# Talk:Shahrbaraz

Mrjahan (May 11th, 2006):
The rank of Eran Spahbod was abolished during the reforms of Khosrau I. Shahrbaraz was a general, but he did not have absolute command. In the western theatre, he shared command with Shahin. I remove the Eran Spahbod ref.
The coin  was not Shahrbaraz. Arashiyama (talk) 05:24, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
Shahrbaraz and Farrokhan were not the same person according to the cited Pourshariati book.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 140.254.91.78 (talk) 20:21, 1 March 2013 (UTC) 

I see that the article has been submitted for a GA review, and I think it will pass with flying colors! I won't do the review, though, because I did the peer review and I think the article would benefit from another editor's judgment before it is submitted for an eventual featured article review. But during the peer review I promised HistoryofIran that I would give another round of comments, so here they are! Some comments continue from where the peer review had stopped.

"Shahrvaraz" (with a "v") seems to be a common alternative version of our guy's name, so it should probably be mentioned. And Pourshariati's book Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire, which is one of the main sources for the article, has the name as "Shahrbarâz" (with an "â"): if this is the correct diacritics (an issue on which I'm not competent to judge), this should be reflected in the lede and even the article title.
Pourshariati's book also claims that Shahrbaraz's real name may have been named "Farrukhân". I can only view snippets of her book, but she debates the evidence starting on p. 143. If there is a controversy concerning the man's name, it should be explained, otherwise we are not respecting WP:NPOV! If the discussion of Shahrbaraz's name is complicated, it could be placed in a short section (titled "Name"?) at the beginning of the article.
Pourshariati claims that Shahrbaraz died in 630, not 629. HistoryofIran explained in the peer review that Pourshariati's claim has not been accepted by mainstream scholars, but Decline and Fall of the Sasanian Empire is a reliable source, and so as with the case of Farrukhân/Shahrbaraz, the controversy needs to be explained, if only briefly. This does not mean she is right, of course.
The section on Shahrbaraz's Early life contains a lot of factual claims that probably need to be referenced.
The section "War against the Byzantine Empire" starts with a lot of details that seem unrelated to the main protagonist. One of the strengths of the article is that it gives enough details for readers to understand the context of Shahrbaraz's actions, but at the beginning of the section, the narrative seems to be a bit too general and not centered on Shahrbaraz enough. Maybe a simple first sentence like "Shahrbaraz was an important general during the Byzantine–Sasanian war of (602–628)" (and some past perfect until we hear of Shahrbaraz's actions) would help the reader to see why all these people and events are mentioned. A "see also" to Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628, where Shahrbaraz is mentioned many times, could also be helpful.
However, Heraclius may have altered the letter for his own purposes before showing it to Shahrbaraz. This sentence proposes an interpretation of primary sources and historical events. As such, it needs a reference.
...Farrukhzad secretly mutinied against Khosrau... I'm not sure a mutiny can be secret. I think of a mutiny as an open revolt more than a secret conspiracy. Maybe another word would be better?
According to the French version of this article ("Schahr-Barâz"), Pourshariati claims that one of Shahrbaraz's sons tried to seize the throne after the death of his father. Maybe this claim, if it is indeed there, could serve as a conclusion to the article?
I will stop here for now. I wish you quick success on the GA review! Madalibi (talk) 16:26, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I have the whole information of the book right here [1]. It both calls him for "Shahrbarāz" and "Shahrvarāz". Though he mostly called Shahrvarāz. When i search in Google books, it only says that the name "Shahrbaraz" has 3.680 results, while the name "Shahrvaraz" only has 510 results. By the way, the whole Pourshariati book uses Middle Eastern names like Qubād, instead of the normal Kavadh. So if we were to change the name i think it would better it should be spelled without those kind of letters like ā, ó, š.. etc.
It is widely disputed, and if i remember right, then Farrukhan and Shahrbaraz were not the same person, but two different high-ranking generals.
Alright :).
Will take a look it :).
Alright :).
Will do.
Will do, thanks.
Yep, that's Shapur-i Shahrvaraz, i will write about that, thank you very much for all your help :). --Mossadegh-e Mihan-dust (talk) 16:45, 17 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for your quick response! On point 1, no need to change the name throughout. And now that I'm looking more carefully, since "Shahrvaraz" and "Šahrwarāz" already appear in the lede, there's actually no need to change anything! :) On point 2, however, I think the controversy needs to be mentioned even if it has been solved (though I have no idea if it has). It's just something relevant to our topic. If you create a "Name" section, all you need to say is something like "there is a controversy concerning..." or if it's not a controversy but a mistake, something like "scholars used to refer to Shahrbaraz as Farrukhan, but...". Then you can summarize what Pourshariati and others say about this issue. I'm not sure this is necessary for the GA review, but if I were one of the FA reviewers I would insist on this for the sake of completeness!
And a few minor comments:
Do you have a link that could explain the "old pre-591 frontier", perhaps to a relevant section of Byzantine–Sassanid War of 572–591?
Two infoboxes—the one on top of the article and the one at the bottom—mention that Shahrbaraz was "Great King (Shah) of Ērānshahr", yet neither "shah" nor "Eranshahr" is mentioned in the article. Is there a reason for that? Could you clarify the issue for neophytes like me? :)
File:SassanianEmpireHistoryofIran.png claims to be a map of the Sasanian empire at its greatest extent in 620. I'm not sure the licenses are good, but the map might be useful if they are.
If you plan to bring this article to FA status, a few more images would be nice!
I really like the new "Legacy" section. It makes a nice conclusion to the article. Just make sure you correct "this resulted in victory for the Byzantines and the Sasanian Empire to fall into a civil war", which is not grammatical.
That's all I have time for right now, as I'm about to leave for a trip. I wish you the best of luck with the GA review and success in your ventures outside the Wiki. Keep up the good work! Madalibi (talk) 05:21, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
Once again, thank you very much for everything :). I will write about the confusion between him and Farrukhan later, as it takes some time to read about the confusion and write about it. --Mossadegh-e Mihan-dust (talk) 12:02, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

