The House of Mihrān or House of Mehrān (

Middle Persian Middle Persian or Pahlavi, also known by its endonym Pārsīk or Pārsīg () in its later form, is a Western Middle Iranian language which became the literary language of the Sasanian Empire. For some time after the Sasanian collapse, Middle P ...

: 𐭬𐭨𐭥𐭠𐭭;

new Persian New Persian ( fa, فارسی نو), also known as Modern Persian () and Dari (), is the current stage of the Persian language spoken since the 8th to 9th centuries until now in Greater Iran and surroundings. It is conventionally divided into thr ...

: مهران), was a leading

Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...

noble family (''šahrdārān''), one of the Seven Great Houses of the

Sassanid Persian Empire The Sasanian () or Sassanid Empire, officially known as the Empire of Iranians (, ) and also referred to by historians as the Neo-Persian Empire, was the last Iranian empire before the early Muslim conquests of the 7th-8th centuries AD. Named ...

which claimed descent from the earlier Arsacid dynasty. A branch of the family formed the

Mihranid The Mihranids were an Iranian family which ruled several regions of Caucasus from 330 to 821. They claimed to be of Sasanian Persian descent but were of Parthian origin. History The dynasty was founded when a certain Mihran, a distant relative ...

line of the kings of

Caucasian Albania Caucasian Albania is a modern exonym for a former state located in ancient times in the Caucasus: mostly in what is now Azerbaijan (where both of its capitals were located). The modern endonyms for the area are ''Aghwank'' and ''Aluank'', among t ...

and the Chosroid Dynasty of

Kartli Kartli ( ka, ქართლი ) is a historical region in central-to-eastern Georgia traversed by the river Mtkvari (Kura), on which Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, is situated. Known to the Classical authors as Iberia, Kartli played a crucial rol ...

History

First mentioned in a mid-3rd-century CE trilingual inscription at the '' Ka'ba-i Zartosht'', concerning the political, military, and religious activities of Shapur I, the second Sassanid king of Iran, the family remained the hereditary "

margrave Margrave was originally the medieval title for the military commander assigned to maintain the defence of one of the border provinces of the Holy Roman Empire or of a kingdom. That position became hereditary in certain feudal families in the ...

s" of

Ray Ray may refer to: Fish * Ray (fish), any cartilaginous fish of the superorder Batoidea * Ray (fish fin anatomy), a bony or horny spine on a fin Science and mathematics * Ray (geometry), half of a line proceeding from an initial point * Ray (gr ...

throughout the Sassanid period. Several members of the family served as generals in the Roman–Persian Wars, where they are mentioned simply as Mihran or , ''mirranēs'', in Greek sources. Indeed,

Procopius Procopius of Caesarea ( grc-gre, Προκόπιος ὁ Καισαρεύς ''Prokópios ho Kaisareús''; la, Procopius Caesariensis; – after 565) was a prominent late antique Greek scholar from Caesarea Maritima. Accompanying the Roman gen ...

, in his ''History of the Wars'', holds that the family name ''Mihran'' is a title equivalent to General. Notable generals from the Mihran clan included:

Shapur Mihran Shapur Mihran ( pal, 𐭱𐭧𐭯𐭥𐭧𐭥𐭩 𐭬𐭲𐭥), known in Armenian sources as Shapuh Mihran (Armenian: Շապուհ Միհրան), was a Sasanian nobleman from the House of Mihran. He served as the marzban of Persian Armenia briefl ...

, who served as the marzban of

Persian Armenia Sasanian Armenia, also known as Persian Armenia and Persarmenia ( hy, Պարսկահայաստան – ''Parskahayastan''), may either refer to the periods in which Armenia ( pal, 𐭠𐭫𐭬𐭭𐭩 – ''Armin'') was under the suzerainty of ...

briefly in 482,

Perozes Perozes ( el, Περόζης, from Middle Persian ''Pērōz'') was the Sassanid Persian general opposing the Byzantines under Belisarius at the Battle of Dara (530). According to the description of the Byzantine historian Procopius of Caesarea, h ...

, the Persian commander-in-chief during the

Anastasian War The Anastasian War was fought from 502 to 506 between the Byzantine Empire and the Sasanian Empire. It was the first major conflict between the two powers since 440, and would be the prelude to a long series of destructive conflicts between the t ...

and the

Battle of Dara The Battle of Dara was fought between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sasanians in 530 AD. It was one of the battles of the Iberian War. Procopius's account of this engagement is among the most detailed descriptions of a late Roman battle. ...

, Mihransitad, a diplomat of

Khosrow I Khosrow I (also spelled Khosrau, Khusro or Chosroes; pal, 𐭧𐭥𐭮𐭫𐭥𐭣𐭩; New Persian: []), traditionally known by his epithet of Anushirvan ( [] "the Immortal Soul"), was the Sasanian Empire, Sasanian King of Kings of Iran from ...

, Golon Mihran, who fought against the Byzantines in Armenia in 572–573, and

Bahram Chobin Bahrām Chōbīn ( fa, بهرام چوبین) or Wahrām Chōbēn ( Middle Persian: ), also known by his epithet Mehrbandak ("servant of Mithra"), was a nobleman, general, and political leader of the late Sasanian Empire and briefly its ruler as ...

, who led a coup against Khosrau II and briefly usurped the crown from 590 to 591, and Shahrwaraz, a commander of the last Roman-Persian war and a usurper. In the course of the 4th century, the purported branches of this family acquired the crowns of three Caucasian polities:

Iberia The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese language, Aragonese and Occitan language, Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a pe ...

(

Chosroids The Chosroid dynasty (a Latinization of ''Khosro anni'', ka, ხოსრო ��ანები), also known as the Iberian Mihranids, were a dynasty of the kings and later the presiding princes of the early Georgian state of Iberia from the ...

), Gogarene and

/ Gardman ( Mihranids). Toumanoff, Cyril. Introduction to Christian Caucasian History, II: States and Dynasties of the Formative Period. ''Traditio'' 17 (1961), p. 38. The much later Samanid dynasty that ruled most of Iran in the 9th and 10th centuries claimed descent from Bahrām ChōbinBritannica, "The Samanids", ''Their eponym was Sāmān-Khodā, a landlord in the district of Balkh and, according to the dynasty’s claims, a descendant of Bahrām Chūbīn, the Sāsānian general'

o

/ref>Kamoliddin, Shamsiddin S
"To the Question of the Origin of the Samanids"
''Transoxiana: Journal Libre de Estudios Orientales'', ]''Iran and America: Re-Kind ng a Love Lost'' By Badi Badiozamani, Ghazal Badiozamani, pg. 123''History of Bukhara'' by Narshakhi, Chapter XXIV, Pg 79 and thus the House of Mihran, though the veracity of this claim is unclear.

References

Sources

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Mihran, House of Ancient history of the Caucasus Families from the Sasanian Empire