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Towards A Social and Economic History of Eighteenth-Century Iran

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Thomas M. Ricks
Thomas M. Ricks*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Extract

Research in Iranian social and economic history is still relatively unknown. This situation is puzzling in view of the social and economic research in Arab and Turkish history, particularly from 1955 onwards. in the past ten years, social and economic research in these two areas of Middle East history have produced some excellent results. But similar research in Iranian history has not developed. This state of affairs is disappointing when we recall the words of Vladimir Minorsky in his "Foreword" to the Tadhkirat al-mulūk in 1943:

The study of the Islamic period of the history of Iran--which alone covers thirteen centuries--is still in its infancy, not so much for want of useful outlines of single periods as because of the limited methods of research which were so long employed.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 6 , Issue 2-3 , Summer 1973 , pp. 110 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1973

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Footnotes

Portions of this article were presented at a panel on "Problems of Iranian Historiography," co-sponsored by The Society for Iranian Studies and the Middle East Studies Association, held in Binghamton, New York, November, 1972. The author wishes to thank Professor Gene Garthwaite and the S.I.S. for that opportunity.

References

Notes

1. The terms "social" and "economic" are used throughout the paper in the sense generally employed by historians today and not by social scientists as such; that is, "social" history as used by E. J. Hobsbawn and G. Rude and "economic" history as used by D. S. Landes. To date, only the monographs of historians such as I. P. Petrushevsky, N. V. Pigulevskaya, A. Yu. Yakubovsky, and A. A. Alizadeh would begin to qualify as "social and economic" history within Iranian historiography. The research by Ann K. S. Lambton and C. Issawi, particularly the latter's recent work, Economic History of Iran, 1800-1914 (Chicago, 1972), are extremely useful but lack the general theoretical background needed in the research discussed in this paper. The same comment applies to the two recent Persian publications by Abū al-Qāsim Tāḥirī, Tārīkh-i siyāsī va ijtimācī-i Īrān: az marg-i Tīmūr tā marg-i Shāh cAbbās (Tehran, 1347/1968) and cAdnān Mazāraci, Tārīkh-i iqtiṣādi va ijtimācī-i Īrān va īrāniyān az āghāz tā Ṣafavīyyah (Tehran, 1348/1969).

2. See Claude Cahen, "L'Histoire economique et sociale de l'Orient musulman medieval," Studia Islamica, III (1955), pp. 93-115.

3. See A. H. Hourani and S. M. Stern, ed., The Islamic City (Oxford, 1970); D. S. Richards, ed., Islam and the Trade of Asia (Oxford, 1970); P. M. Holt, ed., Political and Social Change in Modern Egypt (London, 1968); M. A. Cook, ed., Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East (London, 1970); Gabriel Baer, Egyptian Guilds in Modern Times (Jerusalem, 1964) and idem, "The Administration, Economic and Social Functions of Turkish Guilds," International Journal of Middle East Studies, I, Part 1 (January, 1970), pp. 28-50.

4. Anonymous, Tadhkirat al-mulūk, trans. Vladimir Minorsky, Gibb Memorial Series, n.s., XVI (London, 1943), p. 1.

5. The term "historiography" is used in the sense of historical techniques as well as historical writing.

6. See Hādī Hidāyatī, "Mukhtiṣarī darbārah-i vaqāyicnigārīhā va nusakh khaṭṭī-yi fārsī marbūṭ bih tavārīkh-i qarn-i davāzdahum-i hijra". (A Summary of the Chronicles and Persian Manuscripts concerning eighteenth-century Histories), Majallah-i Dānishkadah- i Adabīyāt-i Tihrān, II, Part 3 (November, 1333/1954), pp. 17-46.

7. See Fereydoun Adamiyat, "Problems in Iranian Historiography (trans. Thomas M. Ricks)," Iranian Studies, IV, Part 4 (1971), pp. 132-156.

