Battle of Nihawānd

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Battle of Nihawānd
Part of the Muslim conquests
Date 642 Location Nehavand, near Hamadan, Iran Result Arab victory
Combatants
Muslim Arabs	Sassanid Empire
Commanders
Al-Nu'man ibn Muqarrin al-Muzani	Wahman Mardanshah†, Pirouzan†
Strength
30,000	approximately 150,000
Casualties
Unknown	Unknown

Islamic conquest of Persia
the Bridge – al-Qādisiyyah – Nihawānd

The Battle of Nihawānd was fought in 642 between Arab and Sassanids armies. Not too much is known of the battle. William Durant in this book The Age of Faith reported that the Persian King Yazdgerd III had about 150,000 men, versus a Muslim army about one fifth that in number. The Persians were outmaneuvered, trapped in a narrow mountain valley, and lost about 100,000 men in the rout. Yezdigerd fled to the Merv area, but was never able to raise another substantial army. It was a decisive victory and the Persians eventually lost the surrounding cities including Sephahan (renamed Isfahan). The Khan of the Turks later lent him some soldiers, but these mutinied and murdered Yezdigerd in the year 652. Tabari reported that the Persian Sassanid army consisted mostly of raw recruits and men who had not fought in any previous battles^{[citation needed]}. An alternative report states that the Persian army consisted of 50,000 men, while the Arab army had some 30,000 recruited from the two cities of Kufah and Basra in modern day Iraq, the two main barrack towns^{[citation needed]}.

The ex-Sassanids provinces in alliance Parthian and White Hun nobles would fight on for a few more years on their own, scoring significant victories in the Caspian even as the Rashidun Caliphates were replaced by the the Umayyads. Thus perpetuating the Sassanians' court styles, Zoroastrian religion and Persian speech.

Various versions are told about Nihavand and how the Muslims were being bested in the early stages of the battle but eventually managed to deceive the Persians through a ruse, that Caliph Omar had died. The Persian cavalry, full of confidence mounted a pursuit of the bedouins who retreated to a safe area and eventually surrounded and trapped the persian force before assailing it from all sides, and decisively defeating it.

As the historian Tabari mentions, the Persians were never again able to unite their men in such numbers and many were already talking of dissolving the Empire and going their separate ways when the battle was commencing.

Though the Persian forces managed to hold off and even defeat the Arabs at Sistan, Tabaristan, Daylam and other isolated outlying areas, Nihavand marked the dissolution of the Sassanian Imperial army with the fall of the last of the grand marshals of the army and the rise of warlordism among the Persians who not only frequently fought the occuping Arabs but opposing lords and barons as well.

The Emperor Yazdegerd III attempted to raise troops by appealing to other neighbouring areas such as the princes of Tukharistan and Sogdia and eventually sent his son Pirouz to the Tang court, but without much success.

Yezdegerd fled towards the east where he was ill-treated by several Marzban (provincial governors) in the north as well as in Merv, where the governor Mahoye openly showed his hostility to the Emperor. Tabari reported that the province of Khorassan revolted against Sassanian rule, just as it had years earlier when it had sided with Khosro Parviz' uncle Bistam. When Yazdegerd was coronated in Istakhr, Persia had in fact three Kings ruling in different regions and this province had not given its support to Yazdegerd at first.

Before Yazdegerd had a chance to receive help from the Hepthalites and Turkish tribes, he was assassinated in Merv where his accompanying Imperial troops and retinue were ambushed and opposed by the local people of Marv. The event took place in 652 and though his son Pirouz continued to fight the Umayyads until 707, Nihavand's significance is such that no Imperial army, other than the armed militias and personal retinues of barons and village lords were ever able to take the field against the invader.