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East Syrian Bishops, Elite Households, and Iranian Law after the Muslim Conquest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Richard Payne
Richard Payne*
Affiliation:
Mount Holyoke College
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Abstract

This article is an exploration of the interconnected legal ties between Christians and Zoroastrians in the early Islamic era. Drawing from the writings of the Christian authors Ishobokt, Simeon, and Henanisho, Payne describes how East Syrian bishops appropriated laws of marriage, inheritance, and property from Iranian jurisprudential traditions as a means of transferring wealth intergenerationally and extending their judicial authority. Payne thus explores the ways in which the Christians of Iran were influenced by the Iranian legal system and culture and in the seventh century CE.

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Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 48 , Issue 1: Special Issue: Religious Trends in Late Ancient and Early Islamic Iran , January 2015 , pp. 5 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2014

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Footnotes

Parvaneh Pourshariati, Peter Sarris, Dorothea Weltecke, and Philip Wood invited me to present aspects of the present article to inquisitive, insightful, and generous audiences in Boston, Cambridge, Berlin, and Oxford. It might never have been written without their help. I am, moreover, grateful to Stefan Esders, Sabine Hübner, and Maria Macuch, for conversations and criticisms that greatly enriched my thinking on law and society in the Iranian world, and to Elizabeth Campbell for her comments on a final draft of the paper.

References

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7 Cf. Sachau, Eduard, “Vom Christentum in der Persis,” Sitzungsberichte der königlichen preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften—Sitzung der philosophischhistorischen Klasse 39 (1916): 977Google Scholar, suggesting that the treatise “setzt einen Zustand der Gesellschaft voraus, in dem zoroastrische Anschauungen und Gebräuche mit christlichen vermischt waren, und sein Bestreben richtet sich darauf, das Christentum von jeder Befleckung durch fremdes Wesen zu reinigen.”

8 Perikhanian, Anahit, Obshchestvo i Pravo Irana v Parfyanskii i Sasanidskii Periodi [The Society and Law of Iran in the Parthian and Sasanian Periods] (Moscow, 1983), 265;Google Scholar Müller, C.D.G., “Die ältere Kirchenrechtsliteratur der Perserkirche,” Oriens Christianus 59 (1975): 47–59;Google Scholar Morony, Michael, “Religious Communities in Late Sasanian and Early Muslim Iraq,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 17 (1974): 113–35.Google Scholar

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10 Selb and Kaufhold, Das syrisch-römische Rechtsbuch, 1: passim.

11 History of Mar Aba, in Histoire de Mar Jabalaha, de trois autres patriarches, d'un prêtre et de deux laïques nestoriens, ed. Paul Bedjan (Paris, 1895), 232–4, where the catholicos Mar Aba expressly denies interfering with Christians making use of Zoroastrian courts, and Martyrdom of Pethion, Adurhormizd, and Anahid, in Acta martyrum et sanctorum II, ed. Paul Bedjan (Leipzig, 1897), 569, where a Christian monk exhorts a Zoroastrian mowbed to judge justly. A late Sasanian collection of judgments refers to Christians in the courts of Zoroastrian judges: Farroxmard ī Wahrāmān, Book of a Thousand Judgments, in Rechtskasuistik und Gerichtspraxis zu Beginn des siebenten Jahrhunderts in Iran: Die Rechtsammlung des Farroḫmard i Wahrāmān, ed. and trans. Maria Macuch (Wiesbaden, 1993), 409/415.

12 Ishobokht, Book of Judgments, 8.

13 See Selb, Walter, Orientalisches Kirchenrecht, Band I (Vienna, 1981), 59–71, for an overview of the sources.Google Scholar

14 For local elites as judges, see Farroxmard ī Wahrāmān, Book of a Thousand Judgments, 517/520, and, for Zoroastrian religious professionals, Shaked, Shaul, “Administrative Functions of Priests in the Sasanian Period,” in Proceedings of the First European Conference of Iranian Studies: Part I, Old and Middle Iranian Studies, ed. Gnoli, Gherardo and Panaino, Antonio (Rome, 1990), 261–73.Google Scholar See also Perikhanian, Anahit, “Ordalya i Klyatva v Sudoproizvodstve Doislamskovo Irana,” Peredneaziatskii Sbornik 3 (1979): 192,Google Scholar on the costs of ordeals, a hint of the charges associated with legal services.

