RESOURCEScerning possible relationships between the control of resources by
rulers and the persons and property of their subjects. Possibilities
native to Iraq are identified by]. Postgate in Taxation and Conscription
in the Assyrian Empire (Rome, 1974), and by M. Ellis in Agriculture
and the State in Ancient Mesopotamia: An Introduction to the Prob-
lems of Land Tenure (Philadelphia, 1976).
Most of the detailed information on late Sasanian taxation survives
only in Arabic literature and raises questions of anachronism. There
is a full discussion of Sasanian taxation in Altheim and Stiehl's Asia-
tischer Staat, pp. 3-11,38-46, and in their Finanzgeschichte der Spat-
antike (Frankfurt a. M., 1957). But Altheim's obsession with feudalism
appears to have affected M. Grignaschi's judgment of the value of the
Arabic material in "La riform tributaria di Ijosro I e il feudalesimo
sassanide," in La Persia nel Medioevo, pp. 87-147. He provides a
good survey of most of the pertinent, schematic Arabic material on
this subject but seems to argue that since the Sasanian system was
"feudal" it must have been incompatible with the central fiscal bu-
reaucracy which existed, according to Arabic literature, in the sixth
and early seventh centuries.
Among those who take the existence of a bureaucracy seriously
there is an argument over whether the Sasanian fiscal bureaucracy was
inspired by Byzantine practices or developed independently. N. Pi-
gulevskaya emphasized the relationship between the late Sasanian and
contemporary Byzantine systems in "K vosposu 0 potatnoi reforme
Chosroa Anushervana," Vestnik Drevnei Istorii 1 (1937): 141-53
(French summary, p. 154), while I. Hahn argued for an independent
development of the two systems in "Sassanidische und spatromische
Besteuerung," Acta Antiqua 7 (1959): 149-60.
Muslim Arabic legal literature from the early 'Abbasi period cites
numerous circumstances from earlier Islamic history as precedents on
which to base fiscal theory. One of the earliest such treatises is the
Kitiib al-khariij of the I;Ianafi qiicft and disciple of Abii I;Ianifa, Abii
Yiisuf Ya'qiib ibn Ibrahim (113/732-182/798). The third edition (Cairo,
1382/1962) was used for this study, but E. Fagnan's French transla-
tion, Livre de l'imp8t foncier (Kitiib el-Kharadj) (Paris, 1921) has been
cited here for convenience after comparing it with the Arabic text.
The Kitiib al-amwiil (Cairo, 1969) of Abii 'Ubayd al-Qasim ibn Sallam
(154/770-224/838) is an equally important early work. Yal),ya ibn
Adam ibn Sulayman's Kitiib al-Khariij is translated into English by
A. Ben Shemesh as the first volume of his Taxation in Islam (Leiden,