ADMINISTRATIVE THEORY AND PRACTICEpicture of what a reigning monarch was supposed to do. Similarly, in
traditional descriptions of Burandokht (630-31) as a reigning queen,
she is s~id to have struck coins, built stone and wooden bridges, and
remitted the arrears of taxes.14
Most of these themes are summed up in the reign of Khusraw Parviz
(590-628). In a letter to the Byzantine emperor Maurice he is said to
have called himself "Chosroes, King of Kings, master of those who
have power, lord of peoples, prince of peace, savior of men, good and
eternal man among the gods, most powerful god among men, most
honored, victorious, ascended with the sun and companion of the
stars."15 He is also represented as being addressed as a god (Syr. alaMi)
by his queen, Shirin.!6 A delegation of Nestorian Christians told him
in 612 that "just as the sun which gladdens the entire earth by its light
and warmth, your goodness spreads abundantly over all men."!? Both
his authoritarian use of fatalism and his pretensions to universal rule
are symbolized by the gold stars and signs of the zodiac set in a sky
of lapis lazuli along with the seven climes on the canopy over his
throne, and by his depiction enthroned in heaven on the dome of the
building at Ganzaca in 624.18 Universalist claims combined with op-
portunism and the inner economics of his absolutist policy were re-
sponsible for the predatory warfare he carried out against the Byzan-
tines in the early seventh century. The huge size of his royal treasure
(which is said to have been accumulated from the time of Firuz in the
late fifth century) was legendary, and he increased it by foreign con-
quests and by exactions from his own subjects.^19 Later Arabic tradition
14 TabarI, Ta'r"ikh, I, 1064.
IS Theophylactus Simocatta, Historiae, iv. 8, p. 164.
16 I. Guidi, Chronica Minora I, CSCO, Scriptores Syri, 1 (Louvain, 1955), 28; Scr.
Syri., 2 (Louvain, 1955), 24; T. Niildeke, "Die von Guidi herausgegebene syrische
Chronik," Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-Historischen Klasse der kaiserlichen Aka-
demie der Wissenschaften 127 (1893),28. Since Shlr1n was an Aramaean from lower
Iraq, she may actually have used such a term.
17 J. B. Chabot, Synodicon Orientale (Paris, 1902), pp. 563, 580-81.
18 L'Orange, Cosmic Kingship, pp. 18-21; Tha'alibl, Ghurar, p. 699.
19 Tabari, Ta'r"ikh, I, 1041-42; Tha'alibi, Ghurar, p. 687; Ya'qiibl, Ta'rlkh, I, 195.
Beginning with forty-eight million mithqals (one mithqiil = 4.25 grams) of coins struck
by Briiz and Qubadh I, the treasure had grown to 468 million mithqiils by 607 and
then 1.6 billion mithqiils in 620 (A. Christensen, L'Iran sous les Sassanides (Copenhagen,
1944), pp. 453-54; Tabarl, I, 1042, 1057). The inventory taken in 624 counted four
hundred million purses of dirhams, one hundred thousand purses of dlniirs, and jewels,
gold and silverplate, furs, precious cloth, thousands of concubines, horses and mules,
and almost one thousand elephants (E. G. Browne, "Some account'of the Arabic work
entitled 'Nihayatu' l-irab fi akhbari'I-Furs wa'l-'Arab,' particularly of that part which