And, we're back...
Sheskh's Vision
Shah Sheskh after Roshana's death in 598 ruled at first in an uncertain position. While he was Shah in his own right, acclaimed by his soldiers and quickly the primitive bureaucracy of his satrapy-cum-kingdom, he was also considered by some to be merely a regent for his young nephew Toramana. It was an arrangement which would not last. Sheskh had many sons and was married to an Armenian noblewoman, and had already proven himself energetic, capable, and ambitious. It should be no surprise that the child Toramana died, all-too-conveniently, before his first birthday. By 599, Shah Sheskh ruled in his own right one of the wealthier successor kingdoms. A year later he would make his own son, Khauwashta, his successor and subordinate Shah in his own right.
However, Sheskh also ruled a regime splintered by religious controversy. His Armenian subjects, whom he relied upon for military support, belonged to the miaphysite Church, a church which had increasingly broken away from Rome and forged its own path. This provided the Armenian people and aristocracy a kind of proto-nationalism based around a unique religious and linguistic identity, and made them insubordinate at the best of times. Thus Sheskh was opted to arrange, often with veiled threats, the taking of numerous young noble hostages to raise among the Eftal, a move which forestalled any threat of rebellion, and integrated his own tribal aristocracy with that of the Armenians.
The city of Huniyag, close to war-torn Asoristan but far enough north to avoid being raided, became Sheskh's base of operations for renewed war with Akhshunwar Malkha. The two kingdoms had previously concluded an uneasy peace under Roshana, but sensing weakness, Sheskh abandoned his sister's treaty and rode south, scoring major victories at twin battles in Kaskar and Karka. Both victories showcased Sheskh's capability for fighting sweeping battles of maneuver, wherein his Eftal cavalry, backed by Turkic archery and Armenian heavy armor, managed to isolate and massacre Akhshunwar's forces in detail. The cities along the Persian gulf surrendered quickly afterwards, which left only Susa, the royal capital.
Akhshunwar made preparations for a siege. He sent letters to the Kidarites begging for aid, and to the various satraps and tribes of the east. However, his Eftal companions defected en masse, and his Turkic mercenaries, unwilling to die for a ruler they had no personal stake in, surrendered Akhshunwar to Sheskh in 600. The mercenaries themselves would be handsomely rewarded and then sent far away at once, to counter raids engineered by Huviskha.
For even as these battles were being fought, Huvishka Prajana, ever the opportunist, took Shahrizor and much of central Persia. More than a mere King, he began to proclaim his right to the entire Eftal Empire, which he swore solemnly to restore. This left Sheskh in a difficult position. Huvishka Prajana and Akhshunwar Malkha could both tie themselves by blood to Akhshunwar I and his dynasty, and while the Eftal might have often cared more for personal merit, Sheskh had begun to fear that the vast number of Eftal who had defected to him were not truly loyal. A majority of them had kept to the worship of Mahadeva much as Akhshunwar had patronized and designed it, and this only exacerbated Sheskh's paranoia.
Executing Akhshunwar Malkha had given Sheskh an empire, but managing the complex and geographically distant state which he inherited was no mean feat. One of the greatest challenges he would face was a series of Zoroastrian-inspired uprisings of the common people, based around ridding the country of foreigners and preparing for the "Great Renovation" when evil would be driven the world by the forces of good. These uprisings, lacking the support of either the mercantile or aristocratic classes of Persian society (which were by and large merged with the Eftal by this point) had little hope of true success but were nevertheless devastating to the countryside and necessitated strong measures to put them down. Meanwhile, the Kidarites, lead by a man named Vinduyih, made a pact with Shah Huvishka and the Johiyava Raja and began raiding into Pars, driving a not insignificant portion of the wealthy population to flee towards the coasts, where the high-walled trading cities renovated and patronized by Toramana and Khauwashta almost a century ago offered superior protection from rural rebellion and banditry. Cities such as Mihirapat and Ram swelled in population but ultimately were forced to close their gates against the influx of refugees. Many who were turned away from the gulf cities fled across the gulf to Hatta or Mazun, where the local petty Shahs welcomed them with open arms and often recruited them for their feuds with the Hadhrami.
