RESOURCESKitab at-taj fi akhlaq al-muluk (Cairo, 1322/1914), falsely attributed
to Jii~i~, which describes the customs of Sasanian kings. A French
translation of this text was published by C. Pellat as Le livre de la
couronne (Paris, 1954). Concerning this text, one should now see
G. Schoeler's, "Verfasser und Titel des Gii~i~ zugeschriebener sog.
Kitab at-Tag," ZDMG 130 (1980): 217-25.
Whether the Sasanian state was administered in a feudal or bu-
reaucratic fashion has been something of a live issue. On the profeudal
side are J. Wolski, "L'aristocratie parthe et les commencements du
feodalism en Iran," Iranica Antiqua 7 (1967): 134-44, and G. Wi-
dengren, Der Feudalismus im alten Iran (Koln and Opladen, 1969),
who finds the origins of feudalism in pre-Islamic Iran in a combination
of ancient Mesopotamian and Indo-Iranian traditions. The problem
with "feudal" interpretations is that they fail to come to terms with
centralizing administrative changes in the late Sasanian period. There
is an attempt to deal with this in F. Altheim and R. Stiehl's "Staats-
haushalt der Sasaniden," La Nouvelle Clio 5 (1953): 267-321, which
was also published as a chapter in their Asiatischer Staat. M. Hossain's
"The Civil Administrative Set-up in Persia on the Eve of the Muslim
Conquest," The Dacca University Studies 8 (1956): 36-51, puts mat-
ters in bureaucratic terms but is only a compilation from the works
of earlier modern scholars.
There is also a difference of opinion over whether the centralizing
administrative changes of the late Sasanian period were inspired by
contemporary Byzantine practices or were indigenous. Since the spe-
cific arguments concern taxation, such works will be noted in that
section. But in order to make comparisons, it is a good idea to know
what Byzantine administration was like in the sixth century. Both
D. Claude's "Die byzantinische Stadt im 6. Jahrhundert," Byzantin-
isches Archiv 13 (1969): 107-61, and T. Carney's Bureaucracy in
Traditional Society (Lawrence, Kansas, 1971), which is about sixth-
century Byzantium, are such works. It is also a good idea to know
what the indigenous precedents may have been; this information can
be gained in part from works such as J. Brinkman's "Provincial Admin-
istration in Babylonia under the Second Dynasty of Isin," jESHO 6
(1963): 233-43. A proper understanding of what the available By-
zantine and Sasanian administrative precedents were by the seventh
century can also serve as an antidote to such simplistic approaches as
G. Wiet's "L'empire neo-byzantin des Omeyyades et l'empire neo-
sassanide des Abbassides," Cahiers d'histoire mondiale 1 (1953-54):