest defeat, the loss of Yemen to Persian invasion certainly comes close. Just as the throne of Aksum had regained its foothold in Yemen, it was lost almost immediately. Had Aksum maintained its hold on Yemen, as well as the incense monopoly and control over the Red Sea it enabled, who knows how history would have turned out. Additionally, the expulsion of Aksumite influence in Yemen would force the Aksumites to take desperate measures to maintain influence in Arabia. This leads us into next week's episode, which focuses on the rise of Islam from an Aksumite perspective, and how the actions of the Aksumite king Armah (also known as Najashi) changed the history of the world forever.

Anyways, here's a video of a guy shooting the Persian "Panjegan" bow, or at least a modern guess at what they may have looked like.