RESOURCESthat of the past at all. Historical events must be understood in their
proper physical setting lest one commit blunders in understanding the
course of those events. Incidental geographical references in all sorts
of historical sources should be noted and used to reconstruct the
contemporary setting. For Iraq we are blessed, and cursed, with an
extensive descriptive geographical literature. We are blessed because
this literature includes demographic, social, and economic information
not only for the major political centers, but for towns and villages
throughout the countryside, making it a major kind of historical source.
We are cursed because the very schematic presentation and circum-
stantial detail in this literature makes it too convenient to rely on it
alone, and to forget that information accumulates in such a literary
tradition so that what an author records may not belong to the period
in which he ;wrote. Fortunately incidental references in a chronological
setting provide a useful control.
The geographical literature itself encourages belief in a high degree
of continuity, if not stability, in administrative geography. Although
Arabic-writing geographers have considerable information about Sa-
sanian administrative geography, it is best to start with what is left
of a contemporary description of the structure of the late Sasanian
empire. In its oldest surviving form, from around A.D. 600, this de-
scription is incorporated into the Armenian Geography once falsely
ascribed to Moses of Chorehe. The section listing the provinces in
each of the four quarters of the late Sasanian empire was published
with an extensive topographical and historical commentary by J. Mar-
quardt as "Eransahr nach der Geographie des Ps. Moses Xorenac'i,"
AKGWG, Phil.-Hist. Klasse, 2nd ser., Ill, no. 2 (1899-1901): 1-358.
It is included and translated into English in R. Hewsen's four-volume
"Introduction to the Study of Armenian Historical Geography" (Ph.D.
diss., Georgetown Univ., 1967). A Middle-Persian text called the Sha-
troiha-i-Eriin listing the capital cities of the provinces in the quarters
of the Sasanian empire survives in its present form from about the
middle of the eighth century. It was published by J. Jamasp Asana in
Pahlavi Texts (Bombay, 1897), 1: 18-24, and by J. J. Modi in "The
Cities of Iran as Described in the Old Pahlavi Treatise of Shatr6iha-i
Airan," in his Asiatic Papers, Bombay 1905, pp. 147-82. It was also
published with an English translation and notes by J. Markwart as A
Catalogue of the Provincial Capitals of Eriinshahr (Rome, 1931), and
the text is included in the reading selections of H. Nyberg's A Manual
of Pahlavi (Wiesbaden, 1964), I: 113-17.