RESISTANCE TO BYZANTIUM

 Khusroe II
Parthian King Khusroe Parvez II,
known as "The Victorious"

For some years, the Parthians (Persians) had been mounting a campaign from the east to take land from the Eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantine Empire). In 613 , Khusroe Parvez II (a.k.a. Khosrau, Khusrau, Kusarai, or Chosroes), king of Parthia (Sassanid Empire), engaged in a war with Byzantine Emperor Heraclius. Aided by 24,000 Jews from Tiberias, Nazara, and the mountains of Galilee, Khusroe's army besieged Jerusalem for several months, capturing it in June 614. The conquest was a bloody affair in which anywhere from 60,000 to 90,000 Christian inhabitants of the city, were said by church legend to have been massacred by Parthians and Jews alike; 20,000 is a more likely estimate, and the accounts of Jewish participation in the slaughter of Christians are found exclusively in Christian sources, and thus suspect. Another 35,000-37,000 Christians were enslaved and exiled to Parthia. The city itself was sacked: the Eleona Basilica on the Mount of Olives, the basilica of Fishes and Loaves in Tabgha, St Steven opposite Damascus Gate, the Hagia Sion on Mt. Zion, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre were all destroyed, and many other churches and monasteries were razed or left in ruins, monks and priests killed, and Christian books burned. The flow of Christian pilgrims was arrested. The "true cross" was looted and carried away from the city by the Parthians as a souvenir of their victory, and Khusroe took Christian Patriarch Zachariah as prisoner of war.

For their active help, the exiled Jewish population of Jerusalem was rewarded by the Parthians with the right to return to the city and govern it themselves. From 614-617, Jewish autonomouls rule of Jerusalem was led by Nehemiah Ben Hushiel Ben Ephraim Ben Yosef (d. 617). After his death, the Parthians turned against the Jews, demanding that they give up the rights they had enjoyed in Jerusalem. In 628/629 (some sources say as early as 620), Byzantine Romans under Emperor Heraclius defeated the Parthians and recovered the city by treaty. With the Christians' return, many Jewish inhabitants were massacred, and the survivors expelled. The Byzantines ruled another 10 or so years in Jerusalem until their defeat in 637-638 at the hands of the Muslim Arab caliph Omar.


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