PseudoSebeos has a chapter on how the "Medes and Armenians" joined the Arabs. The text refers to T'etal troops and the turncoat prince of the Marats' mountains; Bedrosian the translator thought Marats' were the Medes. After the Iranian mountaineers slew the Shah Of Nowhere, their Tachik (=Tayy) masters rewarded the Marats' and T'etal for their treachery ... with a levy of tribute.
In the thirteenth year of Constans so AD 653-4 / AG 965, Muâwiya failed to take Constantinople. Marats' and the T'etal took this opportunity not to pay the tribute anymore.
As to who PsSebeos thought the the Marats' were, he first mentions a "Gaz" river. Today there's one of those in Hormozgān, but Bandar-e Gaz is closer to where Yazdegird died which was Merv. There's also a Chora pass. The famous one today is over in Orūzgān but Armenians applied it to the "Darband", the Caspian Gate. So: the Marats' were Gilaki-Mazanderan speakers and their revolt ran along the southern Caspian shore. This checks out: the Tabaris, Daylamis, and Jurjanis never did bow to the Umayyads. PsSebeos' epilogue claims that the Tachiks had posted an army up there but that they pulled it back for the Fitna of Siffîn.
All this was to provide some (additional) support for Bcheiry, 106-16 on Catholical epistle #7. Shahrazur's bishop in the early 650s / 960s is dealing once more with Zoroastrians, descendants of that vicious "Rad" - a magistrate - which Guidi's Khuzestan noted. That's soooo AG 915, as the bemused Ishoʿyahb points out. Technically the Shah Of Nowhere is still out there - Pērōz, over in Tang territory - but everybody with nose and eyelids knows the shah ain't comin' back, not as a Parsee anyway. What this pope does not understand, or refuses to understand, is that it's not about the empire but about the people. These are not Bedrosian's "Medes" from the great northern lake - but they don't have to be; as the Iranians themselves knew, Medes can be found anywhere.
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