Khosrau I - Legacy

Legacy

Although Khosrau's achievements were highly successful and helped centralize the empire, they did not last long after his death. The local officials and great noble families resented the fact that their power had been stripped away from them and began to regain power quickly after his death. Khosrau's reign had a major impact on Islamic culture and political life. Many of his policies and reforms were brought into the Islamic nation in their transformation from a decentralized oligarchical into an imperial empire.

There are a considerable amount of Islamic work that was inspired by the reign of Khosrau I, for example the Kitab al-Taj of Jahiz. There are a considerable amount of Islamic texts that refer to Khosrau's reign that it is sometimes hard to tell what is fact and what is fallacy.

His reign signifies the promotion and possibly even the creation of the Silk Road between ancient China, India, and the western world. Richard Frye makes the argument that Khosrau's rationale behind his numerous wars with the Byzantine empire as well as the eastern Hephthalites was to establish the Sassanian dominance on this trade route.