Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-pftt2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-08T10:37:41.759Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Qajar Household and Its Estates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

J. D. Gurney
J. D. Gurney*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Much of nineteenth-century Iranian history is still written from European materials--travellers’ accounts, private papers, diplomatic or commercial archives--and nowhere is that disadvantage seen more keenly than in social and economic studies. The most recent, exceedingly useful compilation of economic selections for Qajar Iran, The Economic History of Iran 1800-1914, edited by Charles Issawi, has only two extracts from first-hand nineteenth century Persian sources. Inevitably that gives a false perspective to any discussion of the internal economic structure of the country, and likewise social attitudes are glimpsed through the palimpsest of western interpretations. A basic prerequisite is the more systematic collection and classification of Persian material, from government archives, vaqf or private possession; it is only their intensive study that will provide the information about and insight into the social and economic problems that are beginning to be sketched on a more theoretical or discursive level; detailed monographic studies, on regions, towns, communities, classes, individual trades or industries, have to clothe the skeletal hypotheses which otherwise might run the risk of empty theorizing.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 16 , Issue 3-4: Studies on the Economic and Social History of Iran in the Nineteenth Century , Summer-Autumn 1983 , pp. 137 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1983

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Notes

* The following is a translation of the third and fourth sections of the document. Round brackets denote phrases used in the text; square brackets contain explanatory words or phrases added in translation.

1. I am grateful to Professor Homā Nāṭiq for suggesting a translation of this document, first published by her in Nāmeh-i ˓Ulūm-i Ijtimā˓ī, second series, no. 1, Spring 2535 (1976), pp. 9-49. Professor A. K. S. Lambton and M. A. Katouzian have both given invaluable advice on numerous points in the translation and summary, for which I am greatly indebted; whatever errors there might be are entirely my responsibility.

2. An exception to the general approach criticized in this paragraph is Lambton's, A. K. S. Landlord and Peasant in Persia (Oxford 1953).Google Scholar Despite the great range it covers from the Arab conquest to the twentieth century, it contains Persian source material for the Qajar period that in the 25 years since its publication has never been thoroughly re-examined.

3. See Bāmdād, Mihdī, Sharḥ-i Ḥāl-i Rijāl-i Irān (Tehran 1347) II, pp. 66–70Google Scholar, for an account of his life (1231-1301 A.H./1815-1883/4 A.D.), his religious and literary background in Garmrūd, his early dīvānī positions and governorships, and a brief assessment of his long tenure of the Foreign Ministry from 1268 A.H./1852 A.D. until his death in 1301 A.H./1883/4 A.D., with one interval from Ṣafar 1291/March 1874 to Jamādī al-Avval 1297/April 1880. In these years he was sent to Mashad as mutavallī-bāshī to make way for his rival Mīrzā Ḥusain Khān Sepahsālār, recently dismissed from his position as ṣadr-i ˓aẓam. When the latter was deprived of his numerous offices and made Governor of Qazvin, Mu'tamin al-Mulk was recalled to his previous Ministry but also retained his office of mutavallī-bāshī until Mīrzā Ḥusain Khān was sent to Mashad as Governor, in Ramaān 1298 A.H./July/August 1881 A.D.

Muṣṭafā Khān Mu'tamin al-Dawleh's own career closely followed his father's in Government service; he was his deputy in the Foreign Ministry (nā'ib al-avval) and head of the passport office (ra'īs-i kull-i taẕ kireh), and during these years in Khurasan, his father's deputy at the Shrine. When his father returned to Tehran, he remained as deputy administrator for some months (during which time he reported a miracle that occurred there, I˓timād al-Salṭaneh, Maṭla˓ al-Shams, Tehran 1301 A.H., II, 378-9). For his subsequent career, see Bāmdād, V, 291-2: his most important later position would appear to have been that of kārguẕār of Azarbaijan 1317-19 A.H./1899-1901 A.D.

4. This phrase, janāb-i mustaṭāb-i ajal-i khudāvandgārī, or variants of it, refer to his own father; throughout this text, the Arabic expression rūḥi fidāh(ū) (may my soul be his sacrifice) is usually used in respect of his father.

5. Ḥarat-i ˓alaiheh al-salām is taken throughout as referring to the Imām Riā.

6. For all references to weights, measures and currency, transliterated according to Persian usage in the singular, see Lambton, A. K. S., Persian Grammar (Cambridge 1961), pp. 258–9Google Scholar, and Issawi, Charles (ed.), The Economic History of Iran 1800-1914 (Chicago 1971), pp. 343–5, 387-90.Google Scholar

7. See Maṭla˓ al-Shams, II, 238-43 for a description of the topography of Mashad in this period. MacGregor visited Mashad in 1875 and left a general account and a sketch map of the town, MacGregor, C. M., Narrative of a Journey through the Province of Khorassan and on the N.W. Frontier of Afghanistan in 1875 (London 1879).Google Scholar

8. Razmārā, H. A., Farhang-i Jugrāfiyā-yī Īrān (Tehran 1329 H.S./1951 A.D.), IX, 371Google Scholar, states that Goud-i Sulūk was in the district of Tabādakān, only 1 km. east of Mashad with a population of 140 inhabitants.

