Hello everybody
In my country there is a legend concerning the infant son of the last Sassanid king who was killed during the arab invasion of Iran. I have done some research on the web and it seems that this is not a legend at all (see
http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/History/Post...nian/pirooz.htm ) I wonder if what I have read is accurate. If anybody has anything more to add? And most important, can this family be traced? I do not need to say anything about the immense political ramifications of such a find (and the problems the poor family would possibly go through).

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i think just take away the ) at the end and it should work just fine

Wikipedia has an article on Prince Pirooz that differs from Frank Wong's paper:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirooz_II

Pirooz is discussed in another thread on this forum:

http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...8&hl=Pirooz

If you read far enough into the thread, you will see that some members on CHF distrust Frank Wong's claims regarding Pirooz.

Ah the power of the Tang to simply make some former monarch a new governor of an area in what is now Afghanistan. Those were the days!

Interesting topic. I included this into the Wiki article on the Tang Dynasty a long time ago but did not elaborate then.

Unfortunately, a much longer thread where I debunked Frank Wong's credibility has apparently been deleted since then, probably because a former member named Chineseman got abusive in his uncriticial support of Frank Wong's claims.

Basically, there is no proof at all that the Narsieh diary Frank Wong mentions even exists, and Wong has also lied about his birthplace on different online forums and articles (saying in one place that he was born near Chang'an, and saying in another that he was born in the USA). So I think his statements are not to be trusted at all.

The Wikipedia article on Pirooz II is accurate, especially after I went in and removed the reference to the Nariseh diary and the link to Frank Wong's article. Both the official dynastic histories of the Tang empire (Jiu Tangshu and Xin Tangshu) verify that Pirooz fled to the Tang empire and received the title of General. However, the two histories disagree about whether it was Pirooz or his son Narsieh who made a Tang-sponsored bid at returning to Persia in 678 or 679.

伊嗣俟不君，為大酋所逐，奔吐火羅，半道，大食擊殺之。子卑路斯入吐火羅以免。遣使者告難，高宗以遠不可師，謝遣。會大食解而去，吐火羅以兵納之。

　　龍朔初，又訴為大食所侵，是時天子方遣使者到西域分置州縣，以疾陵城為波斯都督府，即拜卑路斯為都督。俄為大食所滅。雖不能國，咸亨中猶入朝，授右武衛將軍，死。始，其子泥涅師為質，調露元年，詔裴行儉將兵護還，將複王其國。以道遠，至安西碎葉，行儉還。泥涅師因客吐火羅二十年，部落益離散。景龍初，複來朝，授左威衛將軍。病死，西部獨存。

Actually, if you look at the above account in Xin Tangshu, what it reflects is the limits of Tang military power. Suyab (Suiye) and Sogdiana were the furthest west that the Tang empire could deploy its troops, which is why Tang Gaozong rejected Pirooz's appeal for troops to assist him in Tokharistan, and why Pei Xingjian turned back at Suyab and left Narsieh (or Pirooz, if you go with the Jiu Tangshu) to continue on to Tokharistan on his own.

Thus, although 疾陵城 is usually identified as the region of Sistan or Zabulistan ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistan ), we also know that the Tang empire was not able to project its power even as far as Tokharistan (i.e. northern Afghanistan, southwestern Uzbekistan, and southeastern Tajikistan), let alone to the border of modern Iran. Those maps which show the Tang empire in the 660s extending deep into Afghanistan and up to Sistan should probably be edited to acknowledge that the Tang Area Commands (dudu fu 都督府) in this region were really more a matter of rhetoric than reality.

Thank you for clearing this up! I knew that Tang power extended at least to a minimum extent into what is now far northeastern Afghanistan. I just didn't know if their alleged control of areas further west of this into Tokharistan was nominal or real. I see now that it was nominal. Strange that the sources would confuse Pirooz and his son Narsieh, although I've read (I believe from Michael Loewe or Bielenstein) that this sort of inaccuracy or error happened quite frequently in the historical texts in regards to Chinese records on foreigners (i.e. confusing one foreigner for another).

So the prince really existed and he or his son lived in China as a general. But are there any Persian-Chinese communities dating to that period existing in China today? Or were the Iranians all settled in the border lands such as Afghanistan?

There were Persian merchants living in the southern port city of Guangzhou, alongside Arab and Indian merchants. But they have no known descendants in China today.

There are foreigners in the capital, in Longyou, in Fujian and in Yangzhou, and at least in the AoF, foreigners dispersed through the major cities. Caravan routes across north China also have foreigners. During the An Shi rebellion the loyalty of many sogdian communities was severely tested and suspected, leading some to apologize to the emperor.

In Fujian the persians etc. raised an army of their own in the ending days of the Tang until they were annihilated by one of the Chinese rebel armies. In Guangzhou they rioted and caused much destruction and in turn were rioted against and suffered much destruction. Guangzhou according to the foreigners was probably more of a seedy pirate town anyway with embezzling and bullying magistrates, and although i believe that, the south also has a lighter military presence (at least until the destruction of the dynasty with rampaging armies) which no doubt contributed.