8. See the various issues of Bar-rasīhā-yi Tārīkhī and Rāhnamā-yi Kitāb as well as Jahāngīr Qāyimmaqāmī, ed., Yik ṣad va panjāh sanad-i tārīkhī az Jalāyīriyān tā Pahlavī (Tehran, 1348/1969).

9. See Gavin Hambly, "An Introduction to the Economic Organization of Early Qājār Iran," Iran, II (1964), pp. 69-81 for an example of demographic data-collecting from historical sources.

10. See Laurence Lockhart, Nadir Shah (London, 1938); idem, The Fall of the Safavid Dynasty (London, 1958); John R. Perry, "Karim Khan Zand," unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Pembroke College, Cambridge University, 1969); idem, "The Banū Kacb: An amphibious brigand state in Khuzistan," Le monde iranien et l'Islam, I (1971), pp. 131-152 for useful applications of research into the East India companies' records. Also see M. E. Yapp, "The India Office Records as a Source for the Economic History of the Middle East," Studies in the Economic History of the Middle East, ed. M. A. Cook (London, 1970), pp. 501-513 for some insights into this area of research.

11. For example, Parvīz Rajabī's article, "Ārtish-i īrān dar durah-i Zandīyyah," Bar-rasīhā-yi Tārīkhī, VI, Part 3 (1972), pp. 3-26 and Mehdī Roschanzamīr, "Khā nandigan va mā," Bar-rasīhā-yi Tārīkhī, VII, Part 4 (1972), pp. 175-178 where the authors view eighteenthcentury Iran as a centrally administered state with controls over the Persian Gulf similar to present-day Iran. The difficulty is overcome in Muḥammad Kashmīrī's article, "Taṣṣaruf-i Baṣrah bidast-i Īrāniyān dar zamān-i shahryarī-yi Zand (The Occupation of Basra by the Iranian People in the Time of Zand Rule)," Barrasīhā-yi Tārīkhī, VI, Part 1 (1970), pp. 87-126 and VI, Part 2 (1970), pp. 69-104.

12. An excellent example is the Tadhkirat al-mulūk and the many difficulties Vladimir Minorsky had in analyzing the social and economic conditions of provincial Iran from the scanty information in a manual of Safavid administration.

13. See B. Nikitine, "Les valis d'Ardalan," Revue du monde musulman, IXL (1922), pp. 70-104; V. Minorsky, "Mushac shac," Encyclopedia of Islam, Supp., pp. 160-163. Also see B. Nikitine, "Les Afshars d'Urumiyeh," Journal Asiatique (January-March, 1929), pp. 67-123; Aḥmad Kasravī, Tārīkh-i pānṣad sālah'-i Khūzistān, 3rd Edition (Tehran, 1330/1951); and cAlī Muḥammad Sākī, Jughrāfiyā-yi tārīkhī va tārīkh-i Luristān (Tehran, 1343/1964) for additional research into families in Western Iran.

14. The general exceptions in Iranian historiography have been the Russian monographs. See I. P. Petrushevsky, History of Iranian Studies," Fifty Years of Soviet Oriental Studies (Brief Reviews) (Moscow, 1968), pp. 3-30.

15. Hādī Hidāyatī, Tārīkh-i Zandīyyah, I: Īrān dar zamān-i Karīm Khān (Tehran, 1331/1952), pp. 30-64.

16. Parvīz Rajabī, Iran unter Karim Khan (Gottingen, 1970); idem, "Ārtish-i Irān dar durrah-i zandīyyah"; Mehdī Roschanzanīr, Die Zand-Dynastie (Hamburg, 1970); and idem, "Puzhūhishī naw darbārah-i ravābiṭ-i Īrān bā bīgānigān dar sadah-i davāzdahum-i hijra (New Research on the Relations between Iran and Other Countries in the 18th Century)," Bar-rasīhā-yi Tārīkhī, VI, Part 6 (1971), pp. 53-72 and VII, Part 3 (1972), pp. 23-44.

17. Tadhkirat al-mulūk, pp. 24-26 and 162-163.