The Role of Sasanian Divans in Charitable and Public Welfare Activities: An Investigation into Social and Economic Functions

Document Type : .

Authors

Dep. of History, University of Tehran

10.30465/ehs.2026.54317.2090
Abstract
In the Sasanian administrative system, dīwāns operated with the aim of securing governmental interests and in accordance with the biological needs of the members of society. In scholarship, the role of the dīwāns of this era in organizing charitable and public-benefit affairs has received less attention and requires independent examination. Accordingly, the main problem of the present study is how Sasanian dīwāns, through the management of taxation (kharāj), expenditures (nafaqāt), agriculture, judiciary, and endowments (mawqūfāt), operated in providing public welfare, supporting vulnerable strata, and consolidating social order; in light of this, the central question is how public-benefit and supportive affairs functioned as a public policy and an institutionalized administrative mechanism, and how these dīwāns, by creating an administrative network, supporting production, establishing justice, and distributing resources, linked it to the reproduction of the political legitimacy of the Sasanian imperial state. The findings of this study, using a descriptive-analytical method, indicate that the dīwān of taxation and expenditures, the dīwān of agriculture and expenditures, the dīwān of justice, and the dīwān of kardagān, through financing construction costs, supporting agriculture, supervising judicial justice, and registering and administering endowments, attended to public-benefit and supportive affairs and the creation and regulation of social order.

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Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript
Available Online from 27 September 2026

  • Receive Date 21 February 2026
  • Revise Date 02 September 2026
  • Accept Date 27 September 2026