15 Macuch, Maria, “Herrschaftskonsolidierung und sasanidische Familienrecht: zum Verhältnis von Kirche und Staat unter den Sasaniden,” in Iran und Turfan: Beiträge Berliner Wissenschaftler, Werner Sundermann zum 60. Geburtstag gewidmet, ed. Christiane Reck and Peter Zieme (Wiesbaden, 1995), 149–67.Google Scholar

16 Papaconstantinou, Arietta, “Between Umma and Dhimma: The Christians of the Middle East under the Umayyads,” Annales islamologiques 42 (2008): 127–56,Google Scholar has eloquently enjoined historians to attend to the social and economic history of regionally and socially differentiated Christian communities in the first Islamic century. The Christian adaptation of Iranian law is an important, but rarely examined, aspect of the endurance of Iranian cultural and social institutions in the early Islamic world: see, for a recent discussion, Kennedy, Hugh, “The Survival of Iranianness,” in The Rise of Islam: The Idea of Iran, ed. Curtis, Vesta Sarkhosh and Stewart, Sarah (London, 2009), IV: 13–29.Google Scholar

17 On Simeon's thinly documented tenure as bishop, precise dates for which are unavailable, see Adolf Rücker, Die Canones des Simeon von Rêvârdašîr (Leipzig, 1908), 7–21. Henanisho's stormy career is much better known: Tamcke, Martin, “Henanischoc I,” in Studien zur Semitistik und Arabistik: Festschrift für Hartmut Bobzin zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Jastrow, Otto, Talay, Shabo, and Hafenrichter, Herta (Wiesbaden, 2008), 395–402;Google Scholar and Morony, Michael, Iraq after the Muslim Conquest (Princeton, NJ, 1981), 352–3.Google Scholar

18 Sachau, Syrische Rechtsbücher, II: xvii–xxii, argued that the author of the treatise was a ninth-century bishop of Revardashir, not the seventh-century one. But his novel opinion was and remains anomalous. The seventh-century dating was supported by Partsch, J., “Neue Rechtsquellen der nestorianischen Kirche,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte 30 (1909): 355–98;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Baumstark, Anton, Geschichte der syrischen Literatur (Bonn, 1968), 206;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and subsequently by Walter Selb, Orientalisches Kirchenrecht, I: 176–7. On the bilingual environment of the Persian Gulf from which the translation emerged, see Contini, Riccardo, “La lingua del Bēt Qatrāyē,” in Mélanges David Cohen: Études sur le langage, les langues, les dialectes, les littératures offertes par ses élèves, ses collègues, ses amis présentés à l'occasion de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire, ed. Lentin, Jérôme and Lonnet, Antoine (Paris, 2003), 173–81;Google Scholar and Brock, Sebastian, “Syriac Writers from Beth Qatraye,” ARAM 11 (1999): 85–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Our knowledge of Henanisho's Book of Judgments (ktaba d-zudaqe) emerges from his own letters: Henanisho, , Judgments, in Syrische Rechtsbücher, ed. and trans. Sachau, Eduard (Berlin, 1908), II: 1–51, 16.Google Scholar

20 For Ishoyahb's correspondence, see Fiey, Jean-Maurice, “Išocyaw le Grand: Vie du catholicos nestorien Išocyaw III de Adiabène (580–659),” Orientalia Christiana Periodica 35 (1969): 305–33; 36 (1970): 5–46.Google Scholar

21 See the sources in Lamoreaux, John, “Episcopal Courts in Late Antiquity,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3 (1995): 143–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Ioan, Ovidiu, Muslime und Araber bei Īšō‘jahb III (649–659) (Wiesbaden, 2009), esp. 32–4 and 83–6;Google Scholar Payne, Richard, “Persecuting Heresy in Early Islamic Iraq: Ishoyahb III and the Elites of Nisibis,” in The Power of Religion in Late Antiquity, ed. Lenski, Noel and Cain, Andrew (Aldershot, 2009), 397–409;Google Scholar and Tamcke, Martin, “Der Patriarch und seine arabischen Christen: Die nestorianischen Katholikoi-Patriarchen in ihren Anweisungen für Kirchenglieder auf der Arabischen Halbinsel in frühomajadischer Zeit,” in Arabische Christen—Christen in Arabien, ed. Kreikenbohm, Detlev, Muth, Franz-Christoph, and Thielmann, Jörn (Frankfurt, 2007), 105–20,Google Scholar treat different aspects of Ishoyahb III's industrious response to the Muslim conquests.

