PEOPLEwas ustandar of Nasibin and the father of the Christian convert and
martyr Mihramgushnasp/Giwargis (d. 615), married the dfughter of
a Magian priest (N.P. mobadh). Their son, Mihramgushnasp, is de-
scribed only as an aristocratic absentee landlord.^19 Similarly, we find·
the son of a another kind of Magian priest (N.P. hirbadh) engaged in
the defense of the Sawad against the Muslims as a local landed aris-
tocrat who had married into a branch of the royal family.2°Nor were
administrative careers closed to those outside or below the scribal
class. The story of the shoemaker who unsuccessfully trie<l to get a
position as scribe for his son in the reign of Khusraw I Aniishirvan^21
should be balanced by the case of Farriikhzadh, son of Sumayy, tax
collector for Khusraw II Parviz in the 620s, who was a lower-class
person (Ar. 'i/j) from the village of Khandaq in the subdistrict (M.P.
tassuj) of Behrasir (Veh-Artakhshatr).2i His elevation was resented, to
be sure (as was his extortionate and efficient collection of taxes), and·.
it may be that in these examples, which come from the late sixth and
early seventh century, we are dealing with a breakdown of the mid-
sixth-century establishment which was underway after only about a
generation.
The "decadence of rank" and mixing of classes, presented by the
Letter of Tanzar as representing the conditions immediately preceding
and as being the reason for the establishment of the four-class system,
could apply equally well to the degeneration of that system (if it ever
really existed) by the later sixth century. The Letter describes how
unscrupulous social climbers without nobility, ancestral lands, or skill
in a trade, with no respect for noble descent or for the professions,
acquired fortunes by denouncing others, while the descendants of
noble families abandoned their dignity and manners to support them-
selves as tradesmen, married beneath themselves, and produced chil-
dren of mean character.^23 This would have been an extremely fluid
society, and its description serves more'to delineate the antithesis of
the Sasanian ideal than to provide an abstract generalization of wide-
spread or long-term social conditions.
The general problems for the description of Persian society in the
19 Braun, Persischer Miirtyrer, p. 223, Hoffmann, Persischer Miirtyrer, p. 95.
20 Tabari, Ta'rikh, I, 2245. For his identification with Anoshagan, son of Gushnasp-
mah, see page 186.
Z1 Boyee, Tansar, p. 39.
22 Tabari, Ta'rikh, I, 1041.
23 Boyce, Tansar, pp. 39, 44.