ADMINISTRATIONat Mada'in and is described as a kind of undersecretary for Arab
affairs. Two of his sons succeeded him in Sasanian service: 'Amr ibn
'Adi as translator, and Zayd ibn 'Adi as the official in charge, after
his father, of Arabic correspondence.^135 It is not surprising to find
people from Hira serving as translators between Persians and Arabs
at the time of the conquest.^136
Although early Islamic rulers and officials usually had someone to
do the writing for them, there is no evidence for the existence of a
Sasanian-style chancellery in Islamic administration in Iraq before the
time of Ziyad. By singling out eloquent Arabs and mawali and em-
ploying them as correspondence secretaries (Ar. kuttab ar-rasa'il), he
actually established such a bureau and began the introduction of the
Sasanian Persian epistolary style into the administrative Arabic used
by the Islamic government.^137 At least two Arabs, Ziyad's relative,
'Abdullah ibn Abi Bakra, and Jubayr ibn I:Iayya were employed in
his chancellery, and one of Ziyad's Persian mawal'i called Mirdas also
served as his secretary. m They were probably all bilingual, but the
forms which they applied to the correspondence had already been
worked out in the Arabic section of the Sasanian translation bureau.
The Registry Department. The establishment of an administrative
department which used seals to register documents (Ar. d'iwan zimam,
d'iwan al-khatam) completed the system. According to the tradition
reported via al-Mada'ini and Ibn al-Muqaffa', whenever the Sas ani an
monarch gave an order the registrar recorded it, a separate copy was
registered by his assistant, and each month's collection of these mem-
oranda was sealed by the king and then stored. The registrar's copy
was forwarded to the official responsible for affixing the royal seal
(Ar. ~abib az-zimam) who then sent it to the official in charge of having
it drawn up and transcribed in the official form. This copy was returned
to the ~abib az-zimam who presented it to the monarch, compared its
contents with what was in the memoranda, and then sealed it in the
presence of the king or one of his most trusted assistants.^139 There are
several descriptions of the seals used by the Sasanian rulers, but all
seem to be in general agreement on the use of four seals for strictly
135 N. Abbott, The Rise of the North-Arabic Script (Chicago, 1939), pp. 5-6; J. Horovitz,
"'Adi Ibn Zeyd-The Poet of Hira," Islamic Culture 4 (1930),35,38; Tabari, Ta'rrkh,
I, 1024; Ya'qiibi, Ta'rrkh, I, 241, 244.
136 Tabari, Ta'rrkh, I, 2278.
137 Ya'qiibi, Ta'rrkh, n, 3371-72.
138 Jahshiyari, Wuzara', pp. 22-23.
139 Baladhuri, FutulJ, pp. 463-64.