23 Morony, Michael, “Landholding in Seventh-Century Iraq: Late Sasanian and Early Islamic Patterns,” in The Islamic Middle East, 700–1900: Studies in Economic and Social History, ed. Udovitch, Abraham L. (Princeton, NJ, 1981), 142,Google Scholar first signaled Henanisho's use of Iranian law.

24 In cases where the deceased left neither wife nor children, part of the property was to be given to the church: Synodicon Orientale, in Synodicon Orientale, ou recueil de synodes nestoriens, ed. and trans. Jean-Baptiste Chabot (Paris, 1902), 182. When practice becomes discernible in Henanisho's letters, he only dared to suggest the inheritance of the church in cases where there were no living relatives, and then only because the church takes responsibility for the taxes on the property: Henanisho, Judgments, 36/37. Timothy, Cf., Regulations for Ecclesiastical Judgments and Inheritances, in Syrische Rechtsbücher, ed. and trans. Eduard Sachau (Berlin, 1908), II: 96/97.Google Scholar

25 In appropriating the laws of a vanished empire, the activities of the East Syrian bishops paralleled those of their counterparts in the West: Esders, Stefan, Römische Rechtstradition und merowingisches Königtum: Zum Rechtscharakter politischer Herrschaft in Burgund im 6. und 7. Jahrhundert (Göttingen, 1997), 286–316, 463;Google Scholar and Sirks, A.J.B., The Theodosian Code: A Study (Friedrichsdorf, 2007), 238–53.Google Scholar

26 On the region's importance in seventh-century ecclesiastical politics, see Beaucamp, Joëlle and Robin, Christelle, “L’évêché nestorien de Mâšmâhîg dans l'archipel d'al-Bahrain (Ve–IXe siècle),” in Dilmun: New Studies in the Archaeology and Early History of Bahrain, ed. Potts, D.T. (Berlin, 1983), 171–96;Google Scholar and Healey, John F., “The Christians of Qatar in the 7th Century A.D.,” in Studies in Honour of Clifford Edmund Bosworth, ed. Richard, Ian Netton (Leiden: 2000), I: 222–37.Google Scholar

27 Synodicon Orientale, 217–19.

28 Ibid., 225–6.

29 Ibid., 219.

30 Ibid., 623: the Synod of Beit Lapat in 484 had expressly forbidden only “a cleric, bar qyama, or monk” from taking their judicial disputes (dine) before outside judges.

31 Ibid., 220.

32 Ibid., 223. The seventh-century legal writings do not appear to have taken much note of this canon. Christian betrothal does not figure in the legal literature until the catholicos Timothy I, who further outlined the particularities of Christian betrothal: Timothy I, Regulations for Ecclesiastical Judgments and Inheritances, 74–8/75–9. On the emergence of a marriage rite, see Ritzer, Korbinian, Formen, Riten und religiöses Brauchtum der Eheschliessung in den christlichen Kirchen des ersten Jahrtausends (Münster, 1962), 89–94;Google Scholar Selb, Walter, “Zur Christianisierung des Eherechts,” in Eherecht und Familiengut in Antike und Mittelalter, ed. Simon, Dieter (Munich, 1992), 1–14;Google Scholar and Kaufhold, Hubert, Die Rechtssammlung des Gabriel von Baṣra und ihr Verhältnis zu den anderen juristischen Sammelwerken der Nestorianer (Berlin, 1976), 72–5,Google Scholar refuting the claim of Wilhelm de Vries, Sakramententheologie bei den Nestorianern (Rome, 1947), 253, that the East Syrian ritual of betrothal dated from the fifth century.

