Dīwān al-ʿarḍ (department of the army), a subdivision of the dīwān al-jaysh or dīwān al-jund (Pers. dīwān-i sipāh), which was concerned with the ʿarḍ (the mustering, parading, inspection) of soldiers for a range of administrative purposes such as grading, registration, identification and the related matters of pay and other disbursements. The convention of ʿarḍ can be traced back to Pre-Islamic Iran, then through the ʿAbbāsid period to the late-medieval dynas…