چکیده:
Ancient economy has commonly been studied in the context of commerce and trade, less attention being paid to the production
side of the economy. Additionally, artificial periodizations based on political change, including the division of Near Eastern history
to the pre-Islam and Islamic periods, has prevented historians from considering issues such as economic growth in the long term. The
present paper, focusing on the production side of the Sasanian economy, tries to establish certain principles and introduce possible
criteria to study the economic history of the Sasanians. Regions of Khuzistan and Tokharistan/Bactria provide useful examples and
comparisons for illustrating some of the points.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Continuity and Change in Late Antique Irān: An Economic View of the Sasanians Khodadad Rezakhani Freie Universität, Berlin Received: February 13, 2015 Accepted: April 8, 2015 Ancient economy has commonly been studied in the context of commerce and trade, less attention being paid to the produc- tion side of the economy.
Keywords: Sasanians, Islam, Economy, Agriculture, Late Antiquity, Khuzistan, Tokhāristān, Bactria, Irān Introduction The debate over continuity or break between "ancient" and"mediaeval" worlds is in a sense the raison d'etre of the field of "late antiquity" as a whole.
In the economic sense, however, although much is said about the relationship between the economies of late antique powers,3 little has been expressed pointedly about the continuity between the economic systems that extend to both sides of the supposed Islamic break in the history of the West Asia, particularly in the former territories of the Sasanian Empire and its immediate peripheries.
Judging from the prominence of Sasanian investment in the irrigation system, demonstrable evidence for the increasing population and exploitation of marginal lands, and signs of agricultural change, we might then propose that the economy of Khuzestan was not in decline in late Sasanian times, rather in a form of change and transformation to a different type of production.
Other cities of the region are ratherunder-studied, some including Balkh/Bactria itself showing archaeological evidence of occupation mostly in the Islamic period (Knobloch 2002: 104-6).
Archaeological surveys tell us about an increasing tendency towards urbanization in Khuzestan during the late Sasanian and early Islamic times, although the evidence for this is sometimes more textual than archaeologically based.