Arsacid dynasty

“ The Parthians prove incapable of creating a firm, united organization, such as the Achaemenids before them, and the Sassanids after them gave to their empire. The kings themselves were toys in the hands of the magnates and the army who, tenaciously as they clung to the anointed dynasty of the Arsacids, were utterly indifferent to the person of the individual Arsacid. Every moment they were ready to overthrow the reigning monarch and to seat another on his throne. ”

“ The Bagratids founded dynasties at Kars, 962–1080, and in Georgia, which they held until its absorption, 1801, by Russia. From 984 to 1085 the country from Diarbekr to Melasgerd was ruled under the suzerainty first of Arabs then of Byzantines and Seljuks, by the Mervanid dynasty of Kurds, called princes of Abahuni (Ἀπαχουνῆς) . The Arab invasion drove many Armenian noblemen to Constantinople, where they intermarried with the old Roman families or became soldiers of fortune. Artavasdes, an Arsacid, usurped the Byzantine throne for two years ”

“ The native institutions of the Armenian people were not unfavourable to such a development. At the present day they cannot be said to possess a class of nobles, and they are devoid of natural leaders. But in the ninth century their councils were governed by a strong territorial nobility, a relic of the period when they possessed their own independent kings of Arsakid descent. The Arsakid dynasty had struggled on into the fifth century, when it succumbed to the Sasanian monarchy of Persia and Mesopotamia, and a Persian governor was sent to rule over the land (A.D. 428) . ”

“ The Assyrian king was murdered by his son, Assur-nazir-pal I., and Hadad-nadin-akhi made king of Babylonia. But it was not until several years later, in the reign of the Assyrian king Tukulti-Assur, that a reconciliation was effected between the two rival kingdoms. The next Assyrian monarch, Bel-kudur-uzur, was the last of the old royal line. He seems to have been slain fighting against the Babylonians, who were still under the rule of Hadad-nadin-akhi, and a new dynasty was established at Assur by In-aristi-pileser, who claimed to be a descendant of the ancient prince Erba-Raman. ”

“ The number of the victims is said to have amounted to thousands and tens of thousands of either sex and every age. The great cities, including Artaxata and Vagharshapat, were ruthlessly destroyed. Whole populations, among which were conspicuous the numerous Jewish colonies, were driven off into captivity. From this calamity, which must have occurred after the year 363 and before 379, the Arsakid dynasty does not appear to have recovered. The son of Arshak, [306] by name Pap, was indeed placed upon the throne by the emperor, and reigned for several years. ”

“ The Armenian monarch, who had been set on his throne by Artabanus, and was uncle to the young princes, was especially anxious to maintain the Arsacids in power; he gave them a refuge in Armenia, collected an army on their behalf, and engaging Artaxerxes, is even said to have defeated him in a battle. But his efforts, and those of Artavasdes, were unavailing. The arms of Artaxerxes in the end everywhere prevailed. After a struggle, which cannot have lasted more than a few years, the provinces of the old Parthian empire submitted; the last Arsacid prince fell into the hands of the Persian king ”

“ We now know who built Van and by whom these tablets were engraved upon the face of the citadel. As the horizon opens with each advance in our acquisition of the vocabulary and with each addition to the catalogues of texts, we are introduced to no obscure dynasty which slept secure behind the mountains, but to a splendid monarchy which for at least two centuries rivalled the claims of Assyria to the dominion of the ancient world. The native designation of the imperial people was that of Khaldians or children of Khaldis, just as the Assyrians reflect the name of their god, Assur. ”

“ No military expeditions are conducted--no great buildings are reared--art almost disappears--literature holds her tongue." Then came the dynasty of the priest-kings, founded by Her-Hor, which held the throne for more than a century and was contemporary in its latter years with David and Solomon. The Twenty-Second Dynasty which succeeded had its capital at Bubastis and is concluded by Dr. Brugsch to have been a line of Assyrian kings, representing an invasion and conquest of Egypt by Nimrod, the great king of Assyria. ”

