Sassanian Army

[Dutchhoplite]

Maybe it's already mentioned but the story about the Sassanian peasant infantry chained together to force them to stand their ground at Nihawand in 642...
Is this based on reality, some weird interpretation or just propaganda??

[Roxofarnes]

Maybe it's already mentioned but the story about the Sassanian peasant infantry chained together to force them to stand their ground at Nihawand in 642...
Is this based on reality, some weird interpretation or just propaganda??

If you have ever played chess you know what the infantry was expected to do on the battlefield. Mainly - block the manouvers of more agile troops. The chain is attested not only by Nihavend and it seems to appear too often to be just a fantasy however it was pointed that soldiers chained in fives might mean that the samllest unit was five warriors. Going back to chess and role of living fortification played by Sasanian infantry - chains fixed over waist level might disturb any cavalry, especially if ranks of five were placed in several rows (even if the first horse would jump over the chain it would get stuck in next ones while the next riders would be stopped rapidly by the first - I guess chains would be very uncomforatble device for close combat cavalry, the rest would be sorted by presence of the foot archers among the infantry). Similarly Prokopios mentions that Sasanian infantry had only thyreoi as their arms. Naturally they must have had somethng more than this but it is the part of the same infantry employment as the movable fortification. Not very different from Achaemenid gerrophoroi... Obviously these troops were not the "glorious infantry" of Shahname, and losses among such soldiers were not treated as anything to be specially worried about. LAte Sasanians used field earthwork and caltropes as another way to affect the space of combat. IMHO

[Gäiten]

Maybe it's already mentioned but the story about the Sassanian peasant infantry chained together to force them to stand their ground at Nihawand in 642...
Is this based on reality, some weird interpretation or just propaganda??

I think it is a weird interpretation and we shall make a certain differentiation.
These spearmen were supposed to fight in shieldwall formation, a very close-order formation. So, IMHO, alone that could have been the reason for the imagination of mass „chained“ infantry.
Chained infantry, even if they are not supposed to move, are far too inflexible for a battlefield.
Especially if the enemy forces can field professional infantry as the Muslim Arabs did.

However, the advantage of chained warriors while fighting cavalry is reasonable. I believe that such wariors had to be elite, very well-trained and used to fight as a team. Not the untrained low-motivated poor peasant levy.

The paighan might be recruited from all-over the state I believe. Especially in dire straits the state was recruiting virtually everybody. If you consider Iranian armies of teh Arab conquest you might find them dominated by large units of infantry and elephants and diminished role of cavlry. This might result from losses in manpower of aristocratic descent and losses of mounts in Heracleian wars, civil wars and in initial phase of Islamic conquest.

An opposite to the normal picture of Iranian armies who were dominated by heavy cavaly and tactics executed suitable for them.
IMHO it further proves that infantry was very important for the Sassanians.

Anyway - nice to meet someone much into topic which has been my hobby for a while

You are welcome.

The whole history of the mounted warfare of Central Asia has me gotten very interested for some years (beginning with Kaveh Farrokh`s book „Sassanian elite Cavalry“).
Especially those powers we know so less about despite their high importance as the Sassanians (or the Kidarites and Hephtalites) and the ongoing development of horsearchery and the knights.

[Roxofarnes]

Anyway - there is something about these chains indeed and it seems that there is much more than just misobservation. I believe these chained units must have been a sort of marvel and misinterpreted as the prevention from escaping. No source mentions the length of the said chains - these might not be very debiliating for manouverability if long enough. But movable fortification seems very much in Persian mentality. Especially if the "true fighting" was carried by horseman.
There can be no doubt that Sasanians treated infantry as much inferior to cavalry but this does not mean that the former were just crowds of peasantry which much later would be called Kannonenfliesch...

[Dan D'Silva]

I know it's not exactly a scholarly source, but whoever writes copy for Europa Barbarorum said:

The Arabic term 'silsilah' is very likely a poetic device meant to imply soldiers organized into close order units. The same term is used to refer to both Sassanid Persian and Byzantine cavalry, neither of which could have conceivably been physically tied together in groups!

Is that the truth? I've always wanted to see a bibliography for all their claims...

[Sean Manning]

Europa Barbarorum does make some ... remarkable claims. I remember skimming their forum and seeing a few posts asking about the mysterious Celtic sources they quoted in a lot of the quotes which pop up while a screen is loading. After hemming and hawing for several months, explaining that they came from a forum member who had access to translations of unpublished manuscripts, they admitted that they had been fooled and that the quotes would be removed in the next version!

I guess you could take any questions to their forums. There was a thread here some time ago about their mail-barded Spanish cavalry, who seem to come from an Angus McBride illustration.

