ADMINISTRATIONappears to have been increased as a result of Anushirvan's tax reforms
and to have peaked under Khusraw Parviz in the 620S^76 because of
his great need for income to pursue his Byzantine war. Judging by
conditions at the time of the conquest a decade later, the aristocratic
reaction which brought about the fall of Khusraw Parviz in 628 put
much of the control of the tax collection process in the hands of the
local notables again.
The employment of state officials to collect taxes was accompanied
by the usual administrative checks to prevent abuses. Anushirvan is
said to have begun the practice of making three copies of the tax
assessment on each district. One was kept by his own dzwan; one was
sent to the tax department, which billed the district finance officials
(Ar. 'ummal) for the amount; and one was sent to the local judge
(Ar. qaej'iJ or secretary to prevent the finance officers from collecting
any more than their regulations (M.P. dustur) required. The judge or
secretary was also to see that the revenue agents remitted the tax in
case of crop failure, that the poll tax was not collected from the dead
or those over fifty or under twenty years old, and that the monarch
was informed of the exemptions to be made so the central government
could instruct the finance officers accordingly.77
The Islamic government employed its own agents to assess and
collect taxes and tribute in particular places from the time of the
conquest. Income from the confiscated crown lands in the Sawad of
Kufa was collected and distributed by the military leaders who acted
as agents (Ar. sg. wait) for the garrison settled at Kufa. In the time of
'Dmar I, the poll tax was collected from Magians in the rural districts
of Manadhir and Dast-i Maysan around Basra by Jaz' ibn Mu'awiya
with the help of a local Arab, Bajala ibn 'Abda al-'Anbari. As we
have seen, the employment of 'ummal was increasing in the Sawad
of Basra in the late 650s. It especially grew under Ziyad in the reign
of Mu'awiya, when the Christian Arab 'Ibadis of Hira were employed
as tax collectors by the Islamic government, and the state was making
Christians responsible for the collection of both the poll tax (kesaf
Age of Iran (London and New York, 1975), p. 18; E. Herzfeld, "Notes on the Achae-
menid Coinage and Some Sasanian Mint-names," in Transactions of the International
Numismatic Congress, ed. J. Allan and H. Mattingly (London, 1938), p. 420; J. T.
Milik, "A propos d'un atelier monetaire d'Adiabene: Natounia," Revue Numismatique
4 (1962), 57.
76 Tabari, Ta'rzkh, I, 1041.
77 DinawarI, Akhbar a(-(iwal, p. 73; JahshiyarI, Wuzara', p. 4; Tabari, Ta'rzkh, I,
963.