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(260–265)
 
Destruction of Shu Han (263)
 
Fall of Cao Wei/Rise of Jin (265)
 
Jin Wudi (265–290)
 
Destruction of Dong Wu (280)
 
Unification under the Jin (280–316)
 
Rebellion of the Eight Princes (291–306)
 
Jin Huaidi (307–313)
 
Liu Cong of the Hanzhao (310-318)
 
Fall of unified Jin (316)
 
Jin Yuandi (317–323)
Chandragupta (319–335)
 
Samudragupta (335–c. 380)
Fu Jian of the Qianqin (357–385)
 
Battle of the Fei River (383)
Chandragupta II (c. 380–415)
Rise of Bei Wei (386)
 
Tuoba Gui of the Bei Wei (386–409)
 
 
Faxian journeys to India
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Chapter Four
     

The Persian Threat
     
    Between 325 and 361, Shapur II of Persia challenges the Roman empire, Constantine plans the first crusade, and his heirs fight each other for power
     
    N OW THAT HE HAD MOVED his capital city eastward, Constantine was face to face with his most dangerous enemy: the king of Persia.
    Shapur II had been king since he was in the womb. His father, Hurmuz, had died a month before Shapur’s birth, and the Persian noblemen and the priests of the state religion, Zoroastrianism, had crowned the queen’s pregnant belly. Until he turned sixteen, Shapur and his empire were controlled by regents who were more concerned for their own power than for the greater good of Persia. So Persia had been unable, during Constantine’s rise to power, to do much in the way of seizing land for itself.
    In fact, it had been forced into defending itself from southern invasion: tribes of kingless and nomadic Arabs who had lived in the Arabian peninsula for centuries were now driven northward by a sinking water table. Because of the harshness of their own native land, says the Arab historian al-Tabari, they were the “most needy of all the nations,” and their raids were growing more troublesome: “They seized the local people’s herds of cattle,” al-Tabari laments, “their cultivated land, and their means of subsistence, and did a great deal of damage…with none of the Persians able to launch a counterattack because they had set the royal crown on the head of a mere child.” 1
    This lasted only until Shapur attained his majority, which he did early. In 325, he told his army commanders that he would now take over the defense of the empire. He selected a thousand horsemen to act as a strike force against the Arab invaders, under his personal command. “Then he led them forth,” al-Tabari writes, “and fell upon those Arabs who had treated Fars as their pasture ground…wrought great slaughter among them, reduced [others of] them to the harshest form of captivity, and put the remainder to flight.” He then pursued them, sending a fleet of ships across the Persian Gulf to Bahrain, landing in eastern Arabia, and shedding “so much of their blood that it flowed like a torrent swollen by a rainstorm.” 2 His forces reached as far as the small oasis city of Medina, where he took captives.
    Nevertheless, it was not this force at arms that impressed al-Tabari the most. Shapur’s wisdom, al-Tabari tells us, was first seen when, as a young man, he watched his people crossing a bridge over the Tigris, pushing against each other on the crowded span. This struck him as inefficient.
    So he gave orders for another bridge to be built, so that one of the bridges could be used for people crossing in one direction and the other bridge for people crossing from the opposite direction…. In this way, the people were relieved of the necessity of endangering their lives when crossing the bridge. The child grew in stature and prestige in that single day, what for others would have taken a long period. 3
     
    Running an empire the size of Persia required more than skill with a sword; it took administrative ability. Inventing a new traffic pattern was an innovation. Shapur II was intelligent and shrewd, and fully able to withstand Constantine’s plans to dominate the known world.
    Constantine’s move to Byzantium was silent testimony