Detail of Shirin, Queen of the Sassanian Empire, bathing. The hooves of the horse of King Khosrow ca

Detail of Shirin, Queen of the Sassanian Empire, bathing. The hooves of the horse of King Khosrow can be seen at the top right. From the Kashmir Manuscript, 1791.

Shirin was the wife of Khosrow II, the shahanshah, or King of Kings, of the Sassanian (Persian) Empire. Her exact cultural/ethnic origins are debated; some sources say she was Roman (at her time that was the Byzantine Empire who considered themselves Roman) and others say she was Aramean, a non-Persian from the areas of Assyria and Babylonia.

What is known is that she was a Christian and Khosrow was Zoroastrian and that such a relationship was considered forbidden. Through all the turmoil in their lives, Shirin and Khosrow remained together. During that time she was able to gain support for the Christian minority in the empire.

Her and Khosrow’s lives and romance are retold, with fictional elements, in the Persian epic poem Shahnameh, the romance Khosrow and Shirin by the famed poet Nizami Ganjavi, and even in One Thousand and One Nights. 

~Hasmonean