CONCLUSIONalready cultivated as a stable tax base. Similarly the religious dimension
added by Muslims to the poll tax was related to the formation of
religious-social identities.
One of the most important of such trends was the formation of a
society composed of religious communities, which was already well
under way by the late sixth century with the strengthening of internal
bonds and external boundaries. Magians, Jews, and Christians had
their own distinctive forms of ritual, liturgical calendars, leadership,
places of worship, systems of religious law, and forms of religious
education. With regard to Magians and Jews, it is evident that even
ancient and perennial beliefs and customs could acquire an enhanced
significance in particular circumstances. Personal ritual observance
became a source of identity and a symbol of conformity in a multifaith
society. In addition, Jews had their own urban institutions and a
recognized head of their community in the exilarch, just as the Chris-
tian communities relied on coenobitic monasticism for discipline and
the Nestorian catholicos was recognized by the state. The position of
such communal leaders was strengthened by recognition allowing the
communities to serve as vehicles for indirect rule. Military protection
and religious toleration were exchanged for loyalty and taxes. Both
Christians and Jews were establishing communal boundaries by ex-
tending the principles of a communal life ordered by religious law
among themselves, especially in matters of personal status such as
marriage, divorce, and inheritance. Communal barriers, to say nothing
of open hostilities between Nestorians and Monophysites, were rising
on all sides in the late Sasanian period.
The effects of the Islamic conquest on this development were con-
tradictory. There was no official recognition by the Muslim rulers of
either the Jews or Christians as a religious community at the time of
the conquest in the same sense that they had constituted communities
in the Sasanian period. Officially, Muslims made no distinctions among
the members of other religions; all non-Muslims were treated as sub-
jects liable to taxation. Consequently the relationship between the
Nestorians and their rulers that had emerged by the end of the Sasanian
period was broken by the conquest and reconstituted over the follow-
ing century and one-half by the initiative of the Nestorians themselves.
On the other hand, the Muslims expected Jews and Christians to live
according to their own religious laws, so the conquest had the effect
of encouraging the operation and continuing development of auton-
omous systems of religious law simply because there was little inter-