ADMINISTRATIONa part of Iraq not occupied by the other provinces. Marquart suggested
that it may have been the general designation for the group of districts
created by Qubadh before the formation of the Quarter of the West:
Veh-Kavat in the center of the Sawad, Shadh Qubadh around Firuz
Shapur (Anbar), and the district also called Shadh Qubadh east of the
Tigris between Mada'in and Hulwan.7 Other considerations suggest
that Eran-asan-k'art-Kavat may have been located between Kaskar
and Hulwan. This list also appears in a later abridged and amended
form of the Armenian Geography which probably dates from shortly
after the Islamic conquest. In this form, in which the Quarter of the
West has been conflated with Khuzistan, the provinces are listed as
Mazh, Maspan, Mihrank'artak, K'ashtar, Garmakan, Eran-astan (sic)
-kart-Kavat, Not-Artashirakan, Marjin, and Srhen.^8 It should be noted
at this point that both forms of this list include western Media and
Kaskar in the Quarter of the West and put Maysan in the Quarter of
the South.^9 The second description is contained in the Middle Persian
catalogue of the provincial capitals of Iran, the Shatroiha-i Eranshahr,
which lists Ctesiphon, (Na)sibin, Urha (Edessa), Babil, Hira, Mawsil,
and cities in western Media such as Hamadan, Nihawand, Behistun,
Dinawar, and Masruqan as the capitals of the provinces in the Quarter
of the West.^10 Although the present form of this text dates to no earlier
than the reign of al-Man~iir (754-75), the inclusion of Edessa, which
the Persians only ruled between 610 and 628, and a reference to cities
built in Syria, Yam an, and Africa by the Persian and Byzantine rulers
gives this catalogue the appearance of reflecting conditions of the early
seventh century, during which the conquests of Khusraw Parvlz ex-
tended the Quarter of the West into the Jazira, Syria, and Egypt.
The administrative organization of the late Sasanian period amounted
to a pyramidal system in which each quarter of the state was divided
into provinces, each province was divided into districts, and each
, Marquart, "Eransahr," pp. 16, 22-23.
8 Hewsen, "Armenian Historical Geography," p. 300.
9 Ibid., pp. 296, 301.
10 The text of the Shatroiha-i Eranshahr may be found in J. Jamasp Asana, Pahlavi
Texts (Bombay, 1897), I, 18-24. Also see translations and commentaries by J. J. Modi,
"The cities of Iran as described in the old Pahlavi Treatise of Shatroiha-i Airan," ]BBRAS
20, 156-90; and J. Markwart, A Catalogue of the Provincial Capitals of Eriinshahr
(Rome, 1931). This text also puts "Asor the capital of Yeh-Artakhshir," and Eran-
asan-kart-Kavat in the Quarter of the South and lists Baghdad in the Quarter of the
North. There is no clear indication of which quarter contained Maysan. Even if the
city of Ashkar listed in the Quarter of the South is to be identified as Kaskar, this is
hardly conclusive because other cities that were really in the Quarter of the West are
listed in the Quarter of the South.