ADMINISTRATIVE THEORY AND PRACTICE694 to those soldiers who were required to leave within three days to
join al-Muhallab.llo
In fact, the earliest detailed description of a real military review (Ar.
'arcj) appears to be that held by al-J:lajjaj for the combined Basran
and Kufan army of forty thousand men, whom he sent to eastern Iran
in 699. The soldiers were provided with their equipment and mounts,
were completely armed and paid full stipends by al-J:lajjaj, and as each
man passed in front of him, al-J:lajjaj ordered his muster master, 'Abd
ar-Ral;tman ibn Umm al-J:lakam ath-Thaqafi, to give bonuses of five
hundred and fifty dirhams to the bravest and best equipped. m Thus,
the general practice in the second half of the seventh century seems
to have been to distribute stipends and rations to armies mustered in
the field before campaigns, or else to distribute them to the population
subject to military service in the masjid.
Cash surpluses for the payment of soldiers were held in central
treasuries in both the Sasanian and Islamic systems. Incredibly large
reserves (if reports are to be believed) were accumulated at Mada'in
in the late Sasanian period and cash was sent along with armies on
campaign.^112 Similar, but not nearly as large, amounts of cash for the
payment of troops and for other expenses were kept in the treasury
at the complex of government buildings in the center of Basra and
Kufa. The amount grew with the size of the military population and
the increasing efficiency of the administration. In 656 there were six
hundred thousand dirhams in the Basran treasury, but this was ab-
normally low because it had just been raided.113 In 660 there were
five million dirhams in the Kufan treasury,114 and by the 680s the
reserves at Kufa had risen to nine million dirhams and those at Basra
to eight million dirhams.115
Provisions for the Sasanian army were collected from taxes and
rents which were delivered in kind and held in storehouses until they
110 Mubarrad, al-Kitab al-Kamil (Leipzig, 1864), pp. 216-17, 665.
111 Tabari, Ta'rzkh, H, 1043-44. It is also reported that al-l:Iajjaj was the first Muslim
to be seated on a dais during a battle; (see Ibn Rustah, al-A'laq an-nafisa (Leiden,
1891), p. 198. For the subsequent development ofthe military review under the 'Abbasis
and their successors, see C. E. Bosworth, "Recruitment, Muster and Review in Medieval
Islamic Armies," in War, Technology and Society in the Middle East, pp. 59-77.
112 Prokopios, Wars, H. xxx. 44-46; Tabari, Ta'rzkh, I, 2436.
113 Tabari, Ta'rzkh, I, 3227.
114 Ibid., H, 4.
115 Baladhuri, Ansab Oerusalem, 1938), IVb, 102-3; Tabari, Ta'rzkh, 11, 439, 634.
Figures of sixteen and nineteen million dirhams are also given for the Basran treasury
in the 680s (Tabari, Ta'rzkh, H, 439, 443).