THE ARAB CONQUEST 163conquerors was relatively small, and, as indicated above, it could not
be used for military purposes. Thus, it is likely that most people
subjected to direct Arab rule would be required to pay a poll tax and
a land tax, in the same way as did their equivalents in other recently
conquered areas. Former Visigothic royal estates and those of the
leading members of the nobility, killed in the fighting in 711/12 or
executed by Miisfl would have been the legitimate spoil of the victors,
and according to precedent, would be used to support the armies in
the field, with a percentage becoming the property of the caliph.
Muslims were exempt from tax, as in theory was the land owned by
a Muslim, even if it had previously belonged to a tax-paying Christian.
Administering fiscal property and collecting the taxes due, as well as
controlling the local garrisons, thus became the responsibility of the
qii4is. As Islam lacked any notion of a priestly caste, such men were
chosen for their religious learning and probity, and for the personal
influence they might have achieved in this pre-eminently military
society.
Inevitably, in the first phase of conquest tidy administrative
arrangements are unlikely to have been achieved or implemented
uniformly. Groups of the conquerors could take more from the con-
quered than their own rules would allow them. Some form of enquiry
would become necessary in due course, followed by whatever rectifi-
cation was possible. This process seems to have been undertaken in
the governorship of Al-Samb (718-21), prior to his campaigns across
the Pyrenees. The chronicler reports that he conducted a census
throughout the peninsula, and carried out the formal division of
spoil. In Late Roman terminology a census was not so much an enu-
meration of the population as a preliminary to effective taxation. It
recorded the property of those included in it, and thus gave a basis
for the proper evaluation of their tax liability. With the dependence
of Arab government on the proceeds of land tax from property not
assigned to Muslims, such record keeping was a vital part of maxim-
ising revenue. It also may have led in due course to the an increase
in taxation, and slightly less rapidly to a rectification of earlier abuses.
The latter is said to have taken place in the time of the governorship
of Yal;1ya ibn Salama (725-728), while his predecessor Anbasa (721-
725) is accused of having doubled the tax on Christians. In fact this
probably represents the working out in practice of the results of the
census conducted under Al-Saml;1. A full and proper assessment could
now be made, with unfortunate consequences for the taxpayer.