33 Zoroastrian judges did not disappear, and very likely continued to rival their Christian counterparts. But their seals no longer implied privileges superior to those of other judges. The Babylonian rabbis, for example, had recognized the superiority of the seals of state-sanctioned judicial officials, the muhr ī wārwarigān: Macuch, Maria, “Iranian Legal Terminology in the Babylonian Talmud in the Light of Sasanian Jurisprudence,” Irano-Judaica 4 (1999): 91–101.Google Scholar On the comparatively late development of the qāḍī office, see now Tillier, Mathieu, Les cadis d'Iraq et l’État abbasside (132/750–334/945) (Damascus, 2009).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34 Simonsohn, Uriel I., “Seeking Justice among the ‘Outsiders’: Christian Recourse to Non-Ecclesiastical Judicial Systems under early Islam,” Church History and Religious Culture 89 (2009): 191–216,CrossRefGoogle Scholar Simonsohn, Uriel I., “Communal Boundaries Reconsidered: Jews and Christians Appealing to Muslim Authorities in the Medieval Near East,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 14 (2007): 328–63;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Simonsohn, Uriel I., Overlapping Jurisdictions: Confessional Boundaries and Judicial Choice among Christians and Jews under Early Muslim Rule (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2008).Google Scholar Christian petitioners could nevertheless create anxieties at the qāḍī's court: Tillier, Mathieu, “Un espace judiciaire entre public et privé: Audiences de cadis à l’époquecabbāside,” Annales Islamologiques 38 (2004): 491–513.Google Scholar

35 Timothy, Regulations for Ecclesiastical Judgments and Inheritances, 66–8/67–9.

36 John of Phenek, Book of the Main Points, in Sources Syriaques, ed. Alphonse Mingana (Leipzig, 1908), I: 148. This is not the only monastic text to express criticism of episcopal justice. The History of Mar Yonan, a text from the late seventh or early eighth century Persian Gulf, celebrated a bishop's renunciation of judicial power: History of Mar Yonan, in Acta martyrum et sanctorum, ed. Paul Bedjan (Paris, 1890), I: 508.

37 On the apocalyptical and theological context of John's work, see Reinink, Gerrit J., “East Syrian Historiography in Response to the Rise of Islam: The Case of John bar Penkaye's Ktaba D-Reš Melle,” in Redefining Christian Identity: Cultural Interaction in the Middle East since the Rise of Islam, ed. Ginkel, J.J. van, Berg, H.L. Murre-van den, and Lint, T.M. van (Leuven, 2005), 77–89;Google Scholar and Bruns, Peter, “Von Adam und Eva bis Muhammed—Beobachtungen zur syrischen Chronik des Johannes bar Penkaye,” Oriens Christianus 87 (2003): 47–64.Google Scholar

38 Kaufhold, Hubert, “Der Richter in den syrischen Rechtsquellen: Zum Einfluß islamischen Rechts auf die christlich-orientalische Rechtsliteratur,” Oriens Christianus 68 (1984): 91–113.Google Scholar The fullest exposition of judicial procedure is in the Nomocanon of Abdisho of Nisibis (d. 1318): Perczel, István, ed., The Nomocanon of Metropolitan Abdisho of Nisibis: A Facsimile Edition of MS 64 from the Collection of the Church of the East in Thrissur (Piscataway, 2005).Google Scholar

39 Henanisho, Judgments, 12, 16, 42.

40 Ibid., 26.

41 Ibid., 2–3.

42 Rapp, Claudia, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity: The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley, CA, 2005), 242–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 Simeon of Revardashir, Chapters of Ecclesiastical Judgments, in Syrische Rechtsbücher, ed. and trans. Eduard Sachau (Berlin, 1913), III: 208–53, 229; see Timothy, Regulations for Ecclesiastical Judgments and Inheritances, 54/55.

44 Simeon, Chapters of Ecclesiastical Judgments, 225–7; cf. Henanisho, Judgments, 36/37.

45 Simeon, Chapters of Ecclesiastical Judgments, 233–5.

46 Ibid., 239 and 247.

47 Ibid., 247–9.

48 Henanisho, Judgments, 38.

49 Ibid., 40.

50 Ibid., 27.

51 Ishobokht, Book of Judgments, 20.

52 Henanisho, Judgments, 12 (fatherless son), 14 (fatherless son), 15–16 (fatherless son), 20 (brother), 22 (widow), 26 (widow), 34 (fatherless son), 49.

53 Ibid., 7, 12, 24.

54 Ibid., 2, 16, 26–27, 32.

55 See Lamoreaux, “Episcopal Courts in Late Antiquity,” 150–56, on the high demand for ecclesiastical arbitration in the later Roman empire.

