World at War / Conflicts / Recorded History
World at War
Byzantine–Sassanid Wars
502–628 AD
Middle East
Status: ended
Casualties: Hundreds of thousands
The last great war of antiquity. Khosrow II took Jerusalem in 614 and the True Cross; Heraclius struck back to the Persian heartland and won at Nineveh in 627. Both empires were exhausted just as the Arab armies emerged from the desert in the 630s.
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Belligerents
- Eastern Roman Empire (Heraclius)
- Sassanid Persia (Khosrow II)
Casualties
Hundreds of thousands
From World at War, an interactive atlas by Jairus Pereira.
Figures are approximate, drawn from Wikipedia, UCDP, ACLED and academic sources — a design
artefact, not an authoritative register. Contact.