Document Type : .

Authors

• Maryam Khosroabadi ¹
• keyvan karimi alvar ²
• Mohsen Kheydani ³

¹ Assistant Professor of History, Yazd University, Yazd,Iran

² Lecturer of history ,Yasuj University,Yasuj, Iran

³ M.A in Political Science, Tehran university, Tehran, Iran.

Abstract

This article examines the emergence of the bourgeoisie in Safavid empire and tries to answer this hypothesis that: In the Safavid period, especially during the reign of Shah Abbas I (the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries), in parallel with European countries, Iran was also going through the process of formation of national bourgeoisie and historical capitalism. According to studies, this issue has not been researched so far and most theorists and researchers in the fields of political economy, sociology and political science, in terms of industry and production method, do not believe in the emergence of the historical bourgeoisie in Iran, some consider its beginning in the late Qajar period and after the constitution. But according to many historical data that most of which, are taken from the travelogues of western tourists and later other historical texts, Iran in the Safavid period, especially in the period of Shah Abbas I, witnessed the emergence of a method of production and trade system that can be considered it as an example of the historical bourgeoisie. The definition of the historical bourgeoisie by which the developments and characteristics of the economy of Shah Abbas's period are measured, is formed by Emmanuel Wallerstein. The focus of this research was mostly in the Shah Abbas I period. Also, looking at the art of the Safavid era, it is clear that Iran at that time, intellectually and culturally and only in urban societies, had begun to move towards a kind of materialism.

Keywords

• Historical bourgeoisie
• trade
• Safavid
• Shah Abbas I
• production method
• textile

Extended Abstract

The emergence of the historical bourgeoisie in Safavid Iran with emphasis on the textile industry

Introduction: During the period of Shah Abbas the Great, the growth and prosperity of economic and commercial conditions emerged as a condition suitable for the political stability of the government.

In Europe, the formation of the bourgeoisie took several centuries and it arose from the heart of feudalism. Such a trend can also be expected in Iran in the discussion of the Europe-centered capitalist world system, according to researchers such as John Foran, Iran's foreign relations in the 17th century were based on equality with emerging commercial powers (the Netherlands, England, and France), and the empires of Iran's powerful neighbors (Mongolian India, Ottomans and Uzbeks) had been established. Iranian capitalism had been established at the given stage both through the role of the government rom above and through the presence of businessmen independent of the government. However, f like any other period in Iran's history, due to the personal nature of the authority of the royal institution (and not the institutional nature of this authority), every time a weak king came, which itself was a ground for foreign attack or the action of internal centrifugal forces, there was a break. Nevertheless, the researcher finds out the historical potential of Iran and Iranian society by examining the periods of prosperityThe Iranian society before the Safavid era was a monastic society, depressed, and the country of Iran was a fragmented country without a central government. Shah Ismail I and Shah Tahmasab, despite successive defeats against the Ottomans, were able to give integrity and coherence to Iran's territorial integrity and ideological status. From Shah Abbas I onwards, in the shadow of internal security and abundance of blessings, a drastic change in the psychological and intellectual conditions of the people emerged. This period coincides with the beginning of the new centuries in Europe, the age of geographical discoveries, seafaring, the beginning of the Renaissance, trade, and the end of feudalism, religious reformation and the beginning of the bourgeois age It was during this era that the closed economy had reached its end and urban life flourished in the light of the revival of trade routes and the rise of national kings. Villages and feudal land were no longer considered dominant economic and production elements, but in the cities, workshops were built and multiplied quickly, the most important of which were the textile, spinning and cloth weaving workshops This article seeks to answer the question whether during the Safavid period and parallel to Europe, Iran also had a process of formation of national bourgeoisie and historical capitalism?

Research background: Craftsmen and their union life in the Safavid era by Mehdi Kivani (2015), while paying attention to issues such as privileges granted to foreign merchants, considers the political and economic restrictions imposed by the Safavid government as an obstacle to the development of a national bourgeoisie. In two chapters of the book "The Safavid World" edited by Rudi Matti, under the title "Economy and Trade in Safavid Iran", Floor expresses important points related to the economic conditions of the Safavids, the status and position of Iranian merchants, and the role of the government in the economy. In general, the writers and researchers of the contemporary history of Iran, regarding the issue of the bourgeoisie in this country, consider this phenomenon to be related to the post-constitutional period, especially the Pahlavi period, and use the terms “Comprador” and “Governmental” for it

Discussion and conclusion: The Political Stability of the Safavid Government with tools such as the state monopoly of silk export, the tolerance of Shah Abbas I and the geopolitical position of Iran, led to a kind of native capitalism with the active presence of the state and non-state merchants, which It was also an economic battle with the rival empire (that is, the Ottoman Empire).

Safavid Iran, with its special commercial characteristics, including the safety of the roads, the Presence of Ccaravanserais, trade with many foreign merchant minorities, crowded Cities, the presence of active Tradesmen and Craftsmen, quality products, was considered an independent and self-sufficient empire in terms of the structure of the world system, on a trade level with its neighbors and European countries.

According to IEmmanuel Wallenstein’s definition of the historical bourgeoisie and the benchmark of Iran's economic situation in the era of Shah Abbas Safavid, with the same characters that Wallerstein gave from the definition of the historical bourgeoisie, it is clear that in that period Iran witnessed the emergence and growth of a new way of production that before It has not had much history. As a result of that and as a result of economic growth and prosperity and domestic productions in the workshops of the mentioned period, Trade also got a great and unprecedented boom and as a result we saw the emergence of a class in Iran that were rich

The members of this class were neither from the ruling elite nor from the majority of the lower class of society. At the same time, they were respected by the society. They had a strong connection with religion, and their field of activity included not only domestic and regional markets, but also European countries. In addition to these, they started to organize a trade union in its primitive form and had a kind of trade union self-awareness, so that sometimes their economic-political action led to the cancellation of the royal decreeFollowing these developments, culturally (manifested mostly in works of art), the emergence of such a phenomenon, i.e. historical bourgeoisie, is confirmed in the Safavid period, specifically from Shah Abbas I, although after his death, it declines until the extinction of the Safavid dynasty.