This review is transcluded from Talk:Shahrbaraz/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: Adam Cuerden (talk · contribs) 20:03, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
Unfortunately, this article is severely undercited. There are whole paragraphs without citations. Perhaps this is a trivial fix, but until it is, this can't pass good article. I'll give it a few days in case the sources are to hand. 
The basic rule is that there should be a citation for every claim. If the same citation covers multiple claims, you can put it at the end of the series of claims cited - except that it's generally necessary to additionally put a citation at the end of each paragraph - which can, of course, be the same citation. This is because paragraphs tend to move around during editing.
There are two exceptions: In the lead of the article, it's not necessary to cite anything that appears later on with a citation; and in cases where the source is obvious (such as a plot summary) a citation isn't needed, and where a group of paragraph are obviously is part of the same source (a long quotation, say, or something specifically labelled as a summary of a specific source's claims) it's only necessary to cite it once. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:03, 22 February 2014 (UTC)
I've added some sources, and i will add the rest of the sources tomorrow. --Mossadegh-e Mihan-dust (talk) 20:52, 23 February 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. It's a well-written article, but, sadly, that's not in itself enough for GA. =) Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:46, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
Hi everybody! I'm the guy who did the article's peer review and its follow-up, so I've come to care about it more than if it were just another GA candidate.  HistoryofIran: I'm very sorry for not raising the issue of inline citations in the peer review, I really should have. Adam: at 38 reviews, you obviously know what you're doing, so I don't mean to question your judgment. I just think it would be great if you could clarify what you think is missing for this article to reach GA standard (assuming the citation problem can be solved), and perhaps make a few suggestions on how to improve it. I found HistoryofIran ("Mossadegh-e Mihan-dust") very responsive to constructive comments, so I'm sure he would be glad to improve the article further in light of your suggestions. Both of you keep up the good work! Madalibi (talk) 00:49, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Oh, sure:
The lead and article could use a little more context. The Sasanian empire isn't so well known (in the English-speaking world, anyway), so just briefly describing it, e.g. "The last Iranian empire before the rise of Islam" (from the Sasanian empire article) would help. It might help to very briefly summarise the period before his kingship as well.
A few other terms could be glossed. "spahbed", Seven Partian clans, etc.
Generally speaking, it's a quite good article on the whole, and I don't think it needs that much more after sourcing. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:21, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Great, thanks! I'll let HistoryofIran take over from her. All the best, Madalibi (talk) 01:40, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
Adam: I have added many more sources, is this good enough? if not then i can try to find some more. Madaliba: No problem, thanks for the suggestions :-). --Mossadegh-e Mihan-dust (talk) 16:53, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

