PERSIANSlate Sasanian period are complicated still further when one turns to
Iraq. Here there is little evidence for the presence of merchants or
artisans among the Persian pdpulation. One has to deal with the em-
ployment of non-Persians and no,n-Magians at almost all levels of the
administration and with a growing,class of Christian Persian landed
aristocrats and courtiers. How were such people integrated into an
official class system that had meaning in a Magian, and possibly Zur-
vanite, context? At the same time, the religiously sanctioned social
customs of Magians and the hierarchy of Magian priests were part of
the Persian cultural presence in Iraq.
In the face of such difficulties it seems far more reasonable to speak
of a class of landed Persian aristocrats, themselves organized in a
hierarchic system of ranks and grades, which monopolized the military,
administrative, and religious positions in the state. This was in fact,
the second alternative provided in the Letter of Tansar, where the
important distinction was between nobles and commoners. Nobles
were distinguished visibly from commoners, especially artisans and
tradesmen, by their clothing and symbols of rank; their trousers, head-
gear, and horses; the silk clothing of their women; their servants,
houses, and gardens; and by the noble occupation of hunting. Inter-
marriage between nobles and commoners was forbidden; a noble who
married a commoner was disinherited. Commoners were forbidden
by buy the household possessions or estates of nobles.^24 This difference
was intensified by the fact that the members of the royal family, the
high nobility, soldiers, hirbadhs, secretaries, and those in royal service
were all exempt from the poll tax.^25 The heads of the Magian priest-
hood, administrative and military hierarchies, landed aristocracy, and
state-run enterprises were all members of the high nobility, mainly by
virtue of their positions at court.
Apart from being available in such general, theoretical statements,
this alternative has the added advantage that it is actually possible to
find and describe a single vertical social hierarchy among Persians in
late Sasanian Iraq, with the peasants at the bottom. At the top of this
hierarchy was the Sasanian royal family itself, supported by their
domain lands scattered throughout the Sawad.^26 The most important
branch of the royal family with lands in lower Iraq was the house of
Narsi, the son of a maternal aunt of Khusraw 11 Parviz. Narsi had
24 Ibid., pp. 44, 48.
2S Tabari, Ta'rzkh, I, 962.
26 Ibid., pp. 2371, 2540.