Social Dynamics

Parthian and Sasanian societies were highly stratified. This made an impression on Roman sources, such as Tacitus and Ammianus, who describe a deep gulf between nobles and common people.^[833] The Arsacid king of kings and his family occupied the very top of the social hierarchy, a role that the provincial kings fulfilled in their provinces.

In the Arsacid Empire a number of powerful noble families operated with a great deal of independence and fulfilled a variety of official roles.^[834] While not a ‘senate’ they were chief among aristocratic counsellors to whom the king would turn for military and political expertise.^[835] Members of these families, which included the Suren and Karen clans, supplied a number of both empires’ generals as well as diplomatic envoys, supplementing members of the Arsacid line.^[836] Seneca referred to these great Parthian noble families as megistanes and, correspondingly, the Sasanian inscriptions call them the wuzurgan (“the great ones,” “grandees”), who surpassed many of the provincial kings and even the Arsacid king of kings in wealth, courtly opulence, and military power.^[837] Variations no doubt existed among the social structures of the different Parthian kingdoms, though to judge from evidence from regions as different as pre-Sasanian Pärs, Elymais, Armenia and Hatra, the rulers and aristocracies of the kingdoms eventually adopted aspects of Arsacid court culture once they were integrated into the “Parthian Commonwealth.”^[838] Cities with Greco-Macedonian institutions and Hellenized populations, such as Seleukeia-Tigris, Dura Europos, Seleukeia-Eulaios (Susa), Babylon, and Charax Spasinou (Mesene), were an important social and demographic force in the early Parthian Empire. They maintained many of their Greek institutions and urban features even as the urban fabric itself changed and filled in.^[839] Such cities maintained their systems of self-governance for a time, though eventually, due to rebellions and economic and demographic decline or rivalry, they were taken over by the king of kings, with only Susa surviving semi- autonomous into the Sasanian period.^[840]

A variety of sources attest to freeborn noblemen, referred to as liberi by Justin and eleutheroi in a Parthian-era parchment from Dura Europos that records the titles of the city's strategos.^[841] These likely correspond to the azadan in the Sasanian inscriptions and could form divisions of picked men under the service of the king of kings.^[842] Members of the wuzurgan routinely served as generals and councillors for the king of kings, and, as the Dura Europos document indicates, various lesser administrative officials could be drawn from the ranks of the nobles.

Skilled artisans, artists, architects, musicians, and merchants occupied a place and role outside traditional Parthian class structure and roles. Slaves taken in war or raids, which could be bought and sold, formed the substratum.

The society of the early Sasanian Empire resembled that of the Arsacid Empire, with a small body of noblemen, a large body of commoners, and slaves.^[843] The vast majority of the population consisted of peasantry, though skilled craftsmen, merchants, and learned professions such as physicians, engineers, and scribes occupied intermediate and often fluid statuses. The nature of Sasanian society changed over the course of the empire, and one should approach late source material with a measure of caution. They present a static view drawn from post-conquest remembrances of the late Sasanian Empire preserved by Muslim historians, or idealized, religiously minded social aspirations from Zoroastrian priestly texts that attempt to define Sasanian society according to the societal structure described in the Avesta.

We have no direct evidence of official or large-scale efforts to conform Parthian society to Avestan tradition, though it is possible that these ideas exerted some influence among certain communities. In contrast, medieval Middle Persian and Arabic texts reflect several disparate priestly and royal attempts to map onto, or rather, reverse engineer, an idealized pseudo-Avestan class structure for Persian society in the late Sasanian period even if the reality was much more fluid. The majority of Avestan texts describe a society divided among three castes or “estates”: priests (Av. ddrauuan-), warriors (Av. radaestar-), and cattle breeders (Av. vastriia-, Jsuiiant-).^[844] A young Avestan commentary adds a fourth: artisans (Av. huitis).^[845] Departing from these Avestan ideals, the late Zoroastrian Middle Persian literature describes the society of the Sasanian Empire as divided into four castes (Mid.

