RESOURCEStheory of the ma?:iilim court is treated by H. F. Amedroz in "The
Ma+alim Jurisdiction in the Al)kam Sultaniyya of Mawardi," ]RAS
(1911), pp. 635-74. For early Islamic audience procedures, see
O. Grabar, "Notes sur les ceremonies umayyades," Studies in Memory
of Gaston Wiet, ed. M. Rosen-Ayalon (Jerusalem, 1977), pp. 51-60.
The literature on enforcement, surveillance, and communication is
rather scattered. A list of the heads of the shurta from the time of
'Uthman to al-Mutawakkil can be found in Ibn I:Iabib's Kitiib al-
Mu~abbar, pp. 373-77. W. Behrnauer's early "Memo ire sur les in-
stitutions de police chez les arabes, les persans, et les turcs," ]A, 5th
ser. 15 (1860): 461-508; 16 (1860): 114-190, 347-92; 17 (1861):
5-76, is still worth consulting. So is C. Fries, "Zur babylonischen
Feuerpost," Klio 4 (1904): 117-21. For city informers in sixth-century
Edessa, see F. Burkitt's Euphemia and the Goth (London, 1913).
F. Dvornik's Origins of Intelligence Services: The Ancient Near East,
Persia, Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the Arab Muslim Empires (New
Brunswick, N.J., 1974) is a survey, based mostly on secondary modern
scholarship, which includes the Achaemenids but overlooks the Sa-
sanians. For proper comparison and contrast one must consult specialist
works on how early Byzantine agents were employed, such as
A. Audollent's "Les Veredarii emissaires imperiaux sous les Bas Em-
pire," Melanges d'archeologie et d'histoire 9 (1889): 249-78, and
O. Hirschfeld's "Die agentes in rebus," in Akademie der Wissenschaf-
ten, Sitzungsberichte (Berlin, 1893), pp. 421-41. A. Sprenger's pi-
oneering work on the Islamic bartd called Die Post-und Reiserouten
des Orients (Leipzig, 1864) is still cited, but there is a more modern
treatment by N. Sa'dawi, Ni?:iim al-bartd fi-d-dawla al-Isliimiyya (Cairo,
1953).Taxes
Early Islamic taxation tends to attract perennial attention. A wealth
of detailed information collected in easily accessible administrative
legal handbooks promises to reveal the nature of the state's fiscal
system, the impact of the system on subject, non-Muslim populations,
and land tenure relationships, and promises to provide quantifiable
data for economic history. These promises have been only partly ful-
filled because of the legal orientation of the materials themselves and
because of the kinds of questions that have been asked of them. Even
though most of this material pertains to Iraq, there are pitfalls in using
it for direct comparisons with late Sas ani an taxation.
One should gain some sort of perspective at the beginning con-