Nevertheless, the display of royal weight-throwing did still have its limits. The Karin, although certainly brought low, had been scotched, not killed. Meanwhile, their old rivals, the Mihran, continued to supply the House of Sasan with ministers and generals, just as they had ever done. Other Parthian dynasts too had positively flourished under the rule of Kavad. One prominent warlord—known to the Romans as Aspebedes—had played a leading role during the siege of Amida, and, even more lucratively, had succeeded in slipping his sister into Kavad’s bed.69 The marriage was a spectacular love-match. Although Kavad had already fathered two sons to other wives, it was his third, Khusrow, “born to him by the sister of Aspebedes, whom the father loved most of all.”70 Able, ruthless and bold: Khusrow was to prove all these things. Doubtless, then, when Kavad looked at his youngest son, it was the image of his own princely self that he saw reflected there. Nevertheless, as the years slipped by, and Khusrow grew to a strutting maturity, this naked favouritism came to threaten a major constitutional crisis. Blatantly ignoring the convention that dictated the eldest son should succeed to the throne, the Shahanshah began to pull all the strings he could in favour of Khusrow—even to the degree of offering bribes to Anastasius, the Roman emperor, to support his candidacy. This manoeuvring, however, rather than proving offensive to those conservative elements of the establishment that had resisted all of Kavad’s attempts to undermine them, instead received their wholehearted backing: for Khusrow—unlike Kavus, his Mazdakite elder brother—was a fiercely orthodox Zoroastrian. No wonder, then, that the mowbeds, long put in the shade by Kavad’s devotion to Mazdak, should have rallied to the younger prince’s cause. No wonder, either, that the Mazdakites, contrary to all the wishes of their royal patron, should have begun to swing behind Kavus, the legal heir.
So was set the scene for the climactic crisis of Kavad’s reign. By 528, the aged Shahanshah was backed agonisingly into a corner: forced to choose between his faith and his hopes for the future of the crown. To nominate Kavus as his successor would be to entrench Mazdakism in Iranshahr for good; to nominate Khusrow would be to entrust the throne to the man best qualified to consolidate royal power. In the event, Kavad opted to give free rein to his favourite son. Given the nod, Khusrow sprang into action. A formal debate was staged at Ctesiphon, at which Mazdak himself, according to the reports of the gloating mowbeds, was comprehensively trounced. Khusrow, in the wake of this show-trial, had the teachings of the upstart prophet formally condemned. A wave of persecutions followed, right across the empire. Massacres and confiscations rapidly drove the wretched Mazdakites underground. In Ctesiphon’s royal park, so it was reported, Khusrow ordered holes to be dug and then buried his Mazdakite prisoners in them head first, so that only their legs stuck out. He then invited Mazdak himself to walk along the flower beds, inspect what had been planted there, and admire the fruit. When he did so, the prophet cried out in horror and slumped to the ground. He was then revived, hung from a tree, and used for target practice by Khusrow’s archers.
Whatever the truth of this gruesome anecdote, it is certain that Kavad’s willingness to abandon his faith marked a key turning point in the history of the Near East. The scope for change offered by Mazdakism had certainly not been exhausted. Potentially, as the turbulent and convulsive course of Kavad’s own reign had served so potently to demonstrate, there was almost no limit to what might not be achieved by an alliance between an imperial monarchy and the revelations, if truly believed to be heaven-sent, of a prophet. As it was, however, the future of Iranshahr was not to be Mazdakite. In 531, Kavad died. Although Kavus, from his powerbase in the north of the empire, did attempt to seize the throne, he was speedily defeated by his younger brother, captured, and put to death. Sternly, Khusrow proclaimed the definitive end of “new customs and new ways”:71 of what had been, so he declared, a rebellion against “religion, reason, and the state.”72
Yet, in truth, the new Shahanshah was set on having his cake and eating it. His enthusiasm for tradition notwithstanding, he had no intention of letting all of his father’s achievements go to waste. Ancient hierarchies were to be affirmed; and yet, simultaneously, hundreds of inspectors dispatched across Iranshahr with licence to poke their noses into the business of anyone, including even the dynasts. The Zoroastrian priests were to be confirmed in all their rights and privileges; and yet, in a patent attempt to counter the appeal of Mazdakism, new offices created from among their ranks, focused on meeting the needs of the poor and the desperate. Four of the greatest Parthian dynasts—including a Karinid—were to be appointed to the defence of the four corners of the empire; and yet, for the first time, a standing army, beholden solely to the crown, was to be recruited and maintained. To perform such a balancing act, even for an operator as cool and iron-fisted as Khusrow, was likely to prove no easy matter. Not only the future prospects of the House of Sasan, but of Iranshahr itself, were likely to hang upon how he did.
Few who enjoyed the supreme privilege of being ushered into the royal presence would have doubted that Khusrow had what it took for success. “May you be immortal!” sounded the response to his every utterance; and certainly, to look upon a Shahanshah enthroned in all his glory was still, as it had ever been, to behold a man as close as any mortal could be to a god. His robes gleamed with jewels; his beard was dusted with gold; his face was painted like some ancient idol. Most dazzling of all was his diadem: the symbol of his farr. By the time of Khusrow, however, it was no longer possible for a king to wear one unsupported. Instead, as he sat on his throne, the crown had to be suspended by a chain hung from the ceiling above his head. So massive had it become, and so stupefyingly heavy the gold and jewels that adorned it, that it would otherwise have snapped his neck.
Menace, it seemed, lurked in even the most splendid show of power.
By the Rivers of Babylon
Flower-beds and fountains might have seemed an incongruous setting for mass slaughter. Nevertheless, if the stories told of the execution of Mazdak and his followers were true, they had met with their fate in a peculiarly fitting venue for an assertion of royal power. In a land such as Mesopotamia—where sand was often borne on howling winds, and where only relentless toil kept the desert from smothering the fields—there was no more precious perk of majesty than a walled and well-tended park. The ancient kings of Persia had termed such a garden a paradaida—a “paradise.” When Khusrow dallied in arbours “fresh with the beauty of fruit trees, vines and green cypresses,”73 or wandered past paddocks boasting “boundless numbers of ostriches, antelopes, wild asses, peacocks and pheasants,”74 or rode with the lords and ladies of his court through his hunting grounds in pursuit of “lions and tigers of huge size,”75 he was the heir to traditions more ancient than he knew.