Battle of Nahāvand

Battle of Nahāvand
Part of the Muslim conquests
Painting of the Nahavand Castle, which was one of the last Sasanian strongholds.
Date 642 Location Nahāvand, near Hamadan, Iran Result Decisive Rashidun Caliphate victory Collapse of the Sassanid Empire
Belligerents
Rashidun Caliphate	Sasanian Empire
Commanders and leaders
Sa`d ibn Abi Waqqas An-Numan ibn Muqarrin † Tulayha † Amru bin Ma'adi Yakrib  †	Piruz Khosrow  † Mardanshah  †
Strength
30,000	100,000-150,000 many soldiers from Kumis
Casualties and losses
Heavy	Heavy

The Battle of Nahāvand (also Nihāvand or Nahāwand) (Arabic:معركة نهاوند) was fought in 642 between Arab Muslims and Sassanid armies. The battle is known to Muslims as the "Victory of Victories." The Sassanid King Yazdegerd III escaped to the Merv area, but was unable to raise another substantial army. It was a decisive victory for the Rashidun Caliphate and the Persians consequently lost the surrounding cities including Sephahan (renamed Isfahan). The Khan of the Turks later lent him some soldiers, but these mutinied in 652.

The former Sassanid provinces, in alliance with Parthian and White Hun nobles, resisted for a few more years in the region south of the Caspian Sea, even as the Rashidun Caliphate was replaced by the Umayyads, thus perpetuating the Sassanid court styles, Zoroastrian religion, and Persian speech.

At the time of the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632 the religion that he had founded dominated the Hejaz (western Arabia). Under the first two caliphs Abu Bakr and Omar, Islam expanded into Palestine and Mesopotamia where it respectively confronted the East Roman and Persian (Sāsānian) empires. Both were exhausted by warfare and internal dissent. With the Roman defeat at the battle of the Yarmuk (636) the Muslim Arabs were free to turn east to the Euphrates and the Persian heartland. In November 636 a Sāsānian army was decisively defeated at the Battle of Qadisiya, resulting in the loss of Iraq to the Muslim invaders.

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