This was in the last days of Yuan, not Tang. Look for my article "The Arabs of Quanzhou" in the CHF Project Center.



You can also read about this in my article (this happened during the An Lushan rebellion). It wasn't so much a riot as a looting of the government warehouses, and they did it together with the Arabs.

The furthest garrison Tang had at the time was at Kashgar so Tang Tang military deployment didn't even reach these places. Suyab was only made a garrison in 679, when the Tang captured Ashina Duzhi. Contrary to the records of the Jiu Tang Shu, Suyab was never one of the 4 garrisons before this. That is not to say the Tang had no influence over the western turks however, since they were subjugated, the Tang frequently interfered with their politics and appointed their khans. The territory west of the Western turks, which was originally part of their territory such as Sogdiana and Tukharistan was largely outside of Tang's military influence and only received Tang titles and investitures, but they were still within striking range and were economically influenced by the Tang.

This is true for the most part, but I was thinking of Gao Xianzhi's expedition against Tashkent and the battle at the Talas River, which is admittedly later and quite exceptional. I was also talking about short-term deployments or expeditions, and not necessarily permanent garrisons.

This has gotten a bit confusing, lets see:
644 CE: protectorate of An-hsi is established reaching Kashgar and Khotan
657 CE: western turks are defeated at lake Issy-Kul and China extended its influence to Herat and Samarkand
665 CE: since no chinese administration was installed in the far lands they easily broke away from chinese control

On the other hand, the Sassanians lost control of Iran in 636 CE, so it is well within the bounds of probability that Pirooz (or his son) could have led Chinese forces in Afghanistan.

O sorry, now I see the problem:
Yazdegerd III died in 651 CE
Pirooz (according to wikipedia) reached the Tang court by 661 CE
He was made commander in Afghanistan between 670 and 674 CE
In 674 he returns to the Tang court and is sent back to persia in 678 CE
He doesn't reach persia though and spends 20 years in Tokharistan and returns to China by 708 CE

Well, all of these things happened after China lost control of afghanistan, also from 660 to 676, the Tang were occupied in Korea and from 670 to 692, the Tarim basin was under either Tibetan or Turkish control, so it seems quite unlikely that a Chinese army could have freely fought so far from home in afghanistan during those years. Any ideas?

Why do you say 'lost control'? China never had control of Afghanistan.

True, China never had administrative control over Afghanistan but it formed a temporary protectorate over the western Turks, the domain of which reached to Herat and Samarkand. A better word would have been "influence" instead of control.

Well, a few things I have noticed about Pei Xingjian's mission in 679, from consulting other records in Xin Tangshu (primarily in the chapters about the Turks):

1) It was undertaken at a time when the Tang position in the Tarim Basin was extremely tenuous, having lost Khotan, Kucha, Karashahr (Yanqi), and Kashgar (Shule) to the Tibetans in 670 and also facing attacks on Turfan (Xizhou) and Hami (Yizhou) from the Western Turk leader Ashina Duzhi, who had rebelled against Tang overlordship and allied with the Tibetans. Furthermore, Tibetan attacks on the Gansu Corridor (particularly the area around present-day Lanzhou and Xining) were threatening to cut off the Tarim altogether. Pei Xingjian would have had to proceed very cautiously along the northern side of the Tianshan mountains in order to reach Suyab without being intercepted or cut off by Tibetans in Kucha and Karashahr.

2) The mission to escort Narsieh back to Persia was merely a ruse suggested by Pei Xingjian. His real task was to subdue Ashina Duzhi, but he had persuaded the Tang emperor to use trickery rather than a conventional military expedition. So Pei and his troops arrived at Suyab claiming to be on their way to Persia to restore Narsieh's empire and pacify the Arabs. Ashina Duzhi believed this claim and came with his followers to greet Pei, not seeing him as a threat. Pei Xingjian immediately had them captured, and also used his troops to arrest the various other Western Turk chiefs. Narsieh was just a pawn in the whole game, so Pei naturally had no interest in giving him further protection, and instead abandoned him at Suyab and headed back to Gansu. Narsieh was forced to continue on to Tokharistan on his own. So much for the importance of Persia to Tang policy!

3) Not only was Pei Xingjian not ordered to continue helping Narsieh, he also received new orders to deal with another large group of rebelling Turks (this time Eastern Turks) in Inner Mongolia. These Turks had defeated a Tang army sent against them earlier in the year, killing and capturing over 10,000 men. Now in the winter of 679, Pei Xingjian was given overall command of 300,000 men to suppress the Turks. This he did at the Black Mountain (near present-day Baotou) in spring 680, capturing the main leaders of the revolt. But the surviving rebel Turks made a second attempt at independence in mid-680, and in 681 Pei led another army north and crushed them decisively. Obviously, with this Eastern Turk rebellion threatening the northern border, the Tang government had even less reason to be interested in Narsieh's cause.

This is all stuff that could never have made it into Frank Wong's story, written as it was for an Iranian audience.

