Economy
The Iranian highlands and Mesopotamia formed the two major ecological and economic poles of the Parthian and Sasanian empires. The Arsacids and the Sasanians relied on the Iranian highlands' ability to support a strong cavalry as the backbone of their army, as well their Central Asian holdings' ability to control overland trade from East and South Asia.
However, despite the constant need for reinvestment and vulnerability to Roman raids, Mesopotamia's agricultural and mercantile productivity and importance eventually overshadowed that of the Iranian plateau in both empires.The economy of the Parthian Empire depended on agrarian production, overland and sea trade, and tribute from subject peoples when they could extract it.[858] The Parthian Empire was able to successfully capitalize on the East-West land routes to China and sea routes to India, which was one of the most important sources of revenue for the king of kings after tax incomes on royal holdings. The History of the Later Han Dynasty records that Parthian sailors actively discouraged the Han envoy Gan Ying from traveling to Rome so as to preserve their monopoly.[859] Palmyrene merchants served as middlemen between Roman Syria and the Persian Gulf entrepot of Mesene, which accepted seaborne trade from India.[860] Bactrians dominated the land routes that led from India and China into Iran, though some Chinese trade missions did make it to Merv in eastern Iran. Motivated by a desire to regain control of Mesopotamian and Gulf trade, which had been usurped through the predatory actions of provincial rulers of Characene and Elymais, in the mid-first century ce, kings such as Vologases I invested heavily in strategic sites in Mesopotamia.[861] This foreshadowed the Sasanians' policies in the region, though the Sasanians achieved greater success, especially in the development of agriculture.[862]
The creation of intensive irrigation systems on the Mesopotamian plain is one of the most significant economic developments of the Sasanian Empire, as well as of Western Asia in general.[863] It is not an exaggeration to say that the amount of land that was brought into cultivation dwarfs all earlier and many later periods.[864] Achieving a scale and organizational capacity that was unprecedented, the Sasanians created huge systems of canals and succeeded in coordinating entire subregions of the plain.
Almost immediately upon taking control of Mesopotamia, the Sasanian kings of kings expanded agriculture and trade in order to establish a more stable tax base.[865] Ardaxsir I and Sabuhr I appropriated land and constructed cities in regions that had been previously autonomous. A local sub-provincial governor (sahrab, “satrap”) appointed by, and directly responsible to, the king of kings ruled these territories on his behalf. Newly founded cities sometimes anchored these possessions in the early and middle Sasanian Empire, though royal plantations, or “paradises” (dastagerd), tended to control areas of agricultural, commercial, or hydrological exploitation in the late Sasanian Empire.[866] Beginning with Ardaxsir I, the kings of kings founded or re-founded numerous cities across their empire, around which often grew complex ‘monumental zones' inflected by rock reliefs, hunting enclosures and villas, that extended far into the countryside.[867] While it certainly was not a ‘capital' in the modern sense, the conurbation growing around Ctesiphon was inarguably the empire's most populous and administratively important urban area.[868] Composed of multiple fortified cities and aristocratic suburbs (Ctesiphon, Weh-Ardaxsir, Aspanbar and the remnants of the defunct Seleucia), it hosted the empire's two largest and most magnificent palaces (the White Palace and the Ayvan-e Kesra), the empire's central bureaucratic nodal point, the funerary monuments of many of its kings, not to mention massive treasuries that showcased a variety of booty, including the Holy Cross after Husraw II's conquest of Jerusalem, all of which surrounded with numerous royal ‘paradise' plantations.[869] In their new or parallel foundations in, for example, the Susa Plain and around Ctesiphon, the Sasanians succeeded in disembedding old elite and economic networks and reshaping or subordinating the regions' organizational and infrastructural capacities around their interests.Like the kings of kings' Mesopotamian cities and plantations, royal craft workshops located in newly founded cities provided crucial financial resources independent of tax levies derived from the Iranian plateau.[870] Sabuhr I settled skilled craftsmen taken from the Roman Empire in his cities and established royal workshops for them. In addition, trade provided a significant source of income for the king of kings. Early on the Sasanians funnelled the Indian Ocean trade away from the Red Sea, and the Sasanian court actively resisted efforts on the part of the Romans to find ways around their monopoly on the Central Asian silk trade.[871] Much commerce in the Sasanian era was conducted by non-Zoroastrians and non-Persians, though the Sasanian court took a special interest in innovating and controlling the marks of distinction that flowed both from and into the empire.[872] Evidence of importance of the Indian sea trade to Iran, the expansion of East Syriac Christianity into South Asia and China, as well as the extensive Sogdian mercantile network attest to the strength and importance of these communities in the late antique economy, which the Sasanians at time leveraged or attempted to control.[873]
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