He had to repair the damage to society wrought by the Mazdakite movement, so he made peace with the Byzantines in 5 32, on condition of the Persians evacuating several fortresses in Lazica and the Byzantines paying Khusrau to maintain the Caucasian defences. Reforms of taxation and internal administration occupied the new ruler for a number of years.
The Mazdakite disorders had disrupted not only the collection of taxes but also the titles to land. The need for reform, however, was of long standing and the social upheaval brought on by the Mazdakites only enhanced an already archaic system. Kavad had initiated the reform by surveying and measuring the land, but this had not been finished at the time of his death. The cadastre was finished by Khusrau, but more than land was measured; date palms and olive trees were counted and assessed for tax purposes. Finally individuals were counted for the head tax. The old system of assessing taxes on the produce of the land was not only archaic but unjust, for assessment was made on the harvest, but before it was gathered. This meant that farmers had to wait until tax collectors arrived to assess the harvest, which was sometimes spoiled because of the delay.
In Kavad's time the assessment seems to have been made after the harvest had been collected, which was an improvement. The new system of Khusrau did away with the yearly assessment and instead established a fixed tax, the average of several years' harvest. This represented a tremendous advance, since plans could be made henceforth on the basis of the known taxes. The head tax did not apply to the upper classes - clergy, knights and scribes - but rather to men of the common people between twenty and fifty years old. After the reform taxes were collected in money rather than in kind, and payments were made three times a year.
The importance of the new tax system cannot be underestimated since it served as the model for the later caliphate. The resemblance of the tax reform of Khusrau to the Roman indictio with the iugatio and capitatio, as established by the tax reforms of Diocletian, has been noted by several scholars.1 The result of Khusrau's tax reforms was that the ruler had a fixed amount entering his coffers every year. The lowlands of Iraq, as had been the case under the Achaemenids, paid the lion's share of the land tax in the Sasanian empire, evidence of the continuing importance of the Tigris-Euphrates area.
Sargon of Akkad the Empire Builder