56 Henanisho, Judgments, 12/13, where the litigants are exhorted not to demand agricultural labor (pulhana) from a freed slave, and 14/15, where an inheriting son freed a slave because he was his “milk-father” (myanqana), i.e. the father of his wet-nurse. For clerical slave-holding, see Simeon, Chapters of Ecclesiastical Judgments, 243–5. For slave-owning as a marker of elite status, see Ishodenah of Basra, Book of Chastity, 16/17, 22/25, 24/26–7. The East Syrian evidence thus supports arguments for the prevalence of servile labor in the Sasanian and early Islamic Near East: Banaji, Jairus, “Aristocracies, Peasants, and the Framing of the Early Middle Ages,” Journal of Agrarian Change 9 (2009): 78–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57 Henanisho, Judgments, 26–8. The text specifies his native city as “Karka d-Beit so and so” (karka d-beit plan), but though there are many Karkas, there is only one Karka associated with a Beit. The term dara/darta, pl. darata, is somewhat ambiguous here. A dara/darta refers essentially to an enclosed space, i.e. a courtyard. But here it is also to serve as a residence, which suggests a house with a surrounding enclosure, perhaps typical of the arid region around Kufa. As he owned more than one, they will most likely have served an economic function.

58 Henanisho, Judgments, 20; Kister, M.J., “Land, Property, and Jihād: A Discussion of Some Early Traditions,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 31 (1991): 306.Google Scholar For more comparative evidence of drachm values, see Gignoux, Philippe, “Prices and Drachms in the Late Sasanian Period,” in The Sasanian Era: The Idea of Iran, ed. Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis and Sarah Stewart (London: 2008), III: 132–9.Google Scholar

59 Henanisho, Judgments, 42. Unfortunately the letter does not divulge what the individual was trading. For further evidence of East Syrian trading, see Timothy, Regulations for Ecclesiastical Judgments and Inheritances, 74.

60 Henanisho, Judgments, 6 (Perozai, Khusro, “of beautiful lineage” [ṭuhma]), 14 (Suren), 16 (Toma bar Yazdad, Behzadan), 18 (Peroz), 22 (Mihrnarse, Farrokhdad), to cite only the most striking examples. See Papaconstantinou, Arietta, “‘What remains behind’: Hellenism and Romanitas in Christian Egypt after the Arab Conquest,” in From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East, ed. Hannah M. Cotton et al. (Cambridge, 2009), 451–4,Google Scholar on the “totally gratuitous use” of elite Roman gentilicia among Christians in late seventh- and early eighth-century Egypt.

61 Anahit Perikhanian, “Agnaticheskie Gruppi v Drevnem Irane,” Vestnik Drevnei Istorii (1968): 28–53, and Perikhanian, Anahit, “Iranian Society and Law,” in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3 (2): The Seleucid, Parthian, and Sasanian Periods, ed. Yarshater, Ehsan (Cambridge, 1983), 627–80.Google Scholar Despite the importance of agnatic kin, wealth remained in the possession of individual households: Morony, Michael, “Magic and Society in Late Sasanian Iraq,” in Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World, ed. Noegel, Scott and Walker, Joel (University Park, PA, 2003), 83–107.Google Scholar Some of the tensions that could develop between household and agnates will be described below.

62 Ishobokht, Book of Judgments, 104.

63 Simeon, Chapters of Ecclesiastical Judgments, 241.

64 See the simultaneous death of two brothers mentioned in Farroxmard ī Wahrāmān, Book of a Thousand Judgments, 171/176, and Pusanoš, the only surviving heir among four brothers, in Henanisho, Judgments, 14. Nevertheless, such evidence would not support the arguments of Yaakov Elman, “Marriage and Marital Property in Rabbinic and Sasanian Law,” in Rabbinic Law in its Roman and Near Eastern Context, ed. Catherine Heszer (Tübingen, 2003), 227–76, according to which there was a generalized late Sasanian demographic crisis. Rather, elite self-reproduction is intrinsically constrained, as argued by Hopkins, Keith, Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983), 31–119,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the Iranian case is only worsened by the cultural imperatives of patrilineality.

