Battle of Blarathon 591

Background story:

After suffering a minor defeat in the Battle of Araxis against the Byzantines, Shah Hormizd IV humiliated general Bahram Chobin, sending to him women's clothing to wear. Thus, he, along with the main Persian army, rebelled against the Shah and marched toward Ctesiphon. Hormizd was killed and his son, Khosrau II, unable to fight such an army, fled to Constantinople and Bahram sat on the throne.

The Battle:

When General Bahram Chobin seized the Sassanid Persian throne, Emperor Maurice sent a large army to support the legitimate ruler, Khosrau II (Chosroes). The army was led by generals Narses, John Mystacon and the Persian Bindoy, uncle of Khosrau. After a fierce skirmish near Lake Urmiah, Bahram lost Ctesiphon and retreated to northwestern Iran where he was routed at Ganzak. Bahram fled to the Turks and was soon assassinated. Restoration of Khosrau ended the war. Dara and Martyropolis were returned to the Byzantines along with other disputed territories.

Aftermath:

The battle altered the course of Roman-Persian relations dramatically, leaving Byzantium in the dominant position. The extent of effective Byzantine control in the Caucasus reached its zenith historically. The same Persian themes and styles extended into Turkish painting as well Source: http://search.sothebys.com/jsps/live/lot/LotDetail.jsp?lot_id=4DV8W (downloaded Mar. 2005) "THE BATTLE BETWEEN THE SASANIAN KING KHUSRAU PARVIS AND BAHRAM CHUBINEH, ILLUMINATED LEAF FROM THE SHAHNAMA OF FIRDAWSI, TURKISH, 16TH CENTURY. Miniature 20 by 19cm. leaf 23.5 by 20cm. DESCRIPTION: gouache heightened with gold on paper, text in four columns of nasta'liq script above and below miniature and 25 on the verso, miniature mounted with leaf from the same text. CATALOGUE NOTE: This miniature is closely comparable to two leaves from an unidentified manuscript in the late Dr. Edwin Binney's collection. The miniatures exhibit a similarly crowded field of horses and warriors in a mountain scene. Abstracted rocks and trees in the left of the foreground break through into the margin, as do the army's pennants at the top of the scene. Although the Binney miniatures were catalogued as Persian in 1966, the golden sky and grouping of the army suggest a Turkish origin and the two miniatures were reassessed as Turkish and dated to 1580 in the Binney catalogue. It has been suggested that Turkish artists working on the manuscript from which these miniatures originated were working in the Tabriz style, as did those Turkish artists employed on the Houghton Shahnama (Binney 1979, cat 21a&b, p.44-46). It is likely that the current miniature is a product of the same tradition."