Editing Yazdegerd III (section)

====Chinese assistance====
[[File:Ambassador from Persia (波斯國), visiting the court of the Tang Dynasty. The Gathering of Kings (王会图) circa 650 CE.jpg|thumb|upright|Ambassador from Persia (波斯國), visiting the court of the [[Tang dynasty]]. ''[[The Gathering of Kings]]'' (王会图), c. 650 AD]]

After Yazdegerd III started to suffer from the onslaught of the Muslim Arabs, he had sent an envoy to ask for Chinese help against the
invaders in 638, after his first defeat against the Arabs; but nothing seems to have come of it,<ref>{{cite book |last=Crone |first=Patricia |title=The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran |date=2012 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |location=Cambridge, New York |page=5}}</ref> he soon also sent an envoy to the [[Tang dynasty|Chinese court in 639]] "for offering tribute”.<ref name="XZ"/> As he continued to suffer defeats from the Arabs, he again sent envoys to China, in 647 and 648, in order to “seek assistance from the Chinese court with the hope to form a new army".<ref name="XZ"/> Some form of help would only arrive in 661, after [[Peroz III]], the son of Yazdegerd, again sent envoys in 654 and 661. The Chinese established a "Persian military commandery" (波斯都督府) in the city of [[Zabol|Zābol]] (疾陵城 ''Jilingcheng'') in [[Tokharistan]], and Peroz was appointed as Military Commander (都督 ''Dudu'').<ref name="XZ"/> Only in 679 would a Chinese army accompany [[Narsieh]], the exiled son of Peroz, in order to restore him to the Sasanian throne, but the army stopped in Tokharistan and instead repelled the invasion of [[Western Turkic Khaganate|Western Turkic]] Khan [[Ashina Duzhi]], leaving Narsieh to fight against the Muslim Arabs for the next twenty years.<ref name="XZ">{{cite journal |last1=Zhou |first1=Xiuqin (University of Pennsylvania) |title=Zhaoling: The Mausoleum of Emperor Tang Taizong |date=2009 |journal=Sino-Platonic Papers |issue=187 |pages=155–156 |url=http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp187_taizong_emperor.pdf}}</ref>