during the medieval period, executions by elephants were used by several west asian imperial powers, including the byzantine, sassanid, seljuq and timurid empires. when the sassanid king khosrau ii, who had a harem of 3,000 wives and 12,000 female slaves, demanded as a wife hadiqah, the daughter of the christian arab na'aman, na'aman refused to permit his christian daughter to enter the harem of a zoroastrian; for this refusal, he was trampled to death by an elephant.