9. A Khurāsānī term for kaval, hoops of baked clay placed in the tunnel of a qanāt to prevent it falling in.

10. The distinction between sālār and dihqān is not clear from the text. In Khurāsānī practice, the former were peasants attached to a group of ploughlands (ṣaḥrā), and their duties included irrigating, weeding and manuring the land; the latter were responsible for ploughing and sowing. See Lambton, A. K. S., Landlord and Peasant in Persia (Oxford 1953), p. 299.Google Scholar

11. Bāghtarehkār were the growers of melons, cucumbers, watermelons, etc.

12. Bāghdār probably customarily held small orchards or gardens in the village and paid for the water they received from the qanāt. The total extent of land held by this diverse group was, on the basis of the water-rate they paid, about 80 jarīb.

13. Ziyāratnāmeh-khān read the documents, inscriptions and prayers associated with the performance of the pilgrimage at the Shrine.

14. MacGregor, op. cit., 1, 297. “Amongst the troops at Mushudd, was a body of cavalry, drawn from the Shah Sewunds, a large tribe, I believe, of Toork descent, who came from the districts of Mishkeen and Ardebeel, in the province of Azurbaijan.”

15. The sentence used to describe this, ra˓iyat-i namūnehī rasm ast keh barāyeh mālik mīkārad guyā dou kharvār-i gandum, carries the implication that this was incumbent on every peasant household.

16. Young barley grown and cut for horse fodder.

17. The writer possibly meant by this phrase the amount needed for the cultivation of the gardens and the maintenance of the qanāt. Elsewhere in this document, Muṣṭafā Khān uses it for whatever is necessary for the kadūkhāneh (jamī˓-i maṣāliḥ-i kadūkhāneh).

18. It is uncertain whether Āqā Riā survived his pampered up-bringing and reached manhood or not. When Muṣṭafā Khān was kārguẕār of Azarbaijan in 1317-1319 A.H./1899-1901 A.D., a son represented his interests in Tehran and held the laqab of Mujallal al-Salṭaneh. If Āqā Riā had lived, he would have been then in his early twenties, an age quite appropriate for that position, but the name cited by Bamdad, V, 291, is ˓Alī Riā Khān, rather than Āqā kūchūlū's full name as given in this text, Riā Qulī Khān.

19. Grain prices fluctuated considerably in the second half of the nineteenth century, and no accurate price index has yet been compiled. Figures from F. Stolze and F. C. Andreas, Die Handelsverhältnisse Persiens, in Petermann's Mitteilungen, LXXVII, Ergängsband XVII (Gotha 1884-5), pp. 10-11, suggest that in Khurasan wheat per kharvār in 1874 (a good year) cost 1 1/2 tūmān; a decade later, in 1883 (another good harvest), that had risen to 4 or 5 tūmān, and barley was 2 1/2 to 3 tūmān per kharvār. Data from the later 1880's (Issawi, op. cit., pp. 340-42) suggest 4.25 tūmān and 3 tūmān for wheat and barley respectively. For 1877 an approximate figure of 4 tūmān for wheat and 2 1/2 tūmān for barley has been suggested.

20. The size and population of Goud-i Sulūk are uncertain. There may have been 2 ṣaḥrā of 4 zouj each, supervised by a sar sālār and worked by about 10 peasants. The total population may have been about 80 or 90--20/25 peasants, 10/20 bāghtarehkār, 7/8 tariyākkār, and 30/40 bāghdār. The assumption is that only the peasants paid the ra˓iyat-i namūneh-ī.

21. Issawi, op. cit., pp. 40-41. Curzon visiting Mashad over ten years later, suggests 1 qirān for unskilled labour, Persia and the Persian Question (London 1892) 1, 167.Google Scholar

22. I˓timād al-Salṭaneh records that in Ramaān 1303 A.H., two years after his father's death, Muṣṭafā Khān delivered up to Nāsir al-Din Shāh 970 packages, among which were some unopened letters from Iranian Foreign Ministry officials abroad, dating from a period between 14 and 20 years earlier. Moreover, Muṣṭafā Khān told the Shah that his father often threw away official documents into the water, and so, in I˓timād al-Salṭaneh's words, he ensured his bad reputation for all time (Rūznāmeh-i Khāṭirāt, Tehran, 1345 H.S., pp. 567–8).Google Scholar

23. This paragraph is ambiguous in the original. Mukhliṣ has been taken to refer to the writer himself, and so naneh-i mukhliṣ is his own mother, not a proper name.

24. The ˓īd referred to here is Nourūz, which fell in this year (1294 A.H./1877 A.D.) five days after the beginning of Rabī˓ al-Avval (16 March).

25. Prayers for warding off fear in the face of calamity.

26. be-ṭūr-i rūznāmeh-i kārkhāneh-i fard is unclear and might be a misreading for be-ṭūr-i rūznāmeh-i kār-i khāneh-i khūd.

27. There are some discrepancies in this arrangement of personnel, positions and numbers. For example, Mīrzā Beg, though he lived in the same house as one of the gardeners, had considerable financial responsibility, more like a private secretary or accountant than a farrāsh-i khalvat; Isma˓īl ghūlāmbachcheh was not a gardener, five of whom are named elsewhere, but probably a general bīrūn servant. From other internal references, this might be a more accurate list of the male servants and their tasks: