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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 February 2014
The governorships of Muhammad Ismaʿil Khan Vakil al-Mulk (1859–68) and Murtaza Quli Khan Vakil al-Mulk II (1868–78) in Qajar Kirman were highlighted by an extensive building campaign which initiated a period of significant social and economic change in the province. This article explores the activities of local elites in managing their family estates in the context of this project through a careful analysis of provincial geographical and historical writings, Persian-language travelogues, and commentary by European administrators and travelers. Kirmani elites began investing in land and commercial agriculture on an unprecedented scale, accelerating Kirman's absorption into global economic patterns as a producer of raw materials like cotton, wool, and opium. An integrated political economy developed regionally through the expanding networks of elite households and their estates, reinforced by families combining landownership with administrative functions in rural areas. This process demonstrates the extent to which Iranians were active participants in transforming their communities in the context of the advance of global capitalism, with longstanding patterns of elite household competition playing an important role in mediating social and political change locally.
Author's note: I gratefully acknowledge the Iran Cultural Heritage Foundation and the Roshan Cultural Heritage Institute for supporting my research and travel during the preparation of this article. I also thank Rudi Matthee, Joanna deGroot, and Roger Thompson, each of whom patiently read and commented on drafts of this work. Any shortcomings are, of course, entirely my own.
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24 Precise information on crop-sharing agreements from the Qajar era is not available. In his fieldwork in Kirman in the 1960s, Paul Ward English reports that a longstanding 70 percent share for the landowner remained standard at that time, though it is unclear whether this extended back to the Qajar period. English, Paul Ward, City and Village in Iran: Settlement and Economy in the Kirman Basin (Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966)Google Scholar. Floor, Willem estimates an 80 percent share for landlords in the Qajar period, in Agriculture in Qajar Iran (Washington, D.C.: Mage Publishers, 2003)Google Scholar. The consensus is that the peasants received only a small share of the produce from the land they worked, with the majority making its way into the hands of elite households in larger villages and urban centers.
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32 Gilbar, “The Muslim Big Merchant-Entrepreneurs.”
33 Gilbar, “The Opening Up of Qajar Iran,” 78.
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39 Khan, Muhammad Hasan and Rizvani, Muhammad Ismaʿil, Tarikh-i Muntazam-i Nasiri (Tehran: Dunya-yi Kitab, 1984), 3:1826Google Scholar. Ahmadi gives 1282/1866 as the date of Muhammad Ismaʿil Khan's formal appointment, but also mentions that “if you ask 100 different people . . . you will get 100 different answers.” That he was de facto governor since 1859 is more significant. Ahmadi, Farmandihan, 108.
40 Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 43. Vaziri notes that in establishing alliances with the tribal khans, Vakil al-Mulk “gave a daughter and took a daughter for his sons.” A brief account of his military campaign in Baluchistan is contained in “Translation of Extract from Tehran Gazette of 29th May 1862,” United Kingdom, The National Archives at Kew, Foreign Office archives (hereafter FO) 248/203.
41 Matthee, Politics of Trade, 69–74.
42 See, for example, Seyf, Ahmad, “Commercialization of Agriculture: Production and Trade of Opium in Persia, 1850–1906,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 16 (1984): 233–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Gilbar, “The Opening Up of Qajar Iran.”
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44 Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 83, 86, 87, 104, 152, 178. Fine opium is listed among Kirman's agricultural produce by numerous other travelers and diplomats prior to the 1860s. See, for example, Abbott, Keithet al., Cities & Trade: Consul Abbott on the Economy and Society of Iran, 1847–1866 (London: Ithaca Press, 1983)Google Scholar; and de Khanikoff, Nicolas, Memoire Sur La Partie Meridionale De l'Asie Centrale: Par Nicolas De Khanikoff (Paris: L. Martinet, 1861), 198Google Scholar.
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47 Percy Sykes, “Report on the Trade and Commerce of the Consular Districts of Kerman and Persian Beluchistan from March, 1894 to March, 1895,” House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Reports from H.M. Diplomatic and Consular Officers Abroad on Trade and Finance [c.7919] (1896).
48 G. Lucas, “Memorandum on the Cultivation and Exportation of Opium in Persia,” in “Report on the Trade of the Persian Gulf and Muscat for the Years 1874–75” (23 Jan 1875), House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Reports from Her Majesty's Consuls on the Manufactures, Commerce, &c., of their Consular Districts. Part II [c. 2529] (1880), 66; Baring, “Report,” 50.
