Sassanid Sultanic Literature in the Early Abbasid Court and the Question of its Transfer

Abstract

This paper deals with the transfer of Sassanid “Sultantic” literature—that is, literature on governance and the appropriate forms of government—from its original, Persian/Zoroastrian environment to the Arab-Islamic sphere. The work focuses on social factors in the process of transfer and tries to examine traditional factors. The sections of the paper deal with the key subjects as follows: reasons for the emergence of Sassanid sultanic literature in its original context, followed by a study of Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansour’s need for political legitimacy, and the importance of translating Sasanian sultanic literature to meet these challenges. It then explains how later Caliph Al-Maamoun subsequently relied on Sassanid sultanic sources during the wars of succession within an Abbasid civil war. The paper’s findings are that the transfer of the Sassanid sultanic heritage to the Abbasids was accelerated by the political and social experience in terms of the method and philosophy of government, and the opposition confronting the state. The key contents of sultanic literature in the Abbasid period concentrated on the meanings of obedience to the Sultan and the ruler in his capacity as an extension of the ancient oriental sultan.