December 12, AD 627

Battle of Nineveh (627)

Heraclius defeats Rhahzadh at the Battle of Nineveh

Heraclius went looking for a battle because 3,000 Persian reinforcements were on the way — and fought before they arrived.

12 December 627, out of the mist

On 12 December 627, Heraclius’s Roman army met the Sasanian force commanded by Rhahzadh on ground near Nineveh, after manoeuvring to fight before Persian reinforcements could arrive.

Morning mist helped conceal the Roman deployment. Rhahzadh arranged his army in three formations and advanced against Heraclius.

The Great Zab crossing belongs to 1 December, eleven days earlier — not to the day of the battle.

A fight that lasted all day

The armies fought from morning until late in the day. Rhahzadh and several senior Persian officers were killed.

Heraclius was wounded on the lip, and his horse Dorkon was struck in the thigh by a spear.

Theophanes claims 28 Persian standards captured and Roman losses of 50 killed plus 10 wounded who later died — chronicler claims rather than independently verifiable counts.

Not a rout

The Persian formations were not destroyed or routed immediately. They remained near the battlefield into the night before withdrawing to defensive ground in nearby foothills.

That withdrawal left the route south toward the Sasanian metropolitan region open, and the expected reinforcements did not reach the remnants until 21 December.

Heraclius’s personal killing of Rhahzadh is a disputed literary tradition: Nikephoros gives a bodyguard a decisive role, while Theophanes describes Heraclius killing three Persians without identifying one of them as Rhahzadh.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited

How this was checked

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What the sources leave uncertain

The battle date and broad result are supported by both the Byzantine chronological tradition and modern scholarship.
The vivid personal-combat accounts were written nearly two centuries later and differ materially. Nikephoros says Rhahzadh challenged Heraclius, was first disabled by a bodyguard and then killed by the emperor; Theophanes instead describes Heraclius killing three Persians without identifying one as Rhahzadh.
Theophanes’s remarkably low Roman casualty figure and other precise battlefield totals are chronicler claims, not independently verifiable modern counts.
Modern scholarship describes a hard-fought Persian withdrawal, not the annihilation or immediate rout sometimes presented in popular accounts.