Khosrow and Shirin, Part 1

Once the rebellions were finished, the reign of Khosrow II (590 - 628) experienced a golden age in some respects. One facet of his reign was his tolerance of Christians, which may have had something to do with the persecutions in the times of his immediate ancestors, and also to do with one of his wives, Shirin.Shirin was a Christian, a member of the Church of the East and later a member of the Syriac Orthodox Church. When Jerusalem was conquered in 614 by the Sassanians and the True Cross was captured, it was brought to Ctesiphon where Shirin took possession of it.How Khosrow came to be married to a Christian is the subject of speculation, although many varying accounts were created over the years. One is that she was a servant in a Persian home he used to visit when he was young. A 12th-century Persian poet, Nizami Ganjavi, wrote a poem called "Khosrow and Shirin" in which he tells the beautiful (and extremely fictional) story of the two lovers.Nizami paints Shirin as the flawlessly…