Yazdegerd III or Yazdgerd III (also spelled Yazdiger or Yazdigerd, Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

: یزدگرد, "made by God") was the twenty-ninth and last king of the Sassanid dynasty of Iran

Iran

Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...

 and a grandson of Khosrau II

Khosrau II

250px|thumb|Khosrau II 250px|thumb|Khosrau II 250px|thumb|Khosrau II (Khosrow II, Chosroes II, or Xosrov II in classical sources, sometimes called Parvez, "the Ever Victorious" – (in Persian: خسرو پرویز), was the twenty-second Sassanid King of Persia, reigning from 590 to 628...

 (590–628). His father was Shahryar, whose mother was Miriam, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Maurice

Maurice (emperor)

Maurice was Byzantine Emperor from 582 to 602.A prominent general in his youth, Maurice fought with success against the Sassanid Persians...

. Yazdegerd III ascended the throne on 16 June 632 after a series of internal conflicts.

Life and reign

Yazdegerd was born in central Iran, reigned as a youth and had never truly exercised authority. The Muslim conquest of Persia began in his first year of reign, and ended with the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah

Battle of al-Qadisiyyah

The Battle of al-Qādisiyyah was fought in 636; it was the decisive engagement between the Arab muslim army and the Sassanid Persian army during the first period of Muslim expansion. It resulted in the Islamic conquest of Persia, and was key to the conquest of Iraq...

. Yazdegerd sought an alliance with Emperor Heraclius

Heraclius

Heraclius was Byzantine Emperor from 610 to 641.He was responsible for introducing Greek as the empire's official language. His rise to power began in 608, when he and his father, Heraclius the Elder, the exarch of Africa, successfully led a revolt against the unpopular usurper Phocas.Heraclius'...

, who was an old rival of the Persian Empire.

Following the battle of al-Qādisiyyah, the Arabs occupied Ctesiphon

Ctesiphon

Ctesiphon, the imperial capital of the Parthian Arsacids and of the Persian Sassanids, was one of the great cities of ancient Mesopotamia.The ruins of the city are located on the east bank of the Tigris, across the river from the Hellenistic city of Seleucia...

, and the young king fled eastward into Media

Medes

The MedesThe Medes...

 going from one district to another, until at last he was killed by a local miller for his purse at Merv

Merv

Merv , formerly Achaemenid Satrapy of Margiana, and later Alexandria and Antiochia in Margiana , was a major oasis-city in Central Asia, on the historical Silk Road, located near today's Mary in Turkmenistan. Several cities have existed on this site, which is significant for the interchange of...

 in 651.
Ferdowsi

Ferdowsi

Ferdowsi was a highly revered Persian poet. He was the author of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran and related societies.The Shahnameh was originally composed by Ferdowsi for the princes of the Samanid dynasty, who were responsible for a revival of Persian cultural traditions after the...

 a contemporary of Mahmud of Ghazni

Mahmud of Ghazni

Mahmud of Ghazni , actually ', was the most prominent ruler of the Ghaznavid dynasty who ruled from 997 until his death in 1030 in the eastern Iranian lands. Mahmud turned the former provincial city of Ghazni into the wealthy capital of an extensive empire which covered most of today's Iran,...

 recounts the killing of Yazdegerd by the miller at the behest of Mahuy Suri

Mahuy Suri

Mahuy Suri was the Sassanid governor of Merv in Khorasan during the reign of Yezdegerd III. After the Arab invasion he killed Yazdegerd III, who fled to Merv from the Arabic invasion. According to the Shahnameh, the satrap of Khorasan, Mahuy Suri, treacherously had one of his millers to kill...

Zoroastrian calendar

The Zoroastrian religious calendar

Zoroastrian calendar

This article treats of the reckoning of days, months and years in the calendar used by adherents of the Zoroastrian faith. Zoroastrian religious festivals are discussed elsewhere, but have a fixed relationship to Nawruz, the New Year festival, whose timing is discussed below...

, which is still in use today, uses the regnal year

Regnal year

A regnal year is a year of the reign of a sovereign, from the Latin regnum meaning kingdom, rule.The oldest dating systems were in regnal years, and considered the date as an ordinal, not a cardinal number. For example, a monarch could have a first year of rule, a second year of rule, a third, and...

 of Yazdegerd III as its base year. Its calendar era

Calendar era

A calendar era is the year numbering system used by a calendar. For example, the Gregorian calendar numbers its years in the Western Christian era . The instant, date, or year from which time is marked is called the epoch of the era...

 (year numbering system), which is accompanied by a Y.Z. suffix, thus indicates the number of years since the emperor's coronation in 632 AD.

Family

Yazdegerd's son Peroz II fled to China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

. His daughter Shahrbanu

Shahrbanu

Shahrbānū , is a personage described to have been one of the daughters of Yazdegerd III, the last Emperor of the Sassanid dynasty of Persia/Iran...

 is believed to be the wife of Husayn ibn Ali

Husayn ibn Ali

Hussein ibn ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib ‎ was the son of ‘Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib and Fātimah Zahrā...

; his other daughter Izdundad was married to Bustanai ben Haninai, the Jewish exilarch

Exilarch

Exilarch refers to the leaders of the Diaspora Jewish community in Babylon following the deportation of King Jeconiah and his court into Babylonian exile after the first fall of Jerusalem in 597 BCE and augmented after the further deportations following the destruction...

. The Bahá'í religious leader Bahá'u'lláh

Bahá'u'lláh

Bahá'u'lláh , born ' , was the founder of the Bahá'í Faith. He claimed to be the prophetic fulfilment of Bábism, a 19th-century outgrowth of Shí‘ism, but in a broader sense claimed to be a messenger from God referring to the fulfilment of the eschatological expectations of Islam, Christianity, and...

's ancestry can be traced back to Yazdegerd III.