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 that Christian and Jewish communities were not as autonomous as their religious elites wished them to be. This is suggested, among other things, by the fact that Christians and Jews had recourse to Sasanian judicial institutions.
A passage from the Mādayān ī Hazār Dādestān (The book of a thousand judgments) suggests that this work—the only Sasanian legal document preserved to date—is a compilation of Sasanian judicial cases and decisions going back to the pre-Islamic period. The compilation includes very few references to non-Zoroastrians. Among those is one particular regulation addressing the question of the property of an heirless deceased:
Non-believers [i.e., non-Zoroastrians] are not obliged to settle all [the debts of a deceased Zoroastrian head of household, as this must be done by his successors, just as] they also do not become his heirs. As regards non-believers—except for the fact that they shall not be appointed stūrs [persons upon whom is laid the obligation to provide a successor for a dead man who left no male issue], as well as for everything which comes, is due in line of direct family succession or [agnatic] kinship—[ … they ha]ve [?] decisions concerning everything else as the same as those for Zoroastrians.158
The regulation deals with non-Zoroastrian heirs in a Zoroastrian household. It stipulates that there is no obligation incumbent upon non-Zoroastrians to appoint a successor for an heirless male (a stūr-ship). A possible reason for this rule was an interest by the state religion in preventing the proliferation of non-Zoroastrian successors.159 For present purposes, of special interest is the final part of the regulation, indicating that non-Zoroastrians, except in matters pertaining to inheritance, are liable to the same decisions as Zoroastrians. This suggests that, at least partially, non-Zoroastrians fell under the same legal jurisdiction as their Zoroastrian neighbors.
Two other sources that suggest that non-Zoroastrians had access to Sasanian courts are: the Life of Mār Abā, the catholicos, patriarch of the East Syrian Church (fl. 540-52); and a legal treatise, Maktbānūtā d-‘al Dinē (A collection of judgments), written by the East Syrian cleric Išō‘bokt (eighth century; exact dates unknown).160 According to the Life of Mār Abā, the catholicos was originally a Zoroastrian who had converted to Christianity. As a result, he had to leave his official position in the Sasanian court, and he faced charges from his previous coreligionists: “As the king released him, the king announced: that you have trespassed our orders and came, we forgive you. But these four very heavy charges, which the Magians [mgušhē] bring against you, are as follows: that you have turned people away from the Magian religion and converted them to Christianity; that you did not permit your fellow people to take multiple wives; that you drew lawsuits from the Magian way to yourself; that you were first a heathen [ḥanpā] and later became a Christian.”161 A primary concern for the accusers of Mār Abā was the fact that he was drawing Christians away from the Sasanian judiciary, indicating that such recourse was an option.162
Išō‘bokt’s work may serve as further indication of Christian use of Sasanian courts. The treatise is an attempt to harmonize legislative measures that had already been established under the Sasanians and were applied later by the episcopal tribunal.163 Chapter 3 of the present study discusses the contents of Išō‘bokt’s compilation in greater detail. For now, it should suffice to note that his work refers to matters that fall under the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical as well as secular judges. As a Christian clergyman, Išō‘bokt sought to restrict Christians to the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical judge. Drawing from earlier materials that predated Islamic rule—most notably, from Zoroastrian law—Išō‘bokt was among the first ecclesiastical jurists to attempt to introduce a unified religious and civil corpus of ecclesiastical regulations to the Eastern Christian churches. His notion of a judiciary that embodied both legal realms, the religious and the secular, was likely to have been inspired by a Zoroastrian tradition. Indeed, ecclesiastical principles pertaining to civil law, such as questions of inheritance and marriage, had already emerged in the fifth century; yet the absence of an ecclesiastical civil jurisdiction could no longer be tolerated by the church.
In Išō‘bokt’s treatise and in the Life of Mār Abā, there