“ But his chief exploit was the conquest of Damascus, whose king Marih opened its gates to him and became an Assyrian vassal.
The older Assyrian dynasty, however, was fast coming to an end. In b.c. 753 its last representative, Assur-nirari, mounted the throne. Insurrection had already broken out at the beginning of his predecessor's reign, and pestilence had been added to insurrection. The old capital Assur had led the revolt, a solar eclipse on June 15, b.c. ”

“ How clearly, then, do we see the truth of the prophetic announcement that the disruption of the kingdom was "of the Lord"! Out of apparent catastrophe was evolved infinite reparation. The abandonment of the Davidic dynasty of the Ten Tribes looked like earthly ruin. It did indeed hasten the final overthrow of all national autonomy; but that would have come in any case, humanly speaking, from Assyria, or Babylonia, Persia, or the Seleucids, or the Ptolemies, or Rome. ”

“ The golden throne which symbolized her glory and magnificence was carried off. Meanwhile feuds raged between the different branches of the Arsacid family; civil wars were frequent; two or three monarchs at a time claimed the throne, or actually ruled in different portions of the Empire. It is not surprising that under these circumstances the bonds were loosened between Parthia and her vassal kingdoms, or that the Persian tributary monarchs began to despise their suzerains, and to contemplate without alarm the prospect of a rebellion which should place them in an independent position. ”

“ Izalla and Bît-Bakhiâni had fulfilled their duties as vassals whenever Assur-nazir-pal had appeared in their neighbourhood; Bît-Adini alone had remained independent, though its strength was more apparent than real. The districts which it included had never been able to form a basis for a powerful state. If by chance some small kingdom arose within it, uniting under one authority the tribes scattered over the burning plain or along the river banks, the first conquering dynasty which sprang up in the neighbourhood would be sure to effect its downfall, and absorb it under its own leadership. ”

“ Like other provinces of the later Abbasid Caliphate its rulers were, during this period, able to establish quasi-independent dynasties, such being those of the Tulunids who ruled from 868 to 905, and the Ikshidis from 935–969. In 969 the country was conquered by Jauhar for the Fatimite caliph Mo’izz, who transferred his capital from Mahdia (q.v.) in the Maghrib to Cairo. This dynasty lasted till 1171, when Egypt was again embodied in the Abbasid empire by Saladin, who, however, was himself the founder of a quasi-independent dynasty called the Ayyubites or Ayyubids, which lasted till 1252. ”

“ A dynasty of weak kings followed and seemed to be leading Assyria on to ruin, but in 746 B.C. the people rose up in rebellion, driving them out and crowning a ruler selected by themselves. It is supposed that the one they chose had already proven his worth and capacity either at the head of a large division of the army, or possibly in the management of some Assyrian province. ”

“ Whilst abroad, on one of his periodic visits, Parliament deposed him, and proclaimed the extinction of his dynasty, which had occupied the throne of Persia for a hundred and thirty years, whose rulers proudly claimed no less a descent than from Japhet, son of Noah, and whose successive monarchs, with only one exception, were either assassinated, deposed, or struck down by mortal disease. ”

“ We need not then wonder, that the Egyptians have made the Kings in the first Dynasty of their Monarchy, that which was seated at Thebes in the days of David, Solomon, and Rehoboam, so very ancient and so long lived; since the Persians have done the like to their Kings, who began to Reign in Assyria two hundred years after the death of Solomon; and the Syrians of Damascus have done the like to their Kings Adar and Hazael, who Reigned an hundred years after the death of Solomon, worshipping them as Gods, and boasting their antiquity, and not knowing, saith Josephus, that they were but modern. ”

“ The majority of these great vassals secretly aspired to the crown: they frequently had reason to believe that they had some right to it, either through their mother or one of their ancestors. Had they combined against the reigning house, they could easily have gained the upper hand, but their mutual jealousies prevented this, and the overthrow of a dynasty to which they owed so much would, for the most part, have profited them but little: as soon as one of them revolted, the remainder took arms in Pharaoh’s defence, led his armies and fought his battles. ”

