Plundering Byzantine Territory

As Khusrau retreated, however, he extorted large sums of money from Byzantine cities such as Edessa and Dara as a condition of leaving them in peace. At the latter place, he laid siege to the city until the inhabitants paid him a large sum to leave them further unmolested. As a result of these actions, Justinian denounced the truce and prepared to send Belisarius, his victorious general in the west, against the Persians.

Khusrau, on returning to Iraq, built a new city near his capital, a model of Antioch, which he called Veh Antiok Khusrau, ("Better than Antioch [has] Khusrau [built this]"), wherein he settled captives brought from Antioch. This town, forming part of the complex of the capital, was called Rumagan "town of the Greeks" by the local inhabitants, and al-Rumiyya in Arabic. Khusrau the following year opened hostilities in Lazica on the Black Sea coast of Transcaucasia. The Persians captured Petra, a Byzantine fortress on the coast, and established a protectorate over the country, which formerly had been nominally under Byzantine rule. In the south Belisarius had a few local successes but he did not have sufficient troops or equipment to take Nisibis or other large, fortified cities. The following year pestilence hindered the activities of both sides.

Then Belisarius was recalled by Justinian and sent to Italy. A Roman army suffered defeat in Armenia in 543. Heartened by the prospects of victory, Khusrau in 544 laid siege to Edessa, hoping to incorporate all of the Byzantine transEuphrates domain into his own empire. The defence of Edessa is described in detail by Procopius, and the end was the retreat of Khusrau to his homeland after a remarkable defence of their city by the people of Edessa. A five years' truce was arranged between Justinian and Khusrau with the latter receiving two thousand pounds of gold.

The truce was broken in its fourth year by the Byzantine alliance with Lazica to expel the Persians. A Byzantine-Lazic force besieged Petra, but the city was relieved by a Sasanian army. Later two Persian armies were routed and finally after a memorable siege the strong fortress of Petra was retaken by the Byzantines in 551, and again a five-year truce was concluded between the two empires. Lazica was not included in the truce and hostilities continued there. Finally, the Persians had the worst of the conflict and negotiations were opened with Byzantium in 5 5 6 for a permanent settlement. After much discussion and passage of time, finally in 561 a fifty years' peace treaty was signed in which the Sasanians evacuated Lazica and in return received an annual payment of gold. A description of the sealing of the documents, as well as the terms of the treaty, is given by Menander Protektor, a Byzantine historian (in fragment 11 M), and it provides an insight into the diplomatic protocol of the time.

Khusrau needed peace on his western frontiers so he could deal with the Hephthalites in the east. About 5 57 he allied with the Tuijks, who had appeared in Transoxiana, under a ruler called Silziboulos in Greek sources, and together they destroyed the Hephthalites and partitioned their territory. It would seem that Khusrau obtained their lands south of the Oxus river, while the Turks ruled over lands to the north. Just how far the Sasanians extended their domains to the east is unknown; it is possible that they penetrated north of the river and then withdrew later when hostilities between Turks and Persians had broken out about 569-70. Whether Khusrau pushed his frontiers into India is also unknown but not likely. It would appear that Kabul and areas to the east were not under Sasanian rule, although short periods of control cannot be excluded. There does not seem to have been a central power holding the Hephthalite princes together in the east.