The Safavids ruled Persia for nearly two and a half centuries. This study is divided into two sections, the first of which includes studies on the historiography and the religious politics of the period. The second section covers such subjects as trade, an

Using a wide range of archival and written sources, Rudi Matthee considers the economic, social and political networks established between Iran, its neighbours and the world at large, through the prism of the late Safavid silk trade. In so doing, he demonstrates how silk, a resource crucial to state revenue and the only commodity to span Iran's entire economic activity, was integral to aspects of late Safavid society, including its approach to commerce, export routes and, importantly, to the political and economic problems which contributed to its collapse in the early 1700s. In a challenge to traditional scholarship, the author argues that despite the introduction of a maritime, western-dominated channel, Iran's traditional land-based silk export continued to expand right up to the end of the seventeenth century. The book makes a major theoretical contribution to the debates on the social and economic history of the pre-modern world.

Although there are some studies which deal with particular economic issues there has not - until now - been a study dealing with the Safavid economy as a system per se. The objective of this study is therefore to provide a reference work on this subject. Through the analysis of the economy's structure and of its individual sectors and operators the author provides a better understanding of the Safavid's State's economic dimension. Willem Floor describes the economic context of the country's social, cultural, religious, and political development. As such, this book will offer historians of various fields (area and sector specialists, those dealing in comparative studies) as well as readers interested in knowledge and foreign parts a better understanding of the constraints under which the government of Safavid Persia and its people had to operate. This context is not only important for the understanding of the inner working of the country and its institutions itself, but also in relation to its foreign trading partners, including, as of the early 1500s, European traders.

Between 1453 and 1526 Muslims founded three major states in the Mediterranean, Iran and South Asia: respectively the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal empires. By the early seventeenth century their descendants controlled territories that encompassed much of the Muslim world, stretching from the Balkans and North Africa to the Bay of Bengal and including a combined population of between 130 and 160 million people. This book is the first comparative study of the politics, religion, and culture of these three empires between 1300 and 1923. At the heart of the analysis is Islam, and how it impacted on the political and military structures, the economy, language, literature and religious traditions of these great empires. This original and sophisticated study provides an antidote to the modern view of Muslim societies by illustrating the complexity, humanity and vitality of these empires, empires that cannot be reduced simply to religious doctrine.

The Safavid World brings together thirty chapters on many aspects of the complex Safavid state, 1501–1722. With the latest insights and arguments, some offer overviews of the period or topic at hand, and others present new interpretations of old questions based on newly found sources. In addition to political history and religious life, the chapters in this volume cover economic conditions, commercial links and activities, social relations, and artistic expressions. They do so in ways that stretch both the temporal and geographical perimeters of the subject, and contributors also examine Safavid Iran with an eye to both its Mongol and Timurid antecedents and its long afterlife following the fall of the dynasty. Unlike traditional scholarship which tended to view the country as unique, sui generis, and barely affected by the outside world, The Safavid World situates Iran in a wider, regional or global context. Examining the Safavids from their foundations in the fourteenth century to their relations with the rest of the world in the eighteenth century, this study is essential reading for undergraduates, postgraduates, and scholars of the Safavid world and the history and culture of Iran and the Middle East.

The monetary history of a country provides important insights into its economic development, as well as its political and social history. This book is the first detailed study of Iran's monetary history from the advent of the Safavid dynasty in 1501 to the end of Qajar rule in 1925. Using an array of previously unpublished sources in ten languages, the authors consider the specific monetary conditions in Iran's modern history, covering the use of ready money and its circulation, the changing conditions of the country's mints and the role of the state in managing money. Throughout the book, the authors also consider the larger regional and global economic context within which the Iranian economy operated. As the first study of Iran's monetary history, this book will be essential reading for researchers of Iranian and economic history.