He selects for them and appoints over them the best of His creation; and whenever He wishes His servants to grasp the stature that vicegerent enjoys with Him, He looses his tongue with words He has not loosed for you.
The mobedhān would then examine the case: if a valid claim lay between the king and his opponent and the evidence testified against the king, he would take the right from the monarch in full, leaving nothing outstanding. But if no sound claim existed, and the accuser’s plea proved baseless, unsupported by any proof, the judge would order the accuser punished and proclaim, “Such is the recompense of one who would malign the king and the kingdom.”
When the king had finished hearing the lawsuits, he would mount his royal throne, place the crown upon his head, turn to the assembly of courtiers and intimates, and announce, “I have rendered justice against myself so that none of you may dare perpetrate oppression or injustice against anyone. Therefore, whoever among you has an adversary, let him placate him.” On that day he would keep all his close companions at a distance, and whoever had been strong before him became weak in his presence.
Kings continued upon this way and this doctrine until the time of the wicked Yazdegerd. He violated the foundations laid by the House of Sāsān, wronged God’s creatures, and spread corruption. Then, on one of the days, a horse of unrivalled excellence and perfection appeared—no one in that age had ever seen its like for beauty and form. It entered through the palace gate, and every man in the army tried to seize it, but it eluded them until it came near Yazdegerd himself and halted motionless beside the portico. Yazdegerd said, “Stand back from this horse; let none of you approach it, for it is a special gift from God to me.”
He rose from his seat, gently stroked the horse’s face, then ran his hand along its back while the animal remained perfectly still. He called for a saddle, saddled the horse with his own hands, tightened the girth, and turned toward its hindquarters to place his foot in the stirrup. The horse kicked him squarely in the chest with a single, precise blow, and he fell dead on the spot. The animal then trotted away, and no one ever knew whence it had come or where it went. The people said, “That horse was an angel sent by God Most High to destroy him and deliver us from his tyranny and oppression.”
Anecdote: Qadi Abu Yusuf recounted, “In a judicial session of mine, Yahya ibn Khalid al-Barmaki appeared together with an adversary of his, a Magian, who lodged a claim against him and demanded from him….”