A comparative study of the annual income of the Sassanian Empire after the reforms of Khosrow Anoushiravan with the Roman, and Han empires and theAbbasid Caliphate .

Document Type : .

Author

PhD in ancient Iranian history, Department of History, Faculty of Literature and Humanities, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran.

10.30465/ehs.2025.48931.1981
Abstract
From the Sasanian Empire and other great states such as the Roman Empire, the Han Empire, and the Abbasid Caliphate, there are reliable tax data that can be used to compare the economic power of these governments. Since the current currency and the geographical conditions of the states were different, contemporary researchers use the conversion of money into the price of grain, especially wheat, to estimate the economic power of the states. By finding the approximate price of wheat in each of the investigated states and converting the total tax received by these states into the mass unit of wheat, it is possible to compare their economic power. The main issue of the current research is the comparative study of the income of the Sasanian kingdom with the mentioned governments to compare their economic power. The obtained results will show that, Although the Sassanians collected less taxes from each people and lands than the States after them, but on average, they had about 3 to 6 times the income of the largest non-Iranian states of the ancient and middle world in terms of the price of wheat. The research method comparative study and data collection method is library.

Keywords


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Volume 14, Issue 2 - Serial Number 28
December 2025
Pages 323-360

  • Receive Date 04 May 2024
  • Revise Date 04 November 2025
  • Accept Date 19 November 2025