Chapter 3
ADMINISTRATIVE GEOGRAPHY
THE GEOGRAPHICAL FRAMEWORK
The nature of administrative continuity and change may also be
examined by considering the extent to which the Muslim Arabs pre-
served the existing geographical structure of Sasanian administration.
The impression that the basic territorial framework of Sasanian admin-
istration survived into the Islamic period with very little change has
been encouraged by the existence of administrative units named mainly
after late Sasanian rulers which appear to have been in use in the
Islamic period. The pre-Islamic origin of these names and of the ad-
ministrative units they designate is asserted by the Arabic-writing geog-
raphers, and Mas'iidi concludes his discussion of the Sasanian or-
ganization of lower Iraq by saying that "many of these sub districts
are today as they were at that time."l
. However, it seems far too simplistic and static to suggest that after
the Islamic conquest the Arabs took over the territorial structure of
Sasanian administration as it stood. In the first place, the later Sasanian
system appears to have been constantly shifting and readjusting with
the formation and reorganization of units by succeeding rulers, cul-
minating in the reorganization by Khusraw Parviz that produced the
provincial units in existence at the time of the conquest. In the second
place, the Muslim conquest itself affected the shape and orientation
of administrative units under the early Islamic regime. In the third
place, the shift in the lower Tigris River from the fifth to the seventh
century produced changes in the administrative organization of lower
Iraq unrelated to the conquest although contemporary with it.
In order to compare the administrative structures of late Sasanian
and early Islamic Iraq, it is necessary to combine the information
provided by geographers and the incidental references to the presence
or appointment of officials and their jurisdictions in historical and
literary sources with the documentary evidence provided by admin-
istrative seals, seal impressions, and coins. It is also necessary to treat
both the late Sasanian and early Islamic administrative systems as
1 Mas'iidi, Tanblh, p. 40. This chapter is a condensation of the author's article,
"Continuity and Change in the Administrative Geography of Late Sasanian and Early
Islamic al-'Iraq," Iran 20 (1982), 1-49.