TAXESresha) and the land tax (medata).7^8 Likewise, a responsum of R. Sheshna
of Sura prior to 689 indicates that government tax collectors could
require Jewish communal leaders to use the sanction of ostracism to
get taxes collected.^79
The need for some form of control over the activities of government
tax collectors was largely responsible for the emergence and perhaps
intensification among Muslims of the conceptual relationship between
taxation and justice which had been built into the Sasanian system.
At the same time the problems of applying Islamic ethical standards
and expectations in the garrison cities of Iraq, especially in the fair
distribution of booty, encouraged the involvement of advocates of
justice in finance administration. This is reflected both in the appoint-
ment of qar;lts to positions of trust and in the ethical requirements
made of tax collectors. 'Umar I is supposed to have appointed as
collectors of the kharaj those who had been recommended to him as
the most virtuous in each place, while 'Ali is said to have instructed
his tax collectors in the districts of Behqubadh in the Sawad of Kufa
to ask the inhabitants about the conduct of other government officials
there and about illegal taxes. He also reminded them that eternal
reward or punishment would depend on their behavior.80 When
'Ubaydullah ibn Ziyad turned to the dahaqtn to collect taxes, he
appointed Arab supervisors over them to prevent oppression.^81 The
principle that a governor "should appoint as collector of the kharaj
a man who must treat the inhabitants kindly and justly"82 survived
in Islamic administrative theory.
COMMERCIAL TAXES AND SERVICESBoth the Sasanians and Muslims imposed commercial taxes and
obligations in addition to the system of land and poll taxes. The local
tradition seems to go back to the Old Babylonian miksu (Ak.), which
Ellis describes as a general tax on increase in value through agricultural
or commercial activity. It had elements of an income tax, capital gains
tax, and import and customs duties and appears to have survived as
78 Abii Yiisuf, Kharii;, p. 199; Chabot, Synodicon, pp. 225, 490; Tabari, Ta'rlkh, I,
2372,2469.
79 J. Mann, "The Responsa of the Babylonian Geonim as a source of Jewish History,"
JQR 10 (1919-20), 124-25.
80 Abii Yiisuf, Kharii;, pp. 172, 182.
81 Tabari, Ta'rlkh, n, 458.
82 Khadduri, Islamic Law of Nations, pp. 283-84.