Parham Mehraram; Mohammad Seyed Fatemi
Volume 5, Issue 20 , March 2020, , Pages 131-169
Abstract
There has been valuable research on the socio-political structure of the Sassanid era. Most have described Sassanid society as an example of feudal or authoritarian Eastern societies. But the historical evidence is not entirely consistent with these two theories. It seems that the existence of a powerful ...
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There has been valuable research on the socio-political structure of the Sassanid era. Most have described Sassanid society as an example of feudal or authoritarian Eastern societies. But the historical evidence is not entirely consistent with these two theories. It seems that the existence of a powerful aristocracy alongside a strong government seeking to concentrate more power makes this society a prominent example of Eisen's bureaucratic empires. In this case, some concepts related to public law can be argued that they cannot be formed in the two former types. Examples include early national identities and, consequently, the independence of the state's legal personality from the real ruler, which has significant effects on political traditions such as succession traditions and power relations between the king, the nobility, the people and the bureaucracy. It seems that in the Sasanian political-legal structure, it is impossible to deal with power and political-legal structures such as that of ruler. At the same time, the dual nature of the bureaucratic empires as both traditional and modern system and a dynamic point of view (as opposed to a static one) can well justify the inconsistencies in the Sasanian government and the inconsistent historical evidence.
