The Battle of Nahavand: “Victory of Victories”

The Battle of Nahavand, fought in the Zagros mountains south of Hamadan in 642, was the last time the Sasanian Empire put a large royal army into the field. Its defeat by the Arab forces of al-Nu’man ibn Muqarrin opened the Iranian plateau to conquest, and Arab writers called it Fath al-Futuh, the “Victory of Victories”.

The last royal army

After the defeat at Jalula in 637, the caliph Umar held his armies on the edge of the Zagros. For a few years the frontier was quiet in the north, while Arab forces from Basra fought for Khuzestan in the south. In Iran, Yazdegerd III and his governors used the pause to raise a new army from the plateau. The Arabic sources say men came from Ray, Isfahan, Hamadan and the provinces further east, and that they gathered at Nahavand, a town on a mountain plain on the road from Hulwan towards Hamadan and Isfahan.

Reports of this army alarmed the Arab garrison towns of Kufa and Basra. According to Tabari, Umar consulted his advisers, considered leading the army himself and was persuaded not to. He chose al-Nu’man ibn Muqarrin, a commander from the Muzayna tribe, and named the men who would succeed him if he were killed, the first of them Hudhayfa ibn al-Yaman. Troops were drawn from Kufa, Basra and other fronts.

Drawing the Persians out

As at Jalula, the Persians took up a strong defensive position, and the Arabs were unwilling to attack it head on. The chronicles say that after days of inconclusive skirmishing the Arab commanders agreed on a ruse: a feigned retreat to draw the Persians out of their lines and onto open ground. Tabari credits the idea to more than one person, which suggests that the story was told in several tribal versions.

The plan worked. The Persian army followed the retreating Arabs, and when it was well away from its defences the Arabs turned and attacked. Al-Nu’man was killed early in the fighting. In the version Tabari gives, his brother covered his body and kept the banner flying so that the army would not lose heart, and Hudhayfa took over the command.

Rout and pursuit

The Persian army broke, and many of its men died in the flight, some, the accounts say, falling into a ravine in the dark. The Persian commander escaped towards Hamadan but was caught at a mountain pass, which according to a much-repeated story was blocked by a caravan carrying honey. Hamadan surrendered on terms soon afterwards. As usual, the casualty figures in the sources are far too large to be taken literally.

The Arabic histories add an episode about treasure: a Zoroastrian priest is said to have bought safety by revealing a hoard of jewels that Khosrow had left in his keeping. Stories like this, attached to almost every battle of the conquest, show how much the wealth of the Sasanians impressed the conquerors and their descendants.

The Victory of Victories

Nahavand did not end the war, but it ended the empire’s ability to wage it. The Sasanian court never again assembled a combined army. Resistance after 642 was local: cities, provincial governors and mountain lords who fought or made terms on their own. Umar now allowed his commanders onto the plateau, and in the next few years Arab forces took Isfahan, Ray, Qom, Kashan and Azerbaijan, mostly by treaty. Yazdegerd moved east, ending his life as a fugitive in Khorasan, as told on the conquest of Fars, Khorasan and the east.

Different ways of remembering

For Muslim historians Nahavand completed what al-Qadisiyyah began, and its name, Victory of Victories, reflects that confidence. The Persian epic tradition hardly mentions it; in the Shahnameh the story jumps from al-Qadisiyyah to the king’s lonely end at Merv. Modern Iranian writers have sometimes treated Nahavand as the true moment of national defeat, and nationalist narratives often stress the courage of the defenders. Historians today point out that the battle was a contest between a newly confident state and an exhausted one, whose governors were already thinking about their own survival.

Nahavand is today a town in Hamadan province. The Hamadan region’s earlier history is covered on Hamadan.