Rhahzadh
Military leader in the Sassanid Persian Empire
Rhahzadh (Middle Persian: Rāhzād), originally Roch Vehan (from Rōzbehān, "son of Rōzbeh"), known in Byzantine sources as Rhazates (Ancient Greek: Ῥαζάτης) was a Sasanian general of Armenian origin under Shah Khosrow II (r. 590–628).
Biography
As the war that had begun in 602 between the Sasanian Empire and the Byzantine Empire came close to its twenty-fifth year, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius (r. 610–641) made a bold move. As the campaigning season of 627 ended, Heraclius gathered his heterogeneous army of Göktürks and Byzantines, and invaded the Persian heartland at the beginning of September. The news threw Khosrau into a panic. After fifteen years of war, his army was exhausted and his two foremost generals were not available; Shahin was dead and Shahrbaraz was away in Egypt, fearing that Khosrau wanted him dead. Consequently, Khosrau gathered an army and appointed as its commander Rhahzadh, a warlike and brave nobleman.
Rhahzadh moved to cut off Heraclius and prevent him from reaching Ctesiphon, the Persian capital. Heraclius continued burning and pillaging as he went, Rhahzadh following Heraclius, biding his time until he was ready to meet the Romans.
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This entry incorporates text from “Rhahzadh” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.