ADMINISTRATIONlatter contained registers of names, ornaments, and riding animals.
Jahshiyari states explicitly that the taxes were used to pay the army,?!
'Utba ibn Ghazwan, al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba, Abii Miisa al-Ash'ari,
the Persian Payroazh, and the other founders and organizers of Basra
were responsible for the establishment of a Sasanian-type tax bureau
and a military register for the Muslim army.72
In the system which is ascribed to Khusraw Aniishirvan, the record
of income due from each district was based on the measurement of
taxable land and was kept in a central register (M.P.? duruzan). District
finance officials (Ar. 'ummal) were billed for the amounts due and
returned them accompanied by a written invoice to the local "counting
house" (N.P. shamarrah or shomordeh, Ar. dar al-~isab), where taxes
were collected before being forwarded to provincial governors and
then to the capital. The official in charge of the finance bureau (Ar.
~a~ib al-kharaj) sent the Sasanian monarch an annual record of the
amount of tax levied, the amount of expenditures, and the balance
remaining in the treasury; the king then sealed and returned the re-
port.^73 This operation was run by a body of financial secretaries who
kept the central records and accompanied the tax collectors in their
districts to keep the local accounts,?4
There is little, if any, indication of the operation of such a system
in Iraq immediately after the Islamic conquest, partly because of the
ways in which taxes were collected. It is natural to assume that the
survey of the Sawad of Kufa by the Muslims in 642 resulted in a
register listing the taxes that were due from the districts for which
local notables were responsible, districts such as Hira that owed trib-
ute, and from ownerless estates. Even so, there is no evidence for a
system of bills and invoices administered by secretaries. Even the early
existence of a register of taxable land is uncertain at Basra, where the
responsibility for finances is described simply as "in charge of taxes"
(Ar. 'ala kharaj) or "in charge of the treasury" (Ar. 'ala bayt al-mal).
The formation of a real fiscal bureaucracy at Basra is associated
71 Jahshiyari, Wuzarii', p. 3.
72 See M. Sprengling, "From Persian to Arabic," AJSLL 56-57 (1939-40), 175-224,
325-36.
73 Baladhurl, Futu~, p. 464; Dinawarl, Akhbiir at-fiwiil, p. 73; F. L0kkegaard, Islamic
Taxation in the Classic Period (Copenhagen, 1950), p. 180; Tabari, Ta'rlkh, I, 247;
Zotenberg, Chronique, II, 224, 341.
74 Jahshiyari, Wuzarii', p. 4. A reference is made to the secretary of the finance director
or tax collector of lower Iraq (Beth Aramaye) in the early sixth century; see O. Braun,
Ausgewiihlte Akten persischer Miirtyrer (Munich, 1915), p. 191.