their revenues … and he has appointed teachers and judges and priests.141
Since we have seen that by the laws and customs of the ancients the injured received no benefit, but society suffered a mischief and loss in numbers and vigor, we have established this law and custom that people may act upon it in our own day and hereafter; and we have ordered the judges that if offenders of this kind, whose fines are fixed, repeat their offences a second time, their ears and nose are to be cut off.142
The Letter of Tansar represents a highly bureaucratized Sasanian administration of which the judiciary was, of course, an integral part. The second passage attests to the intention of the Persian ruler to reform the legal order in a way that brings its magistrates under his close control.143 Second to the Sasanian king, the supreme head of the judges, stood the “judge of the empire,” who was, in fact, the Zoroastrian high priest, the mowbedān mowbed. In the capacity of his religious authority, the Zoroastrian priest was entrusted with the supervision of all aspects of Zoroastrian religious life. In addition to their judicial authority, at least some of the mowbeds served as rulers of cities or as diplomats and were highly immersed in the empire’s political affairs.144
Nonetheless, the exact legal jurisdiction of the mowbed is not entirely clear. In his discussion on the function of the mayānjīg in the Sasanian period, Shaul Shaked makes a point that the term designated a judicial function: “Among the roles of this office was the supervision over measurements and listening to the complaints of the poor, the defense of whom it has been made a formal attribute of mōbads.”145 Shaked shows that the term mayānjīg was applied to the Zoroastrian divinity, Mithra, and it is in reference to the latter as a judge that in other texts we come across such terms as rāst dādwar, dādwarīh, mayānjīgīh, and azešmānd. These terms, according to Shaked, “denote separate judicial functions,” though, he admits, “it is not possible, in our state of knowledge, to distinguish more closely between them.”146 While the reference to a variety of judicial officeholders and the ambiguous character of the mowbed’s office make it difficult to obtain an accurate picture regarding the state of the judiciary under Sasanian rule, they also underscore its pluralistic character.
The Pahlavi text Rivāyat i Ēmēd i Ašawahištān (The religious explanation of Ēmēd, son of Ašawahišt) is a ninth- or tenth-century “collection of religious, social, and civil laws based on the Zoroastrian religious codes” and is believed to reflect Zoroastrian practice from the Sasanian era.147 Question 5 in this work refers to the duty of family guardianship. This includes an inquiry into the identity of the authority to whom the nomination of a guardian should be made. The issue of appointing family guardians sheds some light on the identity of Zoroastrian judges, as the question itself suggests that appointing guardians was a prerogative that belonged to a judicial authority. The answer establishes the following procedure:
If a religious authority or a priest or a minister is present [i.e., the presence of these religious eminences is required for the nomination of a guardian], in that case [the nominee’s] request to take family guardianship should be made to one of them. If neither an authority of the religion nor a priest nor a minister be present, [but] a sacred fire be in the vicinity, in the town, this claim should be announced by a regular visitor to that fire. If the situation does not prevail either, a righteous man who is a student of a priest, whose knowledge of the religion is rooted in his lineage, to him the request [of the official declaration of the guardian] should be made. If that is not available too, any adherent of Zoroastrianism in that town who is elderly, well known, and with good reputation, and his veneration for the soul and his wisdom are attested more [than the other’s], to him the request [of the official declaration of the guardian] should be made.148
The answer should be read in the context of its time, a period in which Zoroastrians no longer enjoyed a life within Zoroastrian sovereignty. The answer, like the entire text, reflects the difficulty met by Zoroastrians in maintaining their ancient customs in the context of a general decline in priestly circles.149 Yet the significance of this passage has also to do with the Sasanian era, as it attests once again to the crucial link between religious and judicial responsibilities in Zoroastrian eyes and, presumably, in Sasanian eyes as well.
Sasanian legal courts existed not only in central towns but also in rural settlements. In the latter, judgments were rendered by local village judges.150 The distinction between urban and rural courts is attested in the Babylonian Talmud:
Raba proclaimed or, as others say, Rav Huna: those who go up to the Land of Israel and who come down from Babylonia know that if an Israelite knows evidence for the benefit of a Gentile and, without being subpoenaed, goes into a Gentile court and testifies against another Israelite, in such a case, we shall excommunicate him. Why? Because [the Gentiles] collect money even on the evidence of a single witness. And we have made that statement only if it involved one witness, not two. And, further, we have made that ruling only in the case of a trial before the mgistā [untrained magistrates; rural courts], but [not] if it was before the davār [the Persian circuit court; the authorities’ court], where the judges impose an oath on the evidence of a single witness.151
The passage refers to two judicial forums, the mgistā and the davār. Whereas the former appears to have operated in the countryside and to have been administered by lay figures, the latter appears to have been a direct extension to the Sasanian judicial apparatus.
A striking characteristic of the Sasanian Empire was a strong emphasis on social demarcation. The strength of social rank in the Sasanian Empire is suggested by the following passage in The Letter of Tansar: “The King of Kings has had established new customs and new ways; but family and rank are as corner-piers and struts and foundations and pillars. When the foundation perishes the house decays, is ruined and collapses.”152
By prescribing discrete social categories, the Sasanians were drawing on an ancient Persian heritage that sought to maintain a system based on social rank. This heritage reached a point of legislative consolidation by the fifth century A.D. through the division of the middle class into social estates.153 Four main estates were established: priests and judges; warriors; scribes; and cultivators and craftsmen. Each estate consisted of further subdivisions. Whereas the higher classes included the king’s family, vassal rulers, courtiers, state officials, and rural nobility, the lower classes comprised nomadic and rural populations.
Legally speaking, despite this scale of social ranks, Sasanian society was divided into those who possessed citizenship and those who did not. The former had access to state courts; the latter did not.154 A member of the Sasanian society was automatically born into an agnatic group, a community. Membership in such a community entailed active participation in social life, religious worship, and personal and social security. The agnatic group includes subgroups of prominent members who held authority and regulated disputes.155 In general, community members shared the same religion. Thus, abandoning one’s religion entailed a loss of membership in one’s community. Yet being a non-Zoroastrian did not mean that a person lacked civic status.156 The Sasanian legal order was not closed to non-Zoroastrians, while non-Zoroastrians also had their own civic institutions to rely on.
Christian Judicial Institutions in the Sasanian Empire
The Sasanian Empire was ruled by the adherents of the Zoroastrian faith. Here Christians, in contrast to their status under Rome and like the Jews, were members of a religious minority group. Reading through the literary material produced by Christians and Jews under Sasanian rule, it is hard to avoid the notion of self-contained religious communities. That being said, it is worth considering these narratives as forms of a general “rhetoric of insularity,” in their attempt to instill in their readers a sense of communal identity.157 There is, therefore, reason to doubt these claims and consider the possibility