Another thing: Pirooz never stayed in the Tang capital except for a short visit to the Tang court in 671 or 672 (when he received the empty title of General of the Guards). The rest of the time, he was in Tokharistan, waiting for Tang military assistance that never came. All he got was another useless Commander-in-Chief title, giving him nominal authority over a border region of Persia (Sistan/Zabulistan) that he had no means at all of taking back from the Arabs. In exchange for that title, he had to send his son Narsieh to the Tang capital to serve as a hostage, as proof of his loyalty to Tang. Pirooz died without being able to see his son at his deathbed - a high price to pay for non-existent military assistance! And after he died, Narsieh's status as heir to the lost Sassanid throne was quite cynically and cruelly used as a cover to pursue the Tang empire's own strategic interests in 679, after which Narsieh was discarded like a pawn and left to fend for himself. One wonders why, after more than 20 years of hopeless exile in Tokharistan, Narsieh still bothered to travel to the Tang court and receive yet another empty title in 707. Maybe he had still not given up hope that the Tang empire would truly aid him against the Arabs.

An interesting and sad end to the story. But what about the rest of the family? I mean Pirooz and Narsieh must have had relatives, retainers and offspring with them. What happened to them. There are no English sources detailing the fate of the family so I wonder if there is any mention of the last Imperial Iranian family in later periods. (there must be, because a pretender to the throne is too valuable to just forget about unless they were all killed and their memory suppressed)

The Xin Tangshu says that after Narsieh returned to Tokharistan in 679, "the [Persian] tribes increasingly dispersed" 部落益離散. These were presumably Pirooz's followers and kinsmen who were left in Tokharistan after his death (the Jiu Tangshu says there were several thousands of them), and they apparently did not respect Narsieh's leadership much. Then, after Narsieh fell ill and died in the early 700s, "only the western tribes were left" 西部獨存. This is an enigmatic sentence (the Jiu Tangshu, which says it was Pirooz who died in the early 700s, has the line as "his tribes are still there"), and there is no further mention in Chinese sources about what happened to the Sassanid loyalists in Tokharistan. What seems likely to me is that Narsieh and probably his servants were the only Sassanid loyalists living in Chang'an when Pirooz died, and after they themselves returned to Tokharistan, there were none left in the Tang capital.

These are very outdated views. The most updated information, now commonly accepted throughout the scholarly community is that the Tang still retained most or all of these garrisons in most of these years. The Tibetans only occupied all of the 4 garrisons for 1 year and thats in 678-679. From 687-692, they occupied three of the four garrisons(all except Karashar) as well as Suyab, the new fourth garrison.


The records in the New Tang history is actually flawed here, it has been hinted from Turfan manuscripts that the Tibetans probably only occupied Khotan and Kashgar in 670, not Karashar or Kucha, but only to lose both to the Tang again by 674. While in 679, the four garrisons has already been recovered by the Cishi of Xi Zhou before Pei Xingjian set out to return Piroz to his country. This episode is noted by the Tibetan chancellor and recorded in the Tong Dian: “往者 高宗以刘审礼有青海之役，乃使黄仁素、贾守义来和。陵之上下将士，咸无猜忌，故边守不戒严。和事未曾毕，已为好功名人崔知辩从五俟斤路乘我间隙，疮痍我 众，驱掠牛羊，盖以万计。自此陵之国人大危栗和事矣。” So it wasn't Pei xingjiang who wrestled the four garrisons from the Tibetans, he set out in an environment where the Tang already reoccupied the 4 garrisons just a few months before. But to extend Tang military power, Pei xingjiang replaced Karashar with Suyab as one of the four garrisons after capturing Ashina Duzhi, so that accounts for why the Ce Fu Yuan Gui mentioned that Suyab, Kucha, Kashgar, and Khotan "were made the four garrisons" by Pei. Karashar was no longer the fourth garrison and the Tibetans never occupied it again. In fact prior to the late 8th century, the tibetans only occupied Karashar for 1 year, and that was from 678-679.

Did you mean "Kucha and Kashgar in 670, not Karashar or Khotan"?



That's very interesting! Could you elaborate further on how scholars were able to date the recapture of the four garrisons in 679 to such an extent of precision?

I meant Kashgar and Khotan, not Kucha or Karashar, by 673, Khotan and the Gong Yue turks were recovered by Ciao Si Ye, and in 674 Kashgar submitted to the Tang as well. So the four garrisons was reestablished in 675, only to be lost again in 677-678. But the Tang recovered the area in 679, and replaced suyab with Karashar as the new garrison that year, and to lose them again in 687. But in 692, the Tang put a considerable amount of force in the region after they defeated the Tibetans and recovered the garrisons again, and Tibet would not gain the region again in another 100 years.



Hisashi Sato was the first person who proposed that the Chinese recovered the four garrisons in 679, this is hinted in a bunch of Turfan manuscripts, but most important of all, chapter 967 of Ce Fu Yuan Gui, which mentioned that Suyab, Kucha, Khotan and Kashgar were made into the four garrisons by Pei Xing Jian. Wang Xiao Fu, proposed that Pei wasn't the one who recovered the four garrisons; it was Chong Zhi Bian who recovered it shortly before from the passage I just posted from the Tong Dian, and that was why Pei had Hu people accompanying him when he set out to capture Ashina Duzhi.