sehepunkte 25 (2025), Nr. 9

John Hyland / Khodadad Rezakhani (eds.): Brill's Companion to War in the Ancient Iranian Empires

Empires often begin - and end - in war. This is certainly true for the imperial formations of pre-Islamic Īrān, which, from Cyrus to Alexander and from Aršak to Yazdegerd III, developed out of transformative political and military events spanning the entire (Western) Afro-Eurasian region, transforming the lives of millions in the process. Warfare, in the ancient as well as in the modern world, is about much more than battles as such. It involves ideological effort, to make the challenges a conflict inevitably comes with bearable to subject people and potential allies in the enemy camp alike, to say nothing of ensuring continuous support, particularly in dire times, for those who started the war (particularly kings) from the élites around the court, whose commitment to the cause is always critical, if not necessarily always decisive, for its eventual outcome. Logistics, to name just one prominent example, has gained increasing traction in studies of ancient and modern warfare. As the unfolding of many conflicts demonstrates (the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union being a striking case in point), even the most formidable armies, manned by the savviest generals, cannot sustain themselves if the daily mechanisms upholding the supply chain that warfare requires do not live up to what is needed: on the contrary, those endeavors who can rely on an efficient provisioning system (and/or appropriate viz. sabotage that of the enemy), are set to gain a competitive edge which may turn the table even against significant odds. Besides the military skills of Alexander, scholars have long recognized that, to a considerable extent, one structural reason behind the defeat of Darius III was the conqueror's ability to manipulate the imperial satrapal system, thus depriving the rival king of vital resources and manpower, while at the same time rekindling the Achaemenid infrastructural network to his advantage.

Why, then, has it proven so difficult to produce an encompassing bird-eye view on warfare in ancient Īrān through its millennia-long history? As detailed by the editors in their insightful introduction to the newly edited Brill's Companion to War in the Ancient Iranian Empires (Hyland/Rezakhani 2024, 1-33), many factors concurred in consolidating this unfortunate scholarly blind spot, which the volume tries - to a commendable extent successfully - if not to fill, which would hardly be possible to achieve between only two book covers, at least to mitigate. As scholars of one (or more) of the Empires under consideration well known, the nature and the availability of sources stand out as perhaps the most intractable challenge to the task. The history (of scholarship) on the Greek - or Persian-wars in the 5th century BCE is exemplary in this respect. For a very long time, Herodotus' account of Darius' and Xerxes' campaigns provided the only (or the most authoritative) account from which scholars attempted to reconstruct the conflict, its causes, unfolding, and consequences. Herodotus' narrative not being innocent, it is (or should have been) evident what kind of interpretative pitfalls overreliance on such a testimony may entail in understanding how the Achaemenids prepared and managed their military endeavors as a system. And while attention to imperial ideology (as reflected in the royal inscription) has certainly not been lacking, even a proper contextualization of said testimonies against the multilingual Near Eastern background of Achaemenid kingship (Assyria, Ēlām) is a relatively recent but crucial development. Even more concerningly, despite some pioneeringly long-sighted exceptions, not all Achaemenid scholars (to say nothing of Classicists) immediately realized the tremendous potential of the Persepolis Fortification Archive as a source, among many other aspects of Achaemenid social and economic life, for studying Persian militarism in its own terms. Yet, as compellingly highlighted in Hyland's chapter on the subject (157-186, an editio minor of his eagerly expected forthcoming monograph), foregrounding the information coming from the archive promises not only to offer significant correctives, contextualization for, and, at times, internal support to evidence coming from Greek and Roman authors - on the administrative lifepath of certain officers, for example. It also affords unprecedented insights into the systemic nature of the Achaemenid "military-extractive complex", covering the entire expanse of the realm to an extent and a degree which few, if any, other sources can. When even these datasets are absent (as is often the case with the Arsakid and Sāsānid Empires), the challenges increase exponentially. Moreover, as warfare is, by its very nature, an all-encompassing human experience, dependence on patchy sources prevents a rounded appreciation of the phenomenon as such and of its sociopolitical, economic, and cultural consequences over the longue durée of an area, the Īrānicate world, furthermore characterized by marked local idiosyncrasies and, at the scholarly level, intellectual traditions, research agendas and (not least) language barriers, all of which comes in the way of a synthetic treatment of the subject.

