Working in the dīwāns of the non-Arabs, as far as Ibn Qutayba could ascertain, should include a mastery of all those sciences that were just quoted by Ibn Qutayba from the earlier sources. As we can readily tell, those sciences made no mention of army grants and the like. This must mean that the dīwāns that were translated must have included the elementary texts of those sciences. For it was quite unlikely that Ibn Qutayba would call on the kuttāb of his time to acquire these sciences if there were not any texts through which they could be acquired. After all, he was the one who participated in supplying such texts by composing his kitāb al-anwā' (Book of the Rising and Setting or Stars), which touches upon some of those sciences, and particularly the sciences that relate the rising and setting of the stars to agricultural (read revenue) needs.[128] I shall soon return to mention other books in this regard.
For now, the interest in Ibn Qutayba's statement is that it confirms the meaning of the dīwān, which I claim was the one intended by al-Nadīm and al-Jahshiyārī. If that meaning is accepted, then one could say that the translations of the Persian and Greek dīwāns into Arabic must have included a group of elementary scientific texts, which were in turn very much connected to the philosophical and scientific texts that were mentioned before. How could it be otherwise when we know that any government must acquire such elementary sciences in order for it to function in any sophisticated manner?
Another confirmation for this reading comes from another contemporary of al-Jahshiyārī and al-Nadīm who was also interested in the education of the kuttāb and government bureaucrats. Several of his books have reached us from about the middle of the tenth century. The author in question was the famous scientist, Abū al-Wafā' al-Būzjanī (d. 998), whose name was very closely associated with the Greek mathematical and astronomical works that were translated into Arabic. It was this Abū al-Wafā' who had left us two books which directly address the geometric and arithmetical needs of the artisans and workers (obviously including government employees), that were called: What the Artisans need by way of Geometry, and What the workers and kuttāb need by way of Arithmetic.[129] In both of these texts, Abū al-Wafā' takes up elementary mathematical problems, of the types that were obviously discussed in the dīwāns of his time, or among those who were employed in those government departments who were then learning how to carry out the new functions that required those new sciences.
Moreover, we need only take a glance at Keys of the Sciences (mafātīḥ al-'ulūm), a book by al-Khwārizmī al-Kātib, who lived some ten years or so after al-Nadīm and who himself was a dīwān employee, to appreciate the encyclopedic knowledge such an employee of the time needed to know.[130] Here we also see a direct connection between the kind of sciences that were practiced in the dīwān and the philosophical sciences, starting with logic. Most of the remaining sciences that were listed by al-Khwārizmī were in fact at the very core of the ancient sciences we are now discussing.
Even in the relatively later period, we see that those sciences continued to be practiced in the government dīwāns. This should not be surprising as we already know that most administrative offices are usually very conservative and tend to preserve practices for centuries at a time, practices that are usually inherited from one employee to the next, if not from father to son. From that tradition, we see in the work, kitāb qawānīn al-dawāwīn (The Book of the Rules of the dīwāns) of Ibn Mamātī (d. 1209) the many arithmetical and natural scientific material that the dīwān employee was supposed to know.[131] And Ibn Mamātī ought to know better, for he himself was the descendant of a family that worked in the Egyptian dīwān for centuries.
Similarly, later generations have left us several ḥisba (market overseeing) manuals which mention not only the scientific books that the market overseer himself ought to know, but the scientific books that he should use in order to test the various professionals and to control their products from forgeries and the like. These professionals included bonesetters, physicians, pharmacists, as well as others whose names have been summarily mentioned in the work of Ibn al-Ukhuwwa of Egypt (d. 1329) called Ma'ālim al-qurbā fī Aḥkām al-ḥisbā.[132]
For those who may object and say that this book is very late, and its contents may not apply to the kind of knowledge that the Umayyad worker was supposed to know, and the kind that al-Nadīm was talking about, I can only say: was it possible that there would not be in early Islamic times someone who would oversee the affairs of the public, their public health, their protection from deception, etc., and that these functions entered the Islamic administration in later times only? Was it not part of the duties of the administrator of the public treasury (bayt al-māl) to see to it that the right proportion of gold is cast in the minted dīnārs, together with what all that implies by way of managing alloys, composition of metals, and exacting weights and measures? Wouldn't such functions include some alchemy, or at least overlap with it, or what was then called al-ṣan'a, that was being sought by Khālid? Wasn't this ṣan'a also connected to pharmaceutical sciences, and the knowledge of weights and measures, as well as others?
In summary, despite lack of actual manuals that preserve for us a description of the actual operations that took place in the early dīwān, or of the contents of those early manuals or the sciences that were translated, this despite all the evidence that we have reviewed so far about the existence of those operations and sciences, we still cannot ignore the arabization of the dīwāns, which was tied by al-Nadīm himself to the process of the transmission of the ancient sciences to Islamic civilization. The consequences that can be drown from it can help us resolve some of the problems that were left unresolved by the contact or continuing pocket theories usually deployed as corollaries of the classical narrative.
From al-Nadīm's account, we note that the arabization process, including the restructuring of the foundation of the Islamic government, took place during the days of 'Abd al-Malik, the first caliph to mint Arabic dīnārs that were independent of the Byzantine ones, who also engraved on them Qur'ānic verses rather than pictures of emperors, as we have already seen.
He is also the one of whom the sources speak as being the first to reorganize the administration of Islamic government and to centralize its functions and streamline it, to use modern parlance anachronistically. He apparently did all that through the arabization of the dīwān. Weren't these administrative reforms of the government absolutely essential for the foundation of the new Islamic state, when we also see that the Abbāsids themselves, who came to power almost fifty years after 'Abd al-Malik, did not change back any of the reforms that 'Abd al-Malik had introduced? This despite the enmity that the Abbāsids harbored and demonstrated toward the Umayyads, and despite the claims made by the classical narrative and some orientalists that the main backbone of the Abbāsid Empire was the Persian "element." Had this racial categorization been true, wouldn't the Abbāsids have reverted the dīwān back to Persian? Wouldn't this mean that 'Abd al-Malik's reforms were extremely significant and cannot be simply bypassed in favor of focusing on the Persian "element" of the Abbāsids?
129
Abū al-Wafā' al-Būzjānī,
130
Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. Yūsuf al-Khwārizmī al-Kātib,