Justinian and Iran

When Justinian I became emperor (527 - 565), he inherited from his uncle the war with the Sassanid Empire to the east. This Iranian Empire was ruled by the House of Sasan from 224 to 651 CE.

His chief adversary was Khosrow I, who ruled the Sassanids from 531 to 579. Khosrow inherited the war from his father, Kavad I.

In 541, Justinian sent General Belisarius to the east to take command of Byzantine forces facing the Iranians. Belisarius had recently come from Italy where he had been successful in the Gothic Wars, Justinian's attempts reunite the Western Roman Empire with his Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. He was recalled shortly after, possibly because of concerns about his loyalty.

Hostilities between the two empires were halted in 541 at the outbreak of what we call the Justinian Plague, the first appearance of Bubonic Plague in the west. A rebellion in Persia also forced Khosrow to divide his attention between quelling it and the Byzantine front.

Knowing about the rebellion, Justinian ordered a 30,000-strong military invasion of Persian Armenia in 543, but they were defeated, partially because (we saw this recently in posts about the Gothic wars), the commanders of the different divisions did not communicate well, nor did they coordinate well. The Byzantine forces were scattered.

Khosrow besieged the Roman-held city of Edessa the following year. He was unsuccessful. 

Without each side making much progress—and the effects of the plague—they lost their taste for strife. In 545 they declared a truce along the southern Roman-Persian border. 

The northern border was another matter. That area was part of a two-decade war called (among other things) the Lazic War. I'll talk about that tomorrow.