ADMINISTRATIONaccounts that he had introduced served as the basis for subsequent
practice in Iraq.80 The family of Zadhanfarrukh survived for at least
three generations more in government service in Iraq and Khuzistan
down to the end of Marwani rule.^81
The earliest direct evidence for the use of invoices with tax returns
in Islamic Iraq is given in the well-known story of how in the early
eighth century, after the language change, the Persian administrator,
Ibn al-Muqaffa', delivered the tax invoices from his district to ~aliQ
on scented parchment. Whether or not the story itself is apocryphal,
it is significant because of its suggestion of how Sasanian procedures
came to be used in the Islamic finance bureau and because the story
assumes that both ~aliQ and Ibn al-Muqaffa' had some knowledge of
what Sas ani an practice had been. On this occasion, at least, Ibn al-
Muqaffa"s conscious and artificial revival of the preferences of Khus-
raw Parvlz for scented parchment was an intentional archaism.^82
The Department of the Army. The income from regular taxes was
earmarked for the support of the army in the Sasanian system and
was administered by a staff of military scribes. Such officials were
appointed as military advisors to generals and military governors in
the late Sasanian period to see that the monarch's orders were obeyed.
Military scribes were in charge of the army accounts, the inspection
and payment of troops, and the division of the spoils, with the re-
sponsibility for seeing that the royal treasury got its share of the booty.
They were also employed as liaison officers and envoys.83 The best
example of such a military scribe in the early seventh century was
Babai, the secretary of the marzban of Hira, Ruzbi, the son of Marzuq.
Babai is described as accompanying the marzban in the chase, and it
is said that it was through his assistance and counsel that the marzban
was able to contend successfully against the desert Arabs and thus
"escaped the trap into which Khusraw wanted him to fall" by sending
him to such a dangerous frontier.^84
80 Baladhuri, Futu!?, pp. 300-301; Jahshiyari, Wuzarii', pp. 33-34.
81 Sprengling, "Persian to Arabic," pp. 190-91.
82 Baladhuri, Futu!?, pp. 464-65.
83 Jahshiyari, Wuzarii', pp. 4-5; A. N. Stratos, Byzantium in the Seventh Century
(Amsterdam, 1968),1,381-82. Dinawari, in Akhbiir aNiwiil (pp. 57, 86, 90), assumes
the existence of such an official (Ar. kiitib al-jund) in the fifth and sixth centuries. There
were similar officials on the Byzantine side of the border where the emperor Anastasius
appointed the Egyptian Apion as manager of finances for the army he sent against the
Persians at Amid in 503, and Prokopios describes himself as such an adviser to Belisarios
(Wars, I.i. 3; viii.5).
84 J. B. Chabot, "Le Livre de la chastete compose par Jesusdenah, eveque de Ba§ra,"