Lakhmid’s Fall From Power

Last updated: May 18th, 2025 at 7:33 am · Est. Reading Time: 3 minutes

Sasanian King Khosrow II Parvez assassinated the last Lakhmid kinglet, Nu’man III bin Mundhir IV, around 602 CE, virtually ending the era of Lakhmid power.¹

The Reasons Behind the Fall

One guess could be Lakhmid’s failure to maintain the safety of the roads and prevent tribal raids to the satisfaction of Sasanian Iran lately.  Baladhuri preserves an interesting piece of information.   According to this story, Bakr bin Wai’l attacked the Banu ‘Amr clan of Tamin on “Day of al-Salib’ (Ṣalīb’ صَلِيب).  The Iranian regular army, asawira, had to help Tamim.  Bakr defeated them and killed Ta’rif (Ṭa’rīf تَعرِيف), the chief of asawira.²  It is difficult to calculate the timings of this event.  There is another event whose timing can be determined easily.  That is the looting of Sasanian Iran’s caravan by tribesmen belonging to Tamim around 570 CE.  At that time, Khosrow I Anushirwan did not bother to order the Lakhmids to look into the matter.  He rather hired other Arabs for the purpose.³  Another guess could be Lakhmid’s increasing assertiveness towards complete independence.  Still another guess could be a personal fallout between Nu’man III and Khosrow II Parvez, like the refusal of the former to give his daughter Hind in marriage to the latter.  Most of the Lakhmid kinglets were pagan, though most of their households were Christian.  The last straw on the camel’s back could be Nu’man’s overt conversion to Nestorian Christianity.⁴  Nu’man’s Christianity is the least possible because Khosrow II Parvez was tolerant towards Christians, and the person he appointed after Nu’man was also a Christian.

A letter from Parvez, in which he justified putting Nu’man to death and ending Lakhmid rule in Hirah, claimed that “Nu’mān and his clan had conspired with the Arab tribes against us by convincing them that our empire would pass to them.  I learned this information from a letter, so I killed him and appointed an ignorant Arab who knows nothing of all this to rule Hīraḥ”⁵

Aftermath of Lakhmid’s Fall From Power

After the assassination of Nu’man, the Iranians appointed Iyas bin Qabisa (Iyās bin Qabīṣah اِياس بِن قَبِيصه), a Christian from Tayi.  He was merely a façade for the real ruler of Hirah, who was an Iranian marzban (marzbān مَرزبان of Arabic sources, marzipān of Pahlavi sources.  This was the title of a Sasanian military governor of their border provinces.⁶   People of Hirah got dissatisfied with the new rulers and were nostalgic about the Lakhmids.  With the Lakhmid buffer removed, Iranians came face to face with Arabs of the Tribal Zone, who started raiding them.  The Chronicle of Siirt informs us that the Arabs of Lakhm revolted after this event.⁷

This Arab Sasanian tug of war culminated in the battle of Dhi-Qar (Dhi-Qār زى قار) around 610 CE and the defeat of the Iranian army near Hirah.⁸  The war was not purely Arabs versus Persians, as Arab tribes fought on both sides.  However, one Arab faction was fighting on orders of Khosrow II Parvez and with complete support of Iranian cavalry, to keep all Arabs of the region under Khosrow’s hegemony.  The other Arab faction, mainly the clans of Bakr bin Wa’il, were fighting to oppose Sasanian authority over Arabs.

After this unexpected defeat, Iranians decided to rule Hirah directly.  They removed Iyas bin Qabisa and installed Iranian, Azadhbih (Āzādhbiḥ ازاذبِيح), as governor of Hirah.⁹  Arabs of Central Arabia, loyal to the Lakhmids, seceded from Hirah during these upheavals, and so did Bahrain. The Battle of Dhi-Qar set the stage for Qadisyah a few decades later.¹⁰

Further Reading

Abū Jā’far Muḥammad bin Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī, ed. Ehsan Yar-Shater, trans. C. E. Bosworth (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 5:360-365.

Robert G. Hoyland, In God’s Path: the Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 49.

Endnotes

1. The Chronicle of Khuzistan, A Short Chronicle on the End of the Sasanian Empire and Early Islam: 590 – 660 A.D., ed. and trans. Nasir al-Ka’bi (Piscataway, NJ: Gorbias Press, 1916), 24 – 26.
2. Baladhuri, Ansab al-Ashraf, ms. Folio 105b.
3. Abū Jā’far Muḥammad bin Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī, ed. Ehsan Yar-Shater, trans. C. E. Bosworth (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 5:289-291.
4. ‘Abd al-Ḥusain Zarrinkūb, “The Arab Conquest of Iran and its Aftermath,” in Cambridge History of Iran, ed. Richard N. Frye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 4:3.
5. Ahmad al-Ali Salih, Muhadarat fi Tarikh al-Arab (Baghdad: Maktabat al-Munshi, 1960), 70.
6. Abū Jā’far Muḥammad bin Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī, ed. Ehsan Yar-Shater, trans. C. E. Bosworth (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 5:360, 371.
7. Chronicle of Siirt, Patrologia Orientalis ed. and trans. Addai Scher, (Paris: Librairie de Paris, 1918). Vol 13, P 539 (ch. 87).
8. Robert G. Hoyland, In God’s Path: the Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 49.;  Ya’qūbī, Ibn Wāḍiḥ al-, The Works of Ibn Wāḍīḥ al-Ya’qūbī: An English Translation, Eds. and Trans. Matthew S. Gordon, Chase F. Robinson, Everett K. Rowson, and Michael Fishbein, (Leiden: Brill, 2018),645.
9. Abū Jā’far Muḥammad bin Jarīr al-Ṭabarī, The History of al-Ṭabarī, Vol. V, ed. Ehsan Yar-Shater, trans. C. E. Bosworth (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 372.
10. Yasmine Zahran. The Lakhmids of Hira: Sons of the water of Heaven (London: Stacy, 2009), 55.