ADMINISTRATIONprovides about the equipment of the Sasanian army, the method of
inspection, and the responsibilities of the scribe as inspector and pay-
master should probably be taken as authentic.^104
The earliest indications of similar procedures in Islamic Iraq are
associated with Ziyad, who is said to have reviewed the Basran troops
from a domed chamber (Ar. qubba) alongside one of the canals north
of the city.lOS The slogan of "stipends and provisions on time," which
was inscribed in one of the corners of his audience hall at Kufa, appears
to reflect an attempt at a regular system of payment and provision,106
while the claim that he managed to distribute stipends to the soldiers
and their descendents at Basra and Kufa in a single dayl07 might suggest
that a military review was the device for distribution. Stipends were
supposed to have been paid at the beginning of the Islamic year, in
the month of Mul).arram, and the impression that members of the
permanent military population usually received a single annual pay-
ment is encouraged by the account that in 691 Mu~'ab ibn az-Zubayr
sought to win the support of the Basrans by giving them stipends twice
a year (and by increasing the amount by one hundred dirhams).1^08
However, it is difficult to reconcile this picture with more usual
descriptions of how stipends and weapons were handed out when
armies were reviewed before battles or campaigns. Sometimes this also
involved the enrollment of volunteers. The review at the beginning of
the campaign season in the spring was annual, of course, but rarely
coincided with the month of Mul).arram. In fact, in the confused con-
ditions of the second fitna, payments were fairly irregular. Scenes such
as the registration and payment of the Basran reinforcements by al-
Muhallab outside the city in 684 or the distribution of money and
weapons by al-Mukh!ar to his Kufan troops in 687 seem to be more
typica1.^109 AI-I:Iajjaj also distributed stipends in the masjid at Kufa in
104 Dinawari, Akhbiir at-tiwiii, pp. 74-75; Tabari, Ta'rikh, I, 964. Prokopios provides
a contemporary but somewhat distorted description of the Sasanian military review
(Wars, I. xviii. 52-53). Khusraw Parviz is said to have reviewed one thousand elephants
and fifty thousand cavalry during a festival (Mas'udi, Muruj, I, 321).
105 Baladhuri, Futu!?, pp. 358, 364.
106 Ibn Qutayba, 'Uyun, Il, 211. A promise that neither stipends nor rations would
be held back is also included in Ziyad's inaugural khutba at Basra in 665 (Ibn 'Abd
Rabbihi, 'lqd, IV, .112).
107 Ibn 'Abd Rabbihi, 'lqd, V, 8.
108 Baladhuri, Ansiib Oerusalem, 1936), V, 271.
109 Dinawari, Akhbiir at-tiwiii, p. 312; Tabari, Ta'rlkh, Il, 591. See also A. S. Tritton,
"Notes on the Muslim System of Pensions," BSOAS 16 (1954), 170-72.