ZĀDUYA, a Persian noble in the 7th century CE who was instrumental in the crowning of Farroḵzād Ḵosrow as Sasanian king. He is said to have been the “chief of the servants” (raʾis al-ḵawal) during the chaotic period between the reigns of Pērōz II and Farroḵzād Ḵosrow in 631-32 CE (Ṭabari, II/2, p. 1066, tr., pp. 408-9). The office held by him may be the prastīgbed, a term already found in Šāpūr I’s inscription at Naqš-e Rostam (Mid. Pers. plstkpt/Parthian prštkpty, sec. 48) in the early Sasanian period (Shahbazi, pp. 676, no. 1311).
When Pērōz II was murdered by the nobility, Zāduya left for a place called the Stone Fortress (Ḥeṣn-al-Ḥejāra), close to Nisibis in Mesopotamia, where a son of Ḵosrow II, named Farruḵzād Ḵosrow had been hiding to escape the fratricide of the ruling Kawād II Širuya. Zāduya brought back the young prince to Ctesiphon to be placed on the throne. Ṭabari states that his rule was acknowledged and lasted for six months (Ṭabari, II/2, p. 1066; tr. p. 409; Masʿudi, Moruj, ed. Pellat, sec. 655; idem, Tanbih, p. 103; Nöldeke, pp. 396-97).
There is also a mention of a Zāduya who, as the margrave (marzbān) of Saraḵs, made peace with the Arab general, ʿAbd-Allāh b. ʿĀmer, during the Arab Muslim conquest of Khorasan in 651-52 CE (Nöldeke pp. 416 ff.). It is impossible to ascertain if this is the same Zāduya who held a high office before and then served as a margrave in the east (Balāḏori, p. 405).
Bibliography:
Abu‘l-ʿAbbās Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā Balāḏori, Ketāb fotuḥ al-boldān, ed. M. J. de Goeje, Leiden, 1968.
Philip Huyse, Die dreisprachige Inschrift Sabuhrs I: an der Ka‘ba-i Zardušt, Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, part 3/1, 2 vols., London, 1999, I, p. 60.
Abu’l-Ḥasan ʿAli Masʿudi, Moruj al-ḏahab wa maʿāden al-jawhar, rev. ed. Charles Pellat, 7 vols., Beirut, 1962-79.
Idem, Ketāb al-tanbih wa’l-ešrār, ed. M. J. de Goeje, Leiden, 1967.
Theodor Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser und Araber zur Zeit der Sassaniden, Leiden, 1878; repr., Leiden, 1973; tr. ʿAbbās Zaryāb as Tāriḵ-e Irāniān wa ʿArabhā dar zamān-e Sāsāniān, Tehran, 1999.
Šāpur Šahbāzi, Tārik-e sāsānīān, Tehran, 2010.
Moḥammad b. Jarir Ṭabari, Taʾriḵ al-rosol wa’l-moluk, ed. M. J. de Goeje et al., 15 vols., repr. Leiden, 1964; tr. by various scholars as The History of al-Ṭabari, 40 vols., Albany, New York, 1985-2007, V, tr. Clifford E. Bosworth as The Sāsānids, the Byzantines, the Lakmids, and Yemen,, Albany, N.Y., 1999.
(Touraj Daryaee)
Originally Published: March 8, 2012
Last Updated: March 8, 2012
Cite this entry:Touraj Daryaee, “ZĀDUYA,” Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, 2012, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/zaduya (accessed on 20 September 2016).
