ADMINISTRATIVE THEORY AND PRACTICEwith Ziyad, who had already spent two decades in the finance admin-
istration at Basra when he became its governor in 665 and who ruled
both Basra and Kufa and their dependencies for Mu'awiya from 669
until 673. Already in 658-59, when Ziyad was in charge of the kharaj
and the bayt aI-mal of Basra for the governor Ibn 'Abbas (656-59),
there is a description of the tax collectors (Ar. 'ummal) bringing the
taxes of the districts of Basra to Ibn 'Abbas, who in turn forwarded
them to 'An (656-61).7^5 As governor, Ziyad favored the employment
of leading Persians knowledgeable in tax matters as financial secre-
taries (Ar. kuttab al-kharaj), was the first to pay his 'ummal salaries
of one thousand dirhams, and sent annual accounts to Damascus.?6
Ziyad and his son 'Ubaydullah were served by men like Zadhanfar-
riikh, the son of Payroazh, whose family was closely involved in the
transition from Sasanian to Islamic finance administration'?? Whether
or not such people had belonged to the fiscal bureaucracy before the
conquest or were only notables who knew the system, it was due to
their employment in the Islamic finance bureau that the expertise and
interests of the Sasanian scribes survived. At least by the time of Ziyad
there was a register for income from taxes with the numbers and place-
names written in Persian, and proba9ly in the Pahlavi script,78 by a
body of Persian bureaucrats at Basra. About the same time the register
listing Sasanian crown property in Iraq was also recovered.
The bilingual abilities of these Persians made them especially im-
portant to the administration and gave them an ethnic reputation as
bureaucrats.?9 It was a Persian mawla of the Arab tribe of the Banu
Tamim whose parents had been taken captive in eastern Iran, $ali~
ibn 'Abd ar-Ra~man, who was responsible for putting the financial
accounts into Arabic for al-l:fajjaj in 697 over the objections of Za-
dhanfarriikh. When the latter died in 701, $ali~ succeeded him as head
of the finance bureau (Ar. diwan al-kharaj), and the system of Arabic
75 Tabari, Ta'rtkh, I, 3230, 3440, 3448.
76 Ya'qiibi, Ta'rtkh, II, 279; Ibn Taba~aba, Kitiib al-fakhrt (Beirut, 1960), p. 107.
77 Sprengiing, "Persian to Arabic," p. 187.
78 Baladhuri, Futul?, p. 300; Jahshiyari, Wuzarii', p. 33. Ya'qiibi's claim that Ziyad
had cursive (Ar. naskh) script used in the books may signify a simplifying innovation
in keeping administrative records. According to El-Hawary, naskh was used for ordinary
handwriting in the first/seventh cenrury and may be even older than Kufic script. See
H. M. El-Hawary, "The Most Ancient Islamic Monument Known Dated A.H. 31 (A.D.
652) from the time of the third Calif 'U!hman," jRAS (1930), p. 329. It is also worth
noting that the terms that are quoted in Arabic literature as having to be translated
into Arabic are all in New Persian.
79 Jahshiyari, Wuzarii', p. 30.