Sheskh lead the campaigns to put down the rebels, and did so with relative ease. Along the way he confiscated significant amounts of land, either abandoned by fleeing aristocrats or the peasant rebels, distributing it to those Eftal who had once been loyal to Akhshunwar, hoping to win them over with kingly generosity. However, the Kidarites proved a far greater challenge. Sheskh was incapable of pinning them down in a pitched battle, and he would die anticlimactically in a skirmish, where the Kidarite cavalry managed to attack the camp of his vanguard. Dying in 604, he left a dangerous situation for his son and heir.
Back in Huniyag, Khauwashta wasted little time attempting to assert his authority. He rode south to the royal palace at Susa and was quickly declared full Shah. He sent envoys east and made an unfavorable peace with the Kidarites, offering them a large tribute to curtail their raiding. Then, he gathered what forces he could and prepared for Huviskha's move. Huvishka had been wintering in Kermanshah, building up his own military. Sheskh's legacy was a state which was "hollow" - a vast crescent shaped territory from Armenia to Mesopotamia to the Persian Gulf. Huviskha by contrast controlled a contiguous, well-defended territory shielded by mountains on many sides.
Shah Huviskha's army was perhaps the largest raised since the legendary campaigns of Mihiragula, though few of his men had fought in them. His forces, despite a core of Eftal cavalry and Gilani footmen, were bolstered by his Avshastani allies and Turkic, Alani, and Balasagani mercenaries. Commanded by Huvishka's experienced son, Khingila, the swifter elements, the Turkic and Avsha cavalry broke out onto the plains of Mesopotamia, wreaking havoc and interrupting Khauwashta's attempts to muster forces from his far flung provinces. The army Sheskh had led against the Kidarites had largely melted away as well - the Turkic mercenaries defected en masse, just as Sheskh feared they would. Khauwashta was left with a relatively small force, and within a year of Sheskh's death Khauwashta personally controlled little more than the cities along the Persian gulf and Susa.
However, Khauwashta had inherited his father's skill in warfare and diplomacy. He succeeded in making Akhshunwar Malkha's companions his own, and retained the loyalty of the Armenian lords, whose raids would open an additional front and cause Huviskha no end of headaches on the homefront. Riding up the Tigris, he defeated Khingila in battle outside of Dastkart, and then again at Hulwan, his heavy cavalry punching through the center of Shah Huviskha's line and causing the "Universal Ruler in Fellowship" to flee the field. After this unacceptable display of cowardice, it was only a matter of time before the edifice came crumbling down. Many of Huviskha's Eftal allies deserted, the Avsha returned home, and the Turkic mercenaries murdered their former employer, only to find that Khauwashta was not as lenient as his father had been. He did not take the Huviskha's Turkic mercenaries into his service but rather massacred them, riding them down wherever he could find them and subjecting them to grisly punishments.
"This act, more than any, won him the friendship of the common man of Iran, who had long suffered at the hand of the Tujue..." one Eftal historian writes. However, this historian, flatters Khauwashta. Khauwashta would ultimately employ many Turks in his own army as well, settling them in certain depopulated regions of Persia much as his ancestors had settled Xionites and Gaoche, hoping that in time they would become loyal reserves of manpower indistinct from the Eftal warriors they served alongside.
By 605 Khauwashta ruled a "unified Empire, united in the fellowship of the Dharma and the patronage of the God", pardoned Huviskha's son Khingila for his "treason" and sent him to live out his days in a monastery. From the first moment he returned to Susa, Khauwashta tried to imitate the manner of the old Eftal Shahs, acting as if he had always been Shah, and that the war he fought against Huviskha was that of a rightful monarch suppressing a rebel. The world, however, would show how false that truly was. This was not a return to the old days. Distinct regional identities had had a generation to develop in the absence of a central authority not present since Mihiragula and the Reign of Sons. Khauwashta ruled a lesser territory than his predecessors, an Empire stripped of much of its periphery.
