Khosrau, along with Shahrbaraz and his other best generals, conquers Dara and ...

...Edessa in 604; ...

...in the north, the imperial forces are driven back to the old, pre-591 frontier before Khosrau II gave them most of Persian Armenia, parts of Mesopotamia and western half of Iberia.

Khosrow crosses the Euphrates to take Hierapolis and Beroea (Aleppo).

Internal dissensions have made the eastern Roman provinces easy prey, and the Persians overrun Armenia and central Asia Minor, though they apparently do not permanently occupy or administer them.

The Jews of Antioch, upon receiving word of the imminent approach of the Persians, riot, killing the Christian patriarch in revenge for severe repression, thus facilitating the entrance of Persian troops into the city.

As a result, anti-Jewish pogroms break out in the Roman Empire from Syria to Asia Minor.

The Persians, having thoroughly penetrated Asia Minor, now turn to the south.

Khosrau's ablest general, Shahrbaraz, leads a second invasion of Mesopotamia in 613.

Damascus is taken in this year.

The Persian invasion destroys Ghassanid power in 614.

Jerusalem's Christian golden age is brought to an end in 614 by the Persian invasion by Khosrow II's ablest general, Shahrbaraz, after a twenty-day siege, in which the inhabitants of Jerusalem are massacred and the churches razed.

The Holy Sepulchre is destroyed and the True Cross carried to Ctesiphon.

Khosrow himself is generally tolerant of Christianity (and is famously in love with his Armenian Christian wife Shirin), but Shahrbar'z permits his Jewish aides to torture thousands of Christian prisoners and deport some thirty-seven thousand.

The Persians permit the Jews to run the city government.

There are at this time approximately one hundred and fifty thousand Jews living in forty-three settlements throughout Palestine, primarily in Judaea and Galilee.

Tong Yabghu Qaghan, who becomes the new ruler (khagan) of the Western Turkic Khaganate in 618,maintains close relations with the Tang Dynasty of China, and may have married into the Imperial family.

Tong Yabghu's empire fought with the Sassanids of Iran.

In the early 620's, the khagan's nephew Böri Shad leads a series of raids across the Caucasus Mountains into Persian territory.

Many scholars have identified Tong Yabghu as the Ziebel mentioned in Byzantine sources as having campaigned (as khagan of the Khazars) with the Emperor Heraclius in the Caucasus against the Sassanid Persian Empire in 627-628.

A few scholars, including Chavannes, Uchida, Gao and Xue Zhongzeng assert that Tong Yabghu cannot be positively identified with Ziebel (or any Khazar ruler) and may actually have died as early as 626.

These scholars point to discrepancies in the dates between Byzantine and Chinese sources and argue that definitively conflating Ziebel with Tong Yabghu is an exaggeration of the extant evidence.

Following the First Siege of Constantinople by the Avars and Persians, the beleaguered Emperor Heraclius had found himself politically isolated.

He cannot rely on the Christian Armenian potentates of Transcaucasia, since they have been branded as heretics by the Orthodox Church, and even the king of Iberia prefers to befriend the religiously tolerant Persians.

Against this dismal background, he finds a natural ally in Tong Yabghu.

Earlier, in 568, the Turks under Istämi had turned to Constantinople when their relations with Persia soured over commerce issues.

Heraclius dispatches to the steppes his emissary, named Andrew, who in 625 promises to the Khagan some "staggering riches" in return for military aid.

The khagan, on his part, is anxious to secure the Chinese-Contantinople trade along the Silk Route, which had been disrupted by the Persians in the aftermath of the Second Perso-Turkic War.

He sends word to the Emperor that "I shall take revenge on your enemies and will come with my valiant troops to your help".

A unit of one thousand horsemen fights their way through Persian Transcaucasia and delivers the Khagan's message to the imperial camp in Anatolia.

The Jews of Jerusalem, in their Sassanid-sponsored revolt against Heraclius, have gained complete control over the city, and much of Judea and Galilee has become an autonomous Jewish province of the Persian Empire.

The Jewish Temple is rebuilt by the Persian-appointed ruler Nehemiah ben Hushiel (son of the Jewish exilarch), who has begun the work of making arrangements of the rebuilding of the Temple, and sorting out genealogies to establish a new High Priesthood.