“ Hammer's Geschichte der Assassinen (History of the Assassins) , and the same writer's Fundgruben des Orients (Mines of the East) , M. Jourdain's Extrait de l'Ouvrage de Mirkhond sur la Dynastie des Ismaelites, and Malcolm's History of Persia, are the principal authorities for the following account of the Assassins.
[4] The name given to the dynasty founded by Ardeshir, from his pretended ancestor Sassan, a grandson of Isfundear, a hero greatly celebrated in the ancient history of Persia. Isfundear was the son of Gushtasp, who is supposed to be the Darìus Hystaspes of the Greek historians. ”

“ Islam, on the destruction of the Arabian monarchy, resolved itself into a number of separate States, each governed by its own Bey or Sultan, who in his quality of temporal prince was head also of religion within his own dominions. The Mongols, converted to the Faith of Mecca, founded a Mohammedan empire in the east; the Seljuk Turks, replaced by the Ottoman, reigned in Asia Minor; the Barbary States had their own rulers; and Egypt was governed by that strange dynasty of slaves, the Mameluke Sultans. ”

“ The king having no male heir gave Aḥmad his daughter in marriage and appointed him his successor,—a choice that was ratified by the acclamation of the people, and the Muhammadan dynasty thus instituted has continued down to the present century. ”

“ A good general impression, however, of the disastrous scenes amidst which the nineteenth dynasty closed is given by Rameses iii., first king of the succeeding dynasty. ‘The land,’ he tells us, ‘had fallen into confusion; each man did as he chose; there was no sovereign master. The princes of the nomes bore sway, and men slaughtered each other through fear and jealousy. The end of these years of calamity was that Aarsu, a Syrian by birth, gained the chief supremacy, and the whole land did him homage. The gods fared no better than men ”

“ If so weak and small a race could defy the power of the Arsacid monarchs, much more might the far more numerous and at least equally courageous Persians expect to succeed, if they made a resolute attempt to recover their freedom.
It is probable that Artaxerxes, in his capacity of vassal, served personally in the army with which the Parthian monarch Artabanus carried on the struggle against Rome, and thus acquired the power of estimating correctly the military strength still possessed by the Arsacidae, and of measuring it against that which he knew to belong to his nation. ”

“ The only monarchy existing under conditions at all similar to Assyria, whereto an equally long—or rather a still longer—duration has been assigned with some show of reason, is Egypt. But there it is admitted that the continuity was interrupted by the long foreign domination of the Hyksos, and by at least one other foreign conquest—that of the Ethiopian Sabacos or Shebeks. According to Ctesias, one and the same dynasty occupied the Assyrian throne during the whole period, of thirteen hundred years. Sardanapalus, the last king in his list, being the descendant and legitimate successor of Ninus. ”

“ Hajjaj choked the young life in its own blood, and the Abbaside dynasty, with kingly patriotism, sold the dearly-bought conquests of the nation, first to the Persians, and then to Turkish slaves, with the view of procuring an imaginary security for their throne. ”

“ Both in Europe and in Asia small feudal or aristocratic states tended to consolidate themselves into monarchies, but whereas in Europe from the early days of Rome onwards royalty has often been driven out and replaced temporarily or permanently by popular government, this change seems not to occur in Asia, where revolution means only a change of dynasty. The few cases where the government is not monarchical, as Arabia, seem to represent the persistence of very ancient conditions. ”

“ It was a period of calamity and distress, during which the Arabs or the Aramæans ravaged the country, and pillaged without compunction not only the property of the inhabitants, but also that of the gods. The Elamite usurper having died about the year 1030, a Babylonian of noble extraction expelled the intruders, and succeeded in bringing the larger part of the kingdom under his rule.*
* The names of the first kings of this dynasty are destroyed in the copies of the Royal Canon which have come down to us. ”

“ The reverse shows the seated archer, or occasionally an elephant; the head of the king is beardless and wears a helmet and a diadem; only from the third or fourth king they begin to wear a beard after the Iranian fashion. In honour of the founder of the dynasty all his successors, when they came to the throne, adopted his name and officially (e.g. on the coins) are almost always called Arsaces, whereas the historians generally use their individual names. ”