More crucial than the loss of the periphery was the development of regional identity. Buddhism was powerful and influential in the east and north, especially in the region the Greeks called Hyrcania, in but also in Sogdia and the satrapies around the Caspian. Further, the Gilani had served in important positions in Huviskha's government, but did not in Khauwashtas, and this would be a source of simmering resentment. Trade and industry flourished anew in the south, where Eftal and Persian identities were the most blurred - but this synthesis of culture excluded the Persianized but fundamentally different Eftal culture in Mesopotamia, Shahrizor, and the Iranian plateau. The "northern" Eftal were commonly more traditionally pagan and sometimes Christian. They had mixed with far more tribal groups from outside the traditional "White Huns" and lived a more traditional lifestyle, maintaining their cavalry traditions which the Gulf Eftal had begun to lose in their "decadent urban" lifestyle.
Armenia, though now tightly bound to the Eftal Shahdom, was similarly independent in their identity - and indeed had been even during Mihiragula's reign. Khauwashta granted them exceptional privileges and autonomy, as he did to the Kidarites when Vinduyih finally acknowledged his overlordship. Both regions maintained their own vassal Shahs, making Khauwashta little more than first among equals in the periphery of his regime. Concerned with the internal politics of his realm, Khauwashta would also never incorporate Osrhoene or Syria into his state, though monuments from his reign claim that Heshana paid him a magnificent tribute on several occasions.
The Sahushah - Statebuilding on the Steppe
The Sahu clan which came to give their name to the Sahu Shahs was, as mentioned before, a polyglot group. The Xasar-Sahu confederacy's sole commonality was being defeated by the first Khauwashta generations ago, and subsequently breaking out onto the Eurasian steppe, taking the Rav [IOTL Volga] and Don river plains and driving the Hunno-Bulgars and Avars west into conflict with the settled peoples they found there. But from there, the Xasar-Sahu would not merely pass into history like so many of their predecessors. Rather, they began to found something more enduring.
The Sahu, like the Eftal before them, were not opposed to urban settlement. Indeed they patronized it, modeling their new cities off a mixture of imported Persian style and the indigenous Greek designs which they encountered around the Crimea. Much trade flowed up and down the Dnieper, Volga, and Don rivers, and though their urban project began as merely a series of trading posts, these posts began to blossom into true cities, the largest of them being Tangravata, built over the ruins of the Greek city of Tanais. These cities were small affairs, often dingy and dirty, but the blossoming of the Sahu urban tradition was well underway by 590. Their subjugation of the Crimean Goths and the Greek population provided them with skilled builders as well, and allowed them to lay tariffs upon the traditional trade of the region - and from the "Sahu River Tolls" came a level of wealth which allowed the Sahu to further centralize and assert their dominion.
Slaves, amber, lumber and grain flowed south, and this trade with Constantinople and the cities of the Caspian sea benefitted all parties. By ensuring relative peace in the regions of their dominion, they imitated the success of the Silk Road, only with the added benefit of riverine transport. While Sahu dominion was often loose and chaotic, involving vicious tribal conflicts with their confederal allies and subjects, it also successfully imitated the Eftal style of statebuilding. The fortified palace city of Apaxauda (near to IOTL Sarkel) in particular gave the state a permanent, central hub, a place where six months out of the year petitioners could go and seek audience with the Sahu Shah.
Traditionally considered the founder of the Sahu state, Shah Ayadhar cultivated a level of detachment from the other tribal lords who might have considered themselves his peers. One way in which this was achieved was by cultivating foreign relations and forbidding his allies from doing the same. During the glory days of Huviskha's monarchy, the Shah bragged of sending missionaries to Apaxauda, where they remained and founded a monastery. Ayadhar had an embassy in Constantinople, where he sent several of his sons to serve as mercenaries, and raided the Alans, supposedly at the behest of Emperor Ioannes. These raids would ultimately prove beneficial to the Sahu, pressing the Alans out of excellent grazing land, but forced more of the Alans to cross into the Caucasus and, though these refugees were much reduced in number, desperation would force them to attack the weakening Roman state.
