Yazdegerd III.html



Coin of Yazdgerd III, Sakastan mint, Dated RY 11.

Yazdgerd III (also spelled Yazdegerd or Yazdiger, Persian: یزدگرد سوم, "made by God") was the twenty-ninth and last king of the Sassanid dynasty and a grandson of Khosrau II (590–628), who had been murdered by his son Kavadh II of Persia in 628. His father was Shahryar whose mother was Miriam, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Maurice. ¹ Yazdgerd III ascended the throne on June 16, 632 after a series of internal conflicts.

Yazdgerd III reigned as a youth and never truly exercised authority. In his first year the Arab invasion of Persia began, and in 636 the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah decided the fate of the Persian empire. To gain some modest supports from the Persian Empire's old rival, the Roman Empire of the East, he sought an alliance with the Emperor Heraclius who then married off his young granddaughter, Manyanh, the daughter of Heraclius Constantine III and Princess Gregoria of Persia. Yazdgerd and Manyanh had issue.

Following the battle of al-Qādisiyyah the Caliph `Umar ibn al-Khattāb besought Yazdgerd III to convert to Islam. Yazdgerd III issued a reply in which he refuted that Zoroastrians were not monotheistic and highlighted that the Iranians were cultured and civilized in contrast to the Arabs. He criticized the conversion by the sword policy of the Muslims and the barbarism of the Arabs, in particular he condemned the enslavement or women in the name of Allah.²

Arabs occupied Ctesiphon, and the young King fled into Media. Yazdgerd III then fled eastward from one district to another, until at last he was killed by a local miller for his purse at Merv in 651.[1]

The rest of the nobles who fled settled in central Asia where they contributed greatly in spreading Persian culture and language in those regions. They also contributed to the establishment of the first native Iranian dynasty, the Samanid dynasty, which sought to retain some Sassanid traditions while still promoting Islam.

The Zoroastrian religious calendar, which is still in use today, uses the regnal year of Yazdgerd III as its base year. Its calendar era (year numbering system), which is accompanied by a Y.Z. suffix, thus indicates the number of years since the emperor's coronation in 632 CE.

Yazdgerd's son Pirooz II fled to China.

Yazdgerd's daughter Shahrbanu is believed to be the wife of Husayn ibn Ali.

Yazdgerd's daughter Izdundad was married to Bustanai ben Haninai, the Jewish exilarch.

References

• This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

• Genealogy of the Byzantine-Persian royal lineage