I don't know much about the Sassanids, but it does occur to me that "peasant miliia" describes Greek or Republican Roman hoplites pretty well! I doubt that most Sassanid infantry were as good as those troops, but effective ancient soldiers weren't always professional.

[Roxofarnes]

Europa Barbarorum does make some ... remarkable claims. I remember skimming their forum and seeing a few posts asking about the mysterious Celtic sources they quoted in a lot of the quotes which pop up while a screen is loading. After hemming and hawing for several months, explaining that they came from a forum member who had access to translations of unpublished manuscripts, they admitted that they had been fooled and that the quotes would be removed in the next version!

I guess you could take any questions to their forums. There was a thread here some time ago about their mail-barded Spanish cavalry, who seem to come from an Angus McBride illustration.

I don't know much about the Sassanids, but it does occur to me that "peasant miliia" describes Greek or Republican Roman hoplites pretty well! I doubt that most Sassanid infantry were as good as those troops, but effective ancient soldiers weren't always professional.

The fact is that there were indeed some remarks of chained cavalry which obviously can not be treated with any credibility however literature of these days did follow topoi created by previous authors. Still I believe initially these were based on facts

[Robert Vermaat]

I don't know much about the Sassanids, but it does occur to me that "peasant militia" describes Greek or Republican Roman hoplites pretty well! I doubt that most Sassanid infantry were as good as those troops, but effective ancient soldiers weren't always professional.

I think there's a big difference between a 'peasant militia' from a Greek citty state or the Roman republic on the one hand, or one from the Sassanian aristocracy-ruled empire.
I read one report of the Sassanian peasant infantry being chaned together on the battlefield (don't know if it was an accurate report)...

[Sean Manning]

I don't know much about the Sassanids, but it does occur to me that "peasant militia" describes Greek or Republican Roman hoplites pretty well! I doubt that most Sassanid infantry were as good as those troops, but effective ancient soldiers weren't always professional.

I think there's a big difference between a 'peasant militia' from a Greek citty state or the Roman republic on the one hand, or one from the Sassanian aristocracy-ruled empire.

I read one report of the Sassanian peasant infantry being chaned together on the battlefield (don't know if it was an accurate report)...

I agree that its generally true that peasants from relatively egalitarian societies formed more enthusiastic militias. But its not true that the fact that a society was aristocratic always caused the commoners to lose interest in fighting.

The chained thing seems to be a translation of an Arabic figure of speech. I don't know whether scholars think it was literal or not. David Niccole's Medieval Warfare Sourcebook doesn't mention it.

[Gäiten]

However, we have to differ between the "last-levy" peasants of the Islamic conquest and earlier more professional Sassanian infantry forces.

The warfare between Romans and Sassanians was characterized by intense siege warfare, both powers excelled in.
For that you need very well-trained infantry forces.

[Robert Vermaat]

Hi Sean and Gäiten,

Indeed, there is infantry and infantry.
Sean, you are right that an aristocratic society always caused the commoners to lose interest in fighting, but the greater the difference in power between aristocracy and commoners, the greater the need for 'powerless' commoners. See the Late Roman period, where the state became more totalitarian, and citizens were forbiden to carry arms. In the East, this pattern was broken when the state realised that the needed a trained citizenry.
Indeed, the 'chained' infantry may be due to exaggeration or a translation error. The concept is difficult to believe - how does one chain together thousands of men? And how can they be of any use in that condition?

Gäiten, you are right - the early sassanian infantry was surely different from the later period.

[Khusrau]

The 'chained' reference is an excellent example of a mistranslation being repeated extensively in secondary and tertiary sources until it becomes received wisdom and broadly accepted. Despite being completely wrong! Sasanian foot were much better than generally supposed as lazy writers have confused the Paighan footmen with the levied peasants brought along for labouring. I wrote an article for Slingshot on Persian infantry that might be of interest.

[Gäiten]

The 'chained' reference is an excellent example of a mistranslation being repeated extensively in secondary and tertiary sources until it becomes received wisdom and broadly accepted. Despite being completely wrong! Sasanian foot were much better than generally supposed as lazy writers have confused the Paighan footmen with the levied peasants brought along for labouring. I wrote an article for Slingshot on Persian infantry that might be of interest.

Ok, I am interested in

[Gäiten]

I have been wondering about Sassanian archery which is described as somewhat inferior to Roman (considering the power of the shots).

Besides ancient sources (as Procopius) do you know modern researchment proving that?

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

I can't add anything to answer that question, but after reading the Dura report on the arrow fletchings of the Persian/Sassanian arrows,
the fact that the nocks are on the same axis as one of the flight feathers, makes me wonder if this perhaps caused any problem with accuracy
for the Persions archers? Any one fired arrows with this construct?