Battle of Edessa, battle fought in 260 ce between the later Sassanid Persian Empire and the Roman Empire, culminating in the crushing defeat of Roman Emperor Valerian at Edessa (modern Şanlıurfa, in what is now southeastern Turkey).
“A great battle took place beyond Carrhae and Edessa between us and Caesar Valerian,” reads the inscription carved on a rocky outcrop at Naqsh-e Rustam in Iran, hundreds of miles from the battlefield. “We took him [Valerian] prisoner with our own hands,” it continues.
The Sassanid emperor Shāpūr I had invaded Roman Mesopotamia and Syria in about 240: the Romans fought back, defeating the Persians at Resaina in 243. That the Romans now sued for peace owed more to politics than military necessity: Philip the Arabian, who had assassinated Gordian III and seized the imperial throne for himself, needed a chance to secure his position without outside pressure.
However, Shāpūr continued his depredations in the eastern parts of the Roman Empire, taking a number of territories. As emperor from 253, Valerian resolved to win these back. According to the Naqsh-e Rustam inscription, his army was 70,000 strong, and at first it seems to have made real headway. By the time the men reached Edessa, they were beginning to flag, however. Valerian decided that his troops should shelter in the city, to which Shāpūr immediately laid siege. An outbreak of plague here cut a swath through what was soon a severely weakened Roman army. When Valerian led a deputation to Shāpūr’s camp to negotiate a settlement, he was captured with his staff, his praetorian guard, and several senators and taken back to Persia as a prisoner.
Valerian died in captivity. Some sources say that his body was stuffed with straw and put on display, but others hold that Valerian, who was elderly and infirm, was treated with dignity. Valerian was the only Roman emperor ever to be captured by an enemy. For his part, Shāpūr soon mounted an attack on Cilicia but was turned back by Roman forces in battle there.
Losses: Roman, more than 60,000; Persian, minimal.