ADMINISTRATIVE THEORY AND PRACTICEsitions of head physician, head steward, head of servants, royal war-
den, royal astrologer, head of the royal artisans, and grand chamber-
lain either disappeared with the Islamic conquest or were transformed
to fit the changed circumstances. Because the early Islamic regime was
more decentralized at first, the suppression or abandonment of these
hierarchic titles and positions was an aspect of administrative discon-
tinuity. The households of early Islamic rulers and governors were
much less elaborately organized than the Sasanian court and not as
extensively engaged in manufacturing.
No permanent position for a person in charge of all the branches
of the administrative bureaucracy existed in the Sasanian system, mainly
because the monarchy jealously guarded its monopoly of power. It
should not even be necessary to mention the nonexistence of an office
except for the extravagant claims of writers such as the Ni~am al-
Mulk (d. 1092) who derived the Islamic office of waztr from a Sasanian
origin.1so Such claims once muddied the waters considerably and have
affected earlier discussions of the question of administrative conti-
nuity; but it is no longer necessary to demonstrate that the original
meaning of waztr in the Qur'an or its use in early Islamic local admin-
istration was that of an administrative assistant.1S1 The question of
the existence and nature of a Sasanian office resembling that of the
waztr remains, however. The fact I that the later Arabic literature per-
sistently describes several high Sasanian officials as waztrs probably
indicates no more than that at one time or another they were in charge
of the administration for the monarch. In particular, if the two main
passages in which the title of vazurgframiidhiir (M.P.) is explained as
waztr are taken in their entire context, it is clear that the comparison
is intended to be descriptive rather than technica1.1s2
In reality, the sources appear to be describing a regency that is
normal enough in a dynastic state. It was a Sasanian custom, but not
150 Ni~am al-Mulk, The Book of Government or Rules for Kings, tr. H. Darke (Lon-
don, 1960), pp. 178-80.
151 Excellent discussions of this issue are provided by S. D. Goitein, "The Origin of
the Vizierate and Its True Character," in Studies in Islamic History and Institutions
(Leiden, 1968), pp. 168-96, and by D. Sourdel, Le vizirat 'abbiiside (Damascus, 1959),
pp. 41-61.
152 Tabari, Ta'rFkh, I, 869-70; Ya'qiibi, Ta'rFkh, I, 202. However, M. L. Chaumont,
in "Chiliarque et Curopalate a la cour des Sassanides," Iranica Antiqua 10 (1973),
149-51, argues that the position of vazurgframiidhiir was created during the fourth
century by extending the powers of the administrative official called framiidhiir (= Gk.
epitropos) and that this office was consolidated during the late Sasanian period as a
kind of grand vizier.