ABSTRACT
The Arabs considered the Circle of Justice a Persian idea, and most modern scholars follow their line. The pre-Islamic Persians did know the concept of the Circle, but they learned it from Mesopotamian sources, and only very gradually. Achaemenid inscriptions contained most of the Circle’s elements, but without the sense of their interdependence that had developed in the ancient Near East. The Seleucids and Parthians preserved Achaemenid ideas but altered them to fit their own cultures. The idea of interdependence between ruler and people apparently revived only under the last Persian dynasty, the Sasanians, and only late in their reign. In collecting Achaemenid texts, the Sasanians stripped the Circle of its Mesopotamian context and relocated it in Parthia. Legends of eastern Persian kings became the primary vehicle for transmitting the concept of the Circle to later Muslims. The impression of just rule created by late Sasanian writings, however, influenced early Muslim historians’ view of previous eras of Persian history, and they attributed the Circle of Justice to Persian rulers of all periods. The Persians were also the ones who fully integrated money and the treasury into the Circle of Justice.