Huviskha's propagandistic tale of spreading Buddhism seems to have not been false, but the Greek and Gothic peoples of the Crimea certainly were unimpressed by these Eftal missions, and some of the Turkic peoples among the Xasar-Sahu already worshipped their own synthesis of Buddhism which incorporated their own deities. Ayadhar's attempts to unify his people under a single faith seem to have been flawed - Manichaeans, Pagans of many backgrounds and Christians each made up a significant minority, and the Christians in particular were vital to the western half of his trade.
Shah Ayadhar is almost a mythic figure, only corroborated by the existence of his name in the records of many settled peoples around the same time. But his successors would step out of myth into history as a peoples located on the crossroads between civilizations. Administering the great rivers, the Sahu Shahs would be the conduit for a cultural exchange which would fundamentally change the character of the eastern Slavic peoples.
The West and Romanization
The succession of capable African Kings continued with Tamenzut (574-607) and then his son, Idirases. Tamenzut came to the throne inheriting a unified, powerful state with mercantile and hegemonic ambitions. Over his reign, he forged agreements which provided security for the Roman populations of the various western Mediterranean islands in exchange for a series of trade agreements which brought the urban Roman population in Africa prosperity.
When the Prefect of Sicily died of old age, in 602, he sent Idirases as his representative to Syracuse. Maurice had been an able friend of the Mauri, and had repulsed two Gothic invasions, but he had left almost nothing to account for his succession. He had two daughters, the younger of whom was unmarried, but he had left no indication of who should follow him. Immediately, Maria, the eldest daughter, and her husband Cometas sought to take the title of Doux of Sicilia, but Maurice's second-in-command and foremost general, Isidorus rebelled with the loyalty of most of his military. Idirases fled to Lilybaeum, and shortly thereafter returned to Syracuse, this time with a not insubstantial military and fleet of his own.
After a convoluted intrigue described in great detail by the Roman historian Martinus, Cometas was murdered, Maria married Idirases, and Isidorus fled to Naples, and then on to Ravenna, where he offered his loyalty and troops to the Gothic King Recared in exchange for support in being made Doux of Sicily. Recared rode south and met with Idirases. The two men reportedly despised one another, but a compromise was reached - Idirases would be Doux of Sicily, but would abandon all claims to the southern Italian cities Maurice had controlled. The entire Pennisula fell under the control of the Goths.
Apart from small Berber garrisons, the Roman cities under Berber rule, either in Africa or abroad continued much as they always had. Local governors paid taxes to a Rex, but there was no attempt to impose any sort of foreign settlement. In a sense, the Roman Empire continued in north Africa as well as Egypt and Asia Minor.
The trend of re-Romanization was also evident in Hispania. King Gesalec, the Gothic King of Hispania, ruled a territory that had been much reduced from its heydey. A series of battles had cost his predecessors all of Gaul beyond a few isolated coastal cities, and his father, Athanagild, had lost the rest shortly before his death. At the dawn of the seventh century, he was preoccupied with putting down rebellions, particularly in the south where the Roman population defied him, with, he suspected, assistance from the new Mauri King after he had wed an Ostrogothic Princess, an attempt at uniting the two realms in the face of Frankish aggression.In 608, he went to war with the Frankish King Clothar, who came south after a series of successful campaigns in the north against his various brothers, and, despite being by most accounts an uninspiring monarch and a coward, Gesalec won a major victory - keeping the Franks north of Pyrenees for the time being.
After this victory we can trace a significant change in policy. Increasingly, Gesalec chose to describe himself as the protector of Hispania from the northern barbarians. Realizing, perhaps, that he needed to keep the Romans on his side, he sought to bridge the gap between the Arians and the Chalcedonian Romans, trying to present himself as more Romanized than his rivals, drawing on the works of the Roman philosopher Cassiodorus whose effect on the Ostrogoths had been profoundly stabilizing. While he would never convert to Nicene Christianity (and indeed could not, if he wished to maintain his throne) he did patronize Nicene monasteries and the renovation of many Roman churches.