| The Sasanian kings were Mazdeans, but their empire was home to many communities of different religions. It was the birthplace of Manichaeism, the syncretistic world religion of Mani who started his mission under the rule of Shab uhr I (242--270 CE). It was where the Babylonian Talmud , which preserved the laws and traditions of the rabbinic Jews, was collected and redacted. It was under the patronage of the Sasanian monarch, that the Christian Church of the East announced its independence from the Church of the Roman Empire, in the fifth century. With such diversity, the Sasanians' imperial ideology relied on ethnic and religious pluralism, where the leaders of the different religious communities managed their own internal affairs, while representing their people in interactions with the royal administration. Yet, most existing studies of the Sasanian period tend to either ignore or play down the significance of the many different religious groups in the empire's social structure and focus mainly on the Mazdean community. Such approaches lead to a misleadingly monolithic view of the Sasanian Society.;A main area where religious diversity played a critical role was in the construction of the legal framework of the different religious communities of the Sasanian Empire. The enforcement of law by the representatives of the religious institutions within their specific communities was one of the main factors that contributed to the formation of a communal identity. A comparative study of the internal organizational structure of the Mazdean, Jewish and Christian communities of the Late Sasanian period, with emphasis on family law, as a specific institution within the communal legal framework, paints a more holistic picture of its society prior to the Islamic conquest of the seventh century.;The articulation of the different spheres of legal authority and the identification of areas of overlap convey a more accurate picture of the Sasanian social structure, while retaining the importance of a certain level of communal legal autonomy, and highlighting the areas of cultural sharing. In addition, because women took a central role in family affairs, this study presents a more accurate account of the position of Sasanian women, in their own communities, and under imperial law. |
