They were made possible by Kavad's use of the Mazdakite preacher Mazdak, leading to a social revolution that weakened the authority of the nobility and the clergy.

However, with the aid of his sister and an officer named Siyawush, Kavad and some of his followers fled east to the territory of the Hephthalite king, who provided him with an army.

The two empires made peace in 506, with the Byzantines agreeing to pay subsidies to Kavad for the maintenance of the fortifications on the Caucasus in return for Amida.

[6] Although Iranian society was greatly militarised and its elite designated themselves as a "warrior nobility" (arteshtaran), it still had a significantly smaller population, was more impoverished, and was a less centralized state compared to the Roman Empire.

[10] However, the revolt of Armenia in 451 and the loss of its cavalry had weakened the Sasanians' attempts to keep the Hunnic tribes (i.e., the Hephthalites, Kidarites, Chionites and Alkhans)[11] of the northeastern border in check.

[16][18][19] He eventually managed to gain the ten mule packs of silver by imposing a poll tax on his subjects, and thus secured the release of Kavad before he mounted his third campaign in 484.

[22] Peroz's brother, Balash, was elected as shah by the Iranian magnates, most notably Sukhra and the Mihranid general Shapur Mihran.

They had not only seized large parts of its eastern provinces, but had also forced the Sasanians to pay vast amounts of tribute to them, which had depleted the royal treasury of the shah.

[34] Shapur, at the head of an army of his own men and disgruntled nobles, marched to Shiraz, defeated Sukhra's forces, and imprisoned him in the Sasanian capital of Ctesiphon.

[36] It also marked the temporary loss of authority of the House of Karen, whose members were exiled to the regions of Tabaristan and Zabulistan, which were away from the Sasanian court in Ctesiphon.

[36] According to modern historians Touraj Daryaee and Matthew Canepa, 'sharing women' was most likely an overstatement and defamation deriving from Mazdak's decree that loosened marriage laws to help the lower classes.

[40] Mention of Mazdak only emerges in later Middle Persian Zoroastrian documents, namely the Bundahishn, the Denkard, and the Zand-i Wahman yasn.

Gushnaspdad, a member of the Kanarangiyan, the family that held the important title of kanarang (military leader of Abarshahr), proposed Kavad be executed.

[45] One of the authors of the Prosopography of the Later Roman Empire, John Robert Martindale, proposes she may have been Sambice, Kavad's sister-wife, who was the mother of his eldest son, Kawus.

[44][41] According to the narratives included in the history of al-Tabari, during his flight Kavad met a peasant girl from Nishapur, named Niwandukht, who became pregnant with his child, who would ascend the throne as Khosrow I.

[52] The present-day district of Qobadian (the Arabicized form of Kavadian) near Balkh, which was then under Hephthalite rule, was perhaps founded by Kavad and possibly served as his source of revenue.

[59] The empire was divided into four frontier regions (kust in Middle Persian), with a spāhbed (military commander) in charge of each district; a chancery was also added to keep the soldiers equipped.

It sacked the Byzantine city of Antioch in 540, conquered Yemen in the 570s, and under the Parthian military commander Bahram Chobin defeated the Hephthalites and their allies, the Western Turkic Khaganate, in the Perso-Turkic war of 588–589.

They accomplished this either by bargaining with trade associates in the Indian subcontinent—ranging from the Gupta Empire in the north to the Anuradhapura monarchs of Sri Lanka in the south—or by attacking the Byzantine boats.

Bankrupted by his hiatus in 496–498/9, Kavad applied for subsidies to the Byzantine Empire, who originally had paid the Iranians voluntarily to maintain the defense of the Caucasus against attacks from the north.

[81] He proceeded to cross the Armenian Taurus, and reached Martyropolis, where its governor Theodore, surrendered without any resistance and gave Kavad two years' worth of taxes collected from the province of Sophene.

The siege proved to be a far more difficult enterprise than Kavad had expected; the defenders, although unsupported by troops, repelled the Iranian assaults for three months before they were finally defeated.

[87] Although Kavad's first war with the Byzantines did not end with a decisive winner, the conquest of Amida was the greatest accomplishment achieved by a Sasanian force since 359, when the same city had been captured by Shapur II.

[88] According to the Chronicle of Seert and the historian Mari ibn Sulayman, Kavad ordered all the religious communities in the empire to submit written descriptions of their beliefs.

In response to this command, the Patriarch Aqaq commissioned Elishaʿ bar Quzbaye, interpreter of the school of Nisibis, to write for the Church of the East.

According to Procopius, Kavad was forced to leave for the eastern frontier in 503 to deal with an attack by "hostile Huns", one of the many clashes in a reportedly lengthy war.

[5] The increase in the number of coins minted at Gorgan (which was now the northernmost Sasanian region) during his first reign may indicate a yearly tribute he paid to the Hephthalites.

A Sasanian campaign in 508 led to the conquest of the Zundaber (Zumdaber) Castellum, associated with the temple of az-Zunin in the area of ad-Dawar, situated between Bust and Kandahar.

[97] In the ensuing battle the Byzantines suffered a heavy defeat, but Iranian losses were so great Kavad was displeased with Azarethes, and relieved him of his command.

[100] His reign marks the introduction of distinctive traits on the obverse sides of the coin which includes astral symbols, particularly, a crescent on both of his shoulders, and a star in the left corner.