65 See Bagnall, Roger S., Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton, NJ, 1993), 95 and 205–6.Google Scholar

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67 Macuch, “Herrschaftskonsolidierung und sasanidische Familienrecht,” passim. The legal principles were firmly rooted in Zoroastrian cosmological thinking that prized fertility: Macuch, Maria, “Inzest im vorislamischen Iran,” Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 24 (1991): 141–54.Google Scholar

68 See Saller, Richard, Patriarchy, Property, and Death in the Roman Family (Cambridge, 1994), 155–80,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Hopkins, Death and Renewal, esp. 74–78, on the consequences of partible inheritance for the Roman aristocracy, and Arjava, Antti, Women and Law in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 1996), 70–75,Google Scholar on the large amounts of property, as much as 30–45 percent of the total, that came to be owned by women in late antiquity.

69 Macuch, Maria, “Inheritance I: Sasanian Period,” in Encyclopedia Iranica, ed. Yarshater, Ehsan (New York, 2006), 13: 125–31.Google Scholar

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72 Girls could be married from the age of nine, which of course does not at all imply that they were married so young: Pahlavi Rivāyat accompanying the Dādestān ī Dēnīg, 140–41/60. Cf. Shaw, Brent D., “The Age of Roman Girls at Marriage: Some Reconsiderations,” Journal of Roman Studies 77 (1987): 30–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

73 Ishobokht, Book of Judgments, 94.

74 Simeon, Chapters of Ecclesiastical Judgments, 245.

75 Ibid., 245.

76 See Rapaport, Yossef, Marriage, Money and Divorce in Medieval Islamic Society (Cambridge, 2005), 13,CrossRefGoogle Scholar in a society where women are not similarly disadvantaged in the partition of inheritance, property is nonetheless gendered, so that women receive their share in goods and cash, not land.

77 Ishobokht, Book of Judgments, 94–6.

78 Henanisho, Judgments, 18.

79 Ibid., 48–50/49–51; Simeon, Chapters of Ecclesiastical Judgments, esp. 247/246, where he claims that though earlier church leaders never dealt with this problem, “in our days” some have begun to advocate the equal inheritance of daughters. At least some fathers stipulated that their male and female children should inherit equally: Farroxmard ī Wahrāmān, Book of a Thousand Judgments, 311–12/327–8.

80 Macuch, Das sasanidische Rechtsbuch, 8–10.

81 Ibid., 7–8; Macuch, Rechtskasuistik und Gerichtspraxis, 74–6; Carlsen, B.H., “The čakar Marriage Contract and the čakar Children's Status in the Mātiyān i hazār Dātistān and Rivāyat i Ēmēt i Ašavahištān,” in Middle Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the International Symposium organized by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven from the 17th to the 20th of May 1982, ed. Skalmowski, Wojciech and Tongerloo, Alois van (Leuven, 1984), 103–14.Google Scholar

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84 Faroḥmard ī Wahrāmān, Book of a Thousand Judgments, 409/415.

85 Simeon, Chapters of Ecclesiastical Judgments, 235.

86 Ibid., 235.

87 Ibid., 247.

88 Mar Aba's condemnations of the practice suggest marriages of agnates with the wives of a deceased relative were widespread, especially in Fars: Mar Aba, Regulations of Marriage, in Syrische Rechtsbücher (see note 1), III: 258–9, and Synodicon Orientale (see note 24), 82–5/335–7, 549–50/561. Cf. Manfred Hutter, “Mār Abā and the Impact of Zoroastrianism on Christianity in the 6th Century,” in Religious Themes and Texts of Pre-Islamic Iran and Central Asia: Studies in Honour of Professor Gherardo Gnoli, ed. Carlo G. Cereti, Mauro Maggi, and Elio Provasi (Wiesbaden, 2003), 167–74. Armenian condemnations of the practice are particularly strident: Aram Mardirossian, Le livre des canons arméniens (Kanonagirkc Hayocc) de Yovhannēs Awjnecci: Église, droit, et société en Arménie du IVe au VIIIe siècle (Louvain, 2004), 83–5. For the prevalence of Levirate marriage among Babylonian Jews, see Satlow, Michael L., Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton, NJ, 2001), 188;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Weisberg, Dvora, “The Babylonian Talmud's Treatment of Levirate Marriage,” The Annual of Rabbinic Judaism: Ancient, Medieval, and Modern 3 (2000): 35–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

89 Ishoyahb III of Adiabene, Correspondence, ed. Duval, Rubens, Išōʿyahb Patriarchae III: Liber Epistularum, CSCO Scriptores Syri 11 (Louvain, 1962), 153–4.Google Scholar

90 There is another option, namely that Ishoyahb had a čakar marriage in mind, in which the wife would not have the inheritance rights of a fully empowered, pādixšāy wife, who could produce legal heirs. I am grateful to Maria Macuch for this suggestion.