Pers. pesag).^[846] While such a rigid caste system is likely an idealized remembrance or scholarly and political aspiration, it is clear that at certain points in Sasanian history, religious and legal specialists attempted to define Persian society by their idealized categories, though they never succeeded in rigidly structuring it, considering the constancy of the efforts. Several conflicting descriptions exist demonstrating both that Sasanian social ideals were continually contested and that different formulations could even coexist. Reflecting a late antique clerical ideal, Pahlavi texts such as the Denkard and Skandgumamg Wizar describe four castes. These consist of priests (asronan), warriors (artestaran), those who work the land, including herders (wastaryosan) and farmers (dahigan), and artisans (hutuxsan)^[847] Likely reflecting the view of Sasanian society from the point of view of the late Sasanian court versus the priesthood, the Tansar-nama describes the first two estates as consisting of clergy and warriors. The third class includes a variety of individuals who do intellectual work, such as scribes (dabiran), administrators, physicians, poets, and astronomers, and encompasses artisans, farmers, herders, and merchants.^[848] These four religiously defined castes appear to have existed in parallel with divisions between and among the nobility and commoners. Indicating that a great deal of tension existed between the religiously defined, Avestan-inspired castes and actual Sasanian class structure, we read in primary sources of simple country priests who supported themselves by tilling the soil, while ambitious priests such as Kerdir and even court musicians conniving their way into the ranks of the high aristocracy.^[849]

As in the Parthian Empire, aristocrats formed a small minority of the population in the Sasanian Empire. The early primary sources, Säbuhr I's Hajjiabad and Naqsh-e Rostam inscriptions and Narseh's Paikuli inscription, provide a view into the divisions of the early Sasanian aristocracy.^[850] The majority of the aristocracy consisted of warriors, though others, such as priests, could also be granted noble status.

The Sasanian king of kings (sahan sah) and his family occupied the top of the Persian social hierarchy, followed by the provincial kings (sahrdaran), princes of the Sasanian clan not directly related to the king (wispuhragan), the great Parthian and Persian families (wuzurgan), and then the nobles (azadan) and tribal chiefs (kadag- xwadayan). Sabuhr I's inscriptions indicate that the princes, grandees, and nobles could also take on various official functions, though there was no unbreakable link between the offices and their rank. Sabuhr I's names everyone from the king's sons to high officials and military commanders, such as the hargbed, bidaxs hazarbed, down to the court jailer and master of the hunt. The importance of these titles is not constant in the royal inscriptions, indicating that much of administrative structure of the court was still in flux and the relative importance of these offices was still being negotiated, often as a function of individual officeholders' relationship with the king of kings as much as anything else.

Sasanian society experienced several dramatic upheavals and changes over the course of the sixth century. Kawad I and his son Husraw I introduced a number of reforms, which ultimately decreased the power, wealth, and landholdings of the great families, including the ability to control private armies. In an attempt to break the power and prerogatives of the wuzurgan, Kawad I supported a priest called Mazdak who preached communal property holding and social levelling.^[851] This eventually led to Kawad I's overthrow at the hands of the wuzurgan and the rise of his son Husraw I, but not before many of these families were greatly weakened or destroyed. Husraw I took advantage of the disorder that followed and the learned valuable lessons from his father's clumsy though necessary efforts to break the wuzurgan to impose a new social structure, which is the one reflected in the majority of the Islamic literature.^[852] He provided lands and property to lower aristocrats that had been deprived of it, while neutralizing many of the old nobility's privileges.

When Husraw I reformed the empire's taxation system, he extended direct taxation to the holdings of the landed aristocracy. It reduced the burden on the peasantry and introduced a fixed rate of taxation based on a land survey and a means-based poll tax. Husraw I's agricultural reforms provided land to dispossessed farmers and distributed land confiscated from the old landed aristocracy to members of newly important classes of military aristocrats (aswaran) and local nobility (dehgan), who owed their position to the court alone. The aswaran formed the core of a new, professional army and the dehgans were given the status of small landowners, with expectations of local military service and taxation in return. This created ties of support between the central court and the aswaran and dehgan classes. In addition, the court, in collusion with priests, exerted official control over who was noble or not, simultaneously elevating individuals according to favor or merit while attempting to strengthen barriers between classes.

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Source: Bang Peter F., Bayly C.A., Scheidel Walter (eds.). The Oxford World History of Empire. Volume Two: The History of Empires. Oxford University Press,2020. — 1352 p.. 2020

Social Dynamics

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