49 Consul-General Ross, “Bushire, Report by Consul-General Ross on the Trade of the Persian Gulf for the Year 1884,” House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, Commercial. No. 20 (1885). (Trade Reports.) Reports from Her Majesty's Consuls on the Manufactures, Commerce, &c., of their Consular Districts. Part VII. [c. 4524] (1884–85), 1146.
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54 Although Iran's first telegraph lines were operative in 1865, according to Shaykh Yahya Ahmadi the first telegraph line did not reach Kirman until 1879. Ahmadi, Tarikh-i Yahya, 321, 325.
55 A.H. Gleadowe-Neucomen, “Report on the Commercial Mission to South-Eastern Persia During 1904–1905,” FO 368/38; Sykes, “Report on Trade and Commerce.”
56 St. John, “Narrative of a Journey,” 100.
57 Schindler and Kiepert, Reisen, 830.
58 Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 32; Ahmadi, Farmandihan, 115.
59 Vaziri, Tarikh, 808.
60 One instance cited in Vaziri is of multiple branches added to the qanāt at Nusratabad. Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 105.
61 Ahmadi, Farmandihan, 106, n. 1.
62 Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 170–71.
63 See, for example, the discussion of politics in Kirman leading up to the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, in Kirmani, Nazim al-Islam and Sirjani, Saʿidi, Tarikh-i Bidari-i Iraniyan (Tehran: Muʾassasah-yi Intisharat-i Agah, 1983), 1:309Google Scholar.
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65 Farmanfarma, Mallahan-i Khak, 88–89.
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67 Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 158.
68 Sykes, “Report on Trade and Commerce.”
69 Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 157.
70 Sheikholeslami, The Structure of Central Authority.
71 Perhaps the best demonstration of this appears in Werner, An Iranian Town in Transition.
72 Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 63–64.
73 Ibid., 64–65, 91.
74 Ibid., 65.
75 Sykes, “Report on Trade and Commerce.”
76 Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 169.
77 Ibid., 44–45.
78 Ibid., 31.
79 Ibid., 45.
80 Ahmadi, Farmandihan, 126.
81 Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 45.
82 Ibid., 30.
83 Ibid., 54–58.
84 Muhammad Karim Khan's return to Kirman City took place in the context of a struggle for control over the Ibrahimi estate after a certain Sayyid Javad married into the Ibrahimi family and attempted to assert his control over the madrasa and its endowments. See Rizvi, Niʿmat Allah, Tadhkirat al-Awliya fi Sharh Ahwal . . . Muhammad Karim Khan al-Kirmani (Bombay: n.p., 1895), 72–73Google Scholar.
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88 See Muhammad Ibrahim Bastani-Parizi's annotations in Ahmadi, Farmandihan, 140–41.
89 Shahidi, Muzaffar, “Amlak-i Khaliṣah va Siyasat-i Furush-i An dar Dawrah-yi Nasiri,” Tarikh-i Muʿasir-i Iran 1, no. 3 (1976): 65Google Scholar. Shahidi suggests that the advice of these courtiers was ultimately self-serving, as Nasir al-Din Shah's advisors themselves were among those who profited most from the policy, buying up enormous tracts of khalīṣah land throughout the country.
90 A notice in the Qajar state paper on Vakil al-Mulk I notes that even the core agricultural districts like Sirjan and Rafsanjan contained substantial khalīṣah lands. Entry for 14 Jumadi II 1280, in Ghaffari, Saniʿ al-Mulk and al-Hasan Khan, Mirza Abu, Ruznamah-yi Dawlat-i ʿAliyyah-yi Iran, 1 (1861), 622Google Scholar. ʿAbd al-Husayn Mirza Farmanfarma commented repeatedly on khalīṣah lands during his 1894 journey through Bam and Narmashir, at which time they still made up a large portion of the overall landholdings in the eastern portions of the province. Farmanfarma, Musafaratnamah.
91 Farmanfarma et al., Mallahan-i Khak, 140.
92 Ibid., 137; Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 87.
93 Ahmadi, Farmandihan, 107.
94 Foran, “The Concept of Dependent Development,” 5.
95 Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 183.
96 Ibid., 184.
97 Ibid., 173.
98 Ibid., 62, 125.
99 Ibid., 73–74.
100 Ibid., 113, 120.
101 Gazetteer of Persia: Compiled for Political and Military Reference . . . in the Intelligence Branch, Quarter Master General's Dept. in India. Simla; Calcutta: 1885, 4:36; Vaziri, Jughrafiya, 98–99.
102 Farmanfarma, Musafaratnamah, 54–59.
103 Ibid., 62–101.
104 For an alternate view, see Ashraf, “The Roots of Emerging Dual Class Structure.”
