On 12 December 627, a Saturday by the reckoning of the Byzantine chronicler Theophanes, the East Roman emperor Heraclius fought the Persian army of the general Rhahzadh near the ruins of Nineveh, on the Tigris in modern Iraq. The battle lasted from morning into the eleventh hour; the Persian commander was killed and his army broken. Within months King Khosrow II had fallen and Persia sued for peace.
Eleven hours near Nineveh
After years in which the Persians had overrun the Roman East, Heraclius carried the war into Persia itself. He marched across the Armenian highlands into the plain of the Tigris and in December 627 met the Persians near the ruins of Nineveh. Theophanes dates the battle to Saturday, 12 December, a date in the Julian calendar used in the Roman world, and says it was fought from morning until the eleventh hour. Livius and World History Encyclopedia also describe an eleven-hour battle.1
Theophanes tells of Heraclius in the thick of the fighting: his tawny horse Dorkon was wounded in the thigh by a spear, and the emperor himself was struck in the lip. Britannica relates that he killed three Persian generals in single combat and then the Persian commander, a story World History Encyclopedia reports as something he was said to have done. Theophanes records that Rhahzadh, whom he calls Razates, fell together with the three Persian divisional commanders, that the Romans captured 28 Persian standards, and that only fifty Romans were killed. Livius adds that the Persian commander's head was set on a stake in the Roman camp.2
The fall of Khosrow
A month later Heraclius entered the royal residence at Dastagird with its great treasure. Early in 628 Khosrow II was overthrown by his son, who made peace, and Heraclius asked for the return of the True Cross, the prisoners and the conquered Roman lands. In 630 he restored the Cross to Jerusalem. The victory did not last: within a few years Heraclius lost Syria, Palestine and Egypt to the Arab armies.3 › Heraclius
The battle is told in full in our article on the Battle of Nineveh.4
Also on this day
- 1939: Battle of Tolvajärvi. Finnish troops met an advancing Red Army division near Lake Tolvajärvi in Ladoga Karelia during the Winter War.
