the dynastic caliphates: the umayyads and the reforms 133Central Auditing Office. The head of dìwàn-al-zimmahwas account-
able to him, the caliph’s deputy, directly, which, with the direct link,
guaranteed the autonomy of the bureau and its employees at both
the central and provincial levels and their independence from the
administrative authority at both levels. In effect, there were two types
of financial control in the state: internal control, or internal audit-
ing, and external control, or external auditing. While the internal
control was for the benefit of the province governors and carried
out by their officers, the external control was for the benefit of the
central government and was undertaken by officers under the direct
command of the central government. Interestingly enough, account-
ing and financial control systems of modern times are based on a
similar system of dual control: internal and external control systems.
While the former is exercised for the benefit of the internal users of
information, who are mainly the organisation managers, the latter,
the external control, or auditing, is carried out for the benefit of the
external users of information, who are mainly the owners and share-
holders.
The Arabicisation of the State Administration
The Arabicisation of the state administration is attributed to the
Umayyad Caliph Abd-al-Màlik (685–705) and his son al-Walìd
(705–715), (Al- ̨abarì). The process was twofold: changing the lan-
guage of the public registers from Greek and Persian to Arabic, and
the creation of an Arab body of state officials. The changing of lan-
guage in the official registers helped to: (a) reinforce the Arab char-
acteristics of the state administration, (b) reduce or eradicate the
reliance on non-Muslims or non-Arab Muslims in administering state
records, (c) promote the Arabic language among non-Arab Muslims,
(d) promote Arabic writing and calligraphy, and (e) transferred admin-
istrative posts to the Arabs and the Arabic speaking Muslims.
Caliph Abdel-Màlik, and al-Walìd after him, arranged for the tax
registers to be translated from Greek and Persian into Arabic. The
changeover was made in 697 in Iraq, in 700 in Syria and Egypt,
and shortly afterwards in Kurasan (Lapidus, 2002). The Arabiciation
move was also directed towards state officials. In the first decades
of the Arab state the administration had been undertaken by Greeks
and Persian-speaking officials serving in the new occupied land being