JEWSbe subject to the present government. Both the Roman and Persian
empires were permanent and would last until the time of the Messiah.
By analogy with the defeat of the Chaldaeans who had destroyed the
first Temple by the Achaemenian Persians, those who had destroyed
the second Temple (the Romans) would also be defeated by the Per-
sians in the last days. But according to Rav (d. 247), the Persians
would be defeated by those who had destroyed the Temple and the
Messiah would only come after the Romans had dominated the entire
world for nine months.104
This worked very well in the third century when such a development
was very unlikely; but to Jews living in Iraq and Palestine in the early
seventh century, it must have seemed that these things were actually
taking place in the great war between the Sasanians and the Byzantines.
Tens of thousands of Palestinian Jews joined the army of Shahrbaraz
in 614 in an outpouring of Messianic enthusiasm. The eventual defeat
of the Persians by the Byzantines and the execution of Khusraw Parviz
by enemies at his own court were disappointing but at the same time
convincing proof that the Messiah was about to come. An apocalyptic
document probably written in Palestine between 629 and 636 de-
scribed Shiroe (Qubadh 11) as the anti-Messiah who would kill the
forerunner of the Messiah. Messianic expectations are also likely to
have been encouraged among anti-Rabbinic Jews by the career of
MUQammad, the Islamic conquests, and the fall of the Sasanian empire,
and in about 634 the appearance of a prophet among the Saracens
was discussed seriously by rabbis in Palestine.^105
The earliest recorded Messianic rising after the conquest, and the
only one in Iraq, broke out in the heart of the Sawad between 644
and 647. AJew of Beth Aramaye from the village of Pellughta (Falluja)
announced that the Messiah had come and gathered a force of about
four hundred weavers, carpet makers, and linen bleachers. They burned
three churches and killed the governor (Syr. shoJtanii) of the local
district before the uprising was suppressed by troops from 'Aqola
(Kufa). All of the rebels were killed along with their wives and children,
and their leader was crucified in his own village.^106
Two subsequent movements were different in that they occurred in
104 Neusner, History, pp. 31-32; Talmudic ]udaism, pp. 36-38, 41; Rodkinson,
Talmud, 11, "Sabbath," 354; idem, VI, "Yomah," 12-13; idem, XVIII, "Abuda Zara,"
3.
105 A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire (Norman, Okla., 1964), 1, 316-17;
Neusner, History, pp. 129-30; Stratos, Byzantium, pp. 75, 108.
106 Guidi, Chronica Minora I, 1, 33; 11, 27-28.