91 Ishobokht, Book of Judgments, 98/99.

92 Ishobokht, Book of Judgments, 100/99–101.

93 See Timothy, Correspondence, 79, 50, where he rails against those who practice “the unlawful marriage of the Magians,” and 105, 68–9, where he makes clear that it is forms of substitute-successorship along the lines outlined above that he had in mind.

94 Henanisho, Judgments, 38.

95 Ibid., 34, 38.

96 Ibid., 36.

97 Ibid., 36.

98 Ibid., 26.

99 Ishobokht, Book of Judgments, 104.

100 History of Rabban Mar Saba, in Acta martyrum et sanctorum II(see note 11), 644, with the comments of Fiey, Jean Maurice, Saints syriaques (Princeton, NJ, 2004), 163–4,Google Scholar who described Saba as a fifth-century saint without discussing the dating of the text. Internal evidence points to an early seventh-century date.

101 On the themes and topoi of family conflict in East Syrian hagiography, see Walker, Joel, The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Heroism in Late Antique Iraq (Berkeley, CA, 2006), 206–45.Google Scholar

102 History of Rabban Mar Saba, 649; cf. Ishobokht, Book of Judgments, 103–4.

103 Pigulevskaya, Villes de l’état iranien, 178–81.

104 Dēnkard: Book VII, in The Complete Text of the Pahlavi Dinkard: Part II, Books VI—IX, ed. Dhanjishnah Meherjibhai Madan (Bombay, 1911), 749.

105 For hamxwāstagān (referring to individual partners, hambāyān, who share property/wealth, xwāstag, as clarified by Macuch, Rechtskasuistik und Gerichtspraxis, 44) sharing costs of repairs to irrigation works, see Book of a Thousand Judgments (MHD), 550/553, and for shared debts, 386/391.

106 Henanisho, Judgments, 44–8.

107 Ibid., 40–42.

108 Ibid., 16–18.

109 Ibid., 22.

110 Robinson, Chase, Empire and Elites after the Muslim Conquest: The Transformation of Northern Mesopotamia (Cambridge, 2000), 44–59, 91–7,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and, for his succinct description of the period as an “Indian summer,” 57.

111 For a Christian layman with worldly authority, see Henanisho, Judgments, 26.

112 Henanisho, Judgments, 14–16.

113 Robinson, Chase F., “Neck Sealing in Early Islam,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 48 (2005): 431,CrossRefGoogle Scholar arguing, without reference to Henanisho's letter, that neck-sealing for taxation purposes only appeared in Iraq just before the census of Yazid II in 723. The reference in Henanisho suggests that neck-sealing was indeed associated with the tax season, i.e. tax-payers were sealed when the taxes were levied and the seals were removed upon payment (cf. the quotation of Abū Yūsuf at 419). This would explain why some Christians are sealed and others are not. The date of the letter (685–93) may indicate that neck-sealing was put into practice as part of the fiscal reforms of Abd al-Malik.

114 On increased fiscal pressure in the Marwānid period, see Sijpesteijn, Petra M., “Landholding Patterns in Early Islamic Egypt,” Journal of Agrarian Change 9 (2009): 120–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

115 In the papyri, Muslim officials exhort Christian tax-payers not to pay their taxes without obtaining a receipt, perhaps hinting at the forms of abuse that prevailed among the middlemen, most of whom were themselves Christians well into the eighth century and beyond: Nikolaos Gonis, “Arabs, Monks, and Taxes: Notes on Documents from Deir el-Bala'izah,” Zeitschrift für Epigraphik und Papyrologie 148 (2004): 213–24.

116 Henanisho, Judgments, 16/17.

117 Thus building on bishops' traditional patronage for widows and orphans: Krause, Jens-Uwe, Witwen und Waisen im römischen Reich, vol. IV: Witwen und Waisen im frühen Christentum (Stuttgart, 1995), 5–10.Google Scholar

118 Macuch, Rechtskasuistik und Gerichtspraxis, 730–32.