Very, very nearly. I've added two  tags. The information may very well be in a source already mentioned, in which case you can just copy the reference there, but there needs to be an explicit citation for these. The points I raised in response to Madalibi's question above, on consideration, are not necessary for Good article status, but I would work on that when moving on to featured article - which you should, this is a very good article. Adam Cuerden (talk) 23:27, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
The new footnotes added a few HarvErrors to the article, all surrounding the two volumes of The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars by Dodgeon, Greatrex & Lieu, both published in 2002. I disambiguated the two entries as "Dodgeon, Greatrex & Lieu 2002a" and "2002b" and modified the three footnotes I could figure out (see my edit summaries). But I'm not sure whether notes 15 and 30 are to Part I or Part II, so I didn't touch them. HistoryofIran: could you make sure I didn't make mistakes in modifying notes 8, 10, and 24, and could you specify 2002a or 2002b in footnotes 15 and 30? Then the references will be perfect! If you want to detect HarvErrors on your own, you should install this incredibly convenient script. Once you have it installed (takes less than a minute), HarvErrors will just display automatically. All right, good luck with everything! Madalibi (talk) 00:46, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
Done :-). --Mossadegh-e Mihan-dust (talk) 14:34, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

I don't have time to do the promotion at the moment, but, just to be clear, this has passed, and I'll do the work in a moment - I haven't eaten yet today. Adam Cuerden (talk) 22:38, 25 February 2014 (UTC)
Right. Done now: I've put him under "Monarchs". Feel free to move him if you feel somewhere else is more suited - the early definitions of King are very different from the more modern. Adam Cuerden (talk) 23:28, 25 February 2014 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, Shahrbaraz is identical to "Farāyeen" (فرآیین) in Shahname. Ferdowsi's account of Farāyeen is same as the historical Shahrbaraz. Farāyeen first makes an alliance with Piruz Khosro and asks him to kill Ardashir Shirooy (Ardashir III) and then captures Ctesiphon. Ferdowsi even refer to Farāyeen as "Goraz" (Boar). In Shahname, Farāyeen after 50 days of reign was killed by "Shahrāngorāz" (شهران‌گراز) (the same way Shahrbaraz was killed by Farrukh Hormizd), so Farrukh Hormizd is identical to Shahrāngorāz. Boran then punishes Piruz Khosro, when she ascent to the throne after Farāyeen. -- Bkouhi (talk) 02:34, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Shahrbaraz is mostly notable for his career as a general, not as a king. This should be reflected in the lead and the infobox, which mostly emphasize on his kingship. --Z 13:28, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Well, both of his careers are emphasized, it's just that his kingship is mentioned first. --HistoryofIran (talk) 14:23, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
@ZxxZxxZ: Btw could you pls format the sources you added to so they look like the others. It's a GA article, it has to keep looking one or it might get delisted. --HistoryofIran (talk) 15:37, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

I think it is quite ok and neccessary to add military career to the infobox. He has been Governor of Sasanian Egypt, and Spahbed of Nemroz as well; these should be reflected in the infox, like almost any other article in Wikipedia. --Z 19:51, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Frankly, this type of infobox is ugly and not used anywhere else. If you want to help, please format those citations you've added in the same pattern as the others. --HistoryofIran (talk) 20:09, 16 August 2019 (UTC)
Adding such information to the infobox is a well-established practice in Wikipesia articles, see Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani for example. I don't know what you mean by ugly, if you mean the list of the battles, the list can be made collapsable. The article is mostly about Shahrbaraz as a military person and this should be reflected in the infobox. --Z 06:37, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
I don't see a resemblance at all. Please just format those sources, otherwise this article might get delisted as GA. --HistoryofIran (talk) 12:19, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
I meant the infobox succession parameters, which you can see in those articles. I assume you mistakenly reverted them, so I revert your edit. --Z 15:41, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
I'm not going to format citations for you again (except maybe one). Please fix them or I will have to remove them. --HistoryofIran (talk) 15:50, 17 August 2019 (UTC)