TAXESagain, a heavy impost."71 Islamic theory, however, developed at var-
iance with these practices. According to Islamic law, the poll tax was
not considered a debt, it was to be deferred in case of death, and it
was not to be collected from the estate or from the heirs.72
In general, it is reasonable to suppose that collective responsibility
was used to ensure payment in towns that came to terms with the
Muslims at the time of the conquest and in the villages on rural estates
where the landlords had fled or where the land was state domain. In
both cases there was no single surviving local authority who could be
held responsible. The main alternative to this kind of arrangement
was to require local notables to guarantee the payment of the tribute
levied on their districts. At the time of his raid in 633-34, Khalid is
said to have required the headmen of the Euphrates sub districts to
stand as surety for the kharaj. They collected it in fifty days and got
receipts (Ar. bara'at) from his agents when it was paid.?3 This principle
was applied to Islamic administration at the provincial level by
Mu'awiya, who obliged 'Ubaydullah ibn Ziyad to stand as surety for
the entire kharaj of Iraq (one hundred million dirhams) when the latter
was governor. 'Ubaydullah attempted first to pass the pressure on to
an Arab subordinate whom he made responsible for the collection of
the tax by fining his tribe or clan. When this failed to bring in the
required revenue, he turned to the local notables (dahaqzn) to collect
the tax, with more satisfactory results.?4
The direct assessment and collection of taxes by the salaried officers
of a centralized regime exists as a third alternative, but in the actual
mechanics of turning over the taxes this method usually meshed with
one of the other two. Community leaders, city elders, village headmen,
and rural landed notables assisted the agents of the central adminis-
tration to whom they delivered the revenues. Under the Sasanians the
local revenue agent and financial secretary was called an amarkar
(M.P.), and such officials are attested on administrative seals for May-
san and for the combined jurisdiction of Garmekan and Nodh-Ar-
dashirakan in upper Iraq.?5 The activity and number of revenue agents
71 H. W. Bailey, Zoroastrian Problems in the Ninth-Century Books (Oxford, 1943),
p.195.
72 Khadduri, Islamic Law of Nations, pp. 275-76.
73 Tabari, Ta'rlkh, I, 2054.
74 Ibid., II, 458.
75 A.D.H. Bivar, Catalogue of the Western Asiatic Seals in the British Museum, Stamp
Seals, 1I: The Sasanian Dynasty (London, 1969), pp. 18, 117; J. de Menasce, Feux et
fondations pieuses dans le droit sassanide (Paris, 1966), pp. 23-24; R. Frye, The Golden