Navigating through these (and more) obstacles, the Companion nevertheless succeeds in offering to its readers, within one - not even too ponderous - volume, several insightful case studies over the "many faces" of war across ancient Īrānian history, from Ēlām, whose way of war is discussed under the heading of ideology, structures, and practice in a rich chapter by Álvarez-Mon and Wicks, 34-83) until the Islamic Caliphate and the Futūḥāt, the subject of a stimulating revisionist account by Rezakhani ( 600-653), which, against a consolidate scholarly consensus, politically and culturally locates the rise of the new Empire not so much in the context of Sāsānid-Byzantine mutual annihilation, but rather against the background of the former Empire's success in reshaping the geopolitics of the Eastern Mediterranean over almost three decades of relentless warfare. Enshrined between these two chapters, a range of renowned specialists take up the challenges of exploring Īrānian warfare as an all-encompassing human experience (a peculiar kind of Gesamtkunstwerk). While traditional topics are of course addressed and presented in accessible and yet informative overviews (from conceptualizations of war and peace and the art of diplomacy, with Rung and Beckman 84-119, 219-251 addressing the Achaemenid period, while Nabel and Morley 400-434, 538-566 discuss the same topic from the Arsakid and Sāsānid standpoint respectively), considerable space is reserved for the social and economic ripple-effect of economic systems constantly geared up for war (Pirngruber on Babylonian from the Achaemenids to the Arsakids) or to the complexities and intricacies of imperial borderlands in times of shifting alliances and bursting expansion of competing political formations (Haug's treatment of the Central Asian numismatic quagmire involving, as his title says, a dizzying array of dynasts, polities, and people, 506-538). Warfare is, furthermore, to a significant degree a matter of innovation (technological and scientific), as improvements in weaponry may critically tip the balance and alter power differentials, at times in dramatic ways. Ēlamite mastery of the (composite) bow, as discussed by Álvarez-Mon and Wicks, strikingly brings the point home. However, while archival sources from the Īrānicate world are often lacking on this matter, narrative evidence is prone to generalizations and misunderstandings of the subject's fine(st) details. Hence, iconography and material culture critically need to step in: a fascinating endeavor that presents its own set of challenges, as suggestively demonstrated in the methodological notes (476-505) by two foremost experts on the topic, Skupniewicz and Maksymiuk. The inclusion of a Seleukid chapter (by Coloru, 304-328 on the military organization of the Upper Satrapies) clues a critical theoretical standpoint adopted by the editors, namely their rejection - or at least questioning - of resilient but flawed ethnically-based periodization (the Seleukids as a Greek intermezzo in the history of Īrānian cultural and political history?) in favour of a structural approach on imperial dynamics which will only benefit Īrānian studies and ancient history at large.

Purposefully conceived as an (authoritative) introduction to a vibrant and complex subject, the Companion does not shy away from touching upon longstanding scholarly debates with at times refreshingly revisionist approaches, one notable case in point being Gregoratti's reappraisal of Carrhae as a handbook example of the Arsakid way of war, with the author compellingly contenting that, instead, it was likely an exceptional episode taking place under exceptional circumstances and because of the involvement of extraordinary individuals (Surēn). The book is well-crafted and painstakingly edited, with no typographical errors worth mentioning. While the volume includes a detailed index of names and concepts, a list of sources (at least those mentioned throughout the chapters) would have been welcome, albeit its redaction may have proven a demanding task, given, to name but one point, the considerable number of languages preserving accounts related to Īrānian warfare. It is fair to say that Hyland and Rezakhani have done a substantial service to both scholars and the general public, as the Companion offers a valuable state of the art and a useful springboard into further research of a fascinating subject.