PEOPLEthe early accounts were treated. In any case, both the way the dahiiqtn
assumed that they should deal with the Arabs according to their own
customs, and the immediate Arab reaction, are nicely illustrated by
the following story. After the Battle of Kaskar during the conquest,
two of the dahiiqtn of the Sawad, Farriikh and Farwandadh, presented
Abii 'Ubayd with dishes of Persian food to honor him as they would
a guest, but Abii 'Ubayd refused to accept them because there was
not enough for his entire army. 172 This issue is also reflected in a scene
that describes 'An refusing to accept the gifts brought to him by the
dahiiqtn at Mada'in.173 Arab resistance to such assimilation had less-
ened by the time of Mu'awiya, and the association between the at-
titudes of the dahiiqtn and the practice of bringing gifts to their rulers
at Nawriiz and Mihrijan is heightened by the way in which the gradual
adoption of the requirement of gifts on these two occasions by the
Muslim government is associated with the recovery of the register of
the crown lands in his reign. 'Abdullah ibn Darraj appears to have
been the first to regularize the practice of receiving gifts at Nawriiz
and Mihrijan in Muslim Iraq, collecting an additional ten million
dirhams that way.174 One of the main points to be.,made here is that
the very length of time the dahiiqtn survived in the Sawad, as well as
their contacts with the Muslim rulers, was necessary for successful
cultural transmission and assimilation. By the time the dahiiqtn began
to be suppressed, they had survived long enough after the conquest
to transmit their style of life to a class of Muslim Arab landlords.
Defectors and mawiilt were equally important for the preservation
and transmission of Sasanian military traditions, which involved mainly
heavy cavalry equipment and tactics and the techniques of siege craft.
A good early example is the knowledge of siegecraft brought to the
army of Sa'd at Behrasir by Shlrzadh, who had been forced to retire
from Anbar to his own district of Sabat as a result of Khalid's raid.
After the Battle of Qadisiyya, he came to terms with the Muslims,
joined their army, and constructed twenty mangonels for Sa'd's use
against Behrasir.175 Of a similar nature is the occasion in Basra in 683
when four hundred of the Asiiwira, led by a man called Mah AfrIdhiin,
executed the Persian tactic of the five-arrow shot (N.P. panjeqiin)
172 Ibid., I, 2170-71, 2173.
173 Ya'qiibi, Ta'rikh, 11, 218.
- Jahshiyari, Wuzara', p. 2l.
175 Tabari, Ta'rikh, I, 2424, 2427.