BAZAR i. General

The Iranian bāzār is a unified, self-contained building complex of shops, passageways, and caravanserais, interspersed with squares (meydān), religious buildings, bathhouses (ḥammām), and other public institutions. This traditional commercial center is usually roofed with vaulted ceilings made from fired brick, although the outer branches may be open or have only makeshift coverings of wood or reeds. Light and air circulation come from small openings in the brick vaults, and the height of the ceilings keeps the halls cool and comfortable during the long hot season, even though the bāzār can be rather chilly in the winter. The shops (dok[k]ān), small single-storied stalls three or four meters in width, line each side of the lanes and contain retailers and craftsmen, who often are grouped in separate branches (rāsta) by occupational types. Typically no residences occur within the bāzār, and so the main complex can be closed at night or on holidays (or during political protests by the bāzārīs). A bāzār may also have a qayṣarīya, a passageway which usually has large doors on each end which can be locked, with shops containing goods of higher value. Bāzārs of small towns may contain only a few hundred shops (or fewer), while the market centers in the major cities have several thousand shops.

Large interior courtyard caravanserais (ḵān, sarā[y], sarai) are an integral part of most bāzārs, particularly in the larger cities where international long-distance trade was significant in the past. Around the courtyard are single- or, more usually, two-storied complexes of offices occupied by wholesalers, although the bottom level is more often for storage and in some instances even contains shopkeepers or craftsmen. The caravanserais open onto the main branches of the bāzār, and small covered caravanserais (tīmča), which often feature shops, may be adjacent to the larger ones. Goods have to be carried by human porters or pack animals through the crowded, narrow passageways. (But most large caravanserais which housed caravans and travelers in the past were on the outskirts of cities, and not spatially associated with the bāzār.)

Interspersed throughout the bāzār are mosques, religious schools (madrasa), mausolea, and other religious buildings. The bāzār itself often contains considerable endowment (waqf) property, and the religious endowments that are within the marketplace support structures which are principally in the bāzār complex itself. The Friday mosque is sometimes next to or part of the bāzār, although there are exceptions to this pattern, as in Yazd or Kermānšāh (now Bāḵtarān).

The location of the bāzār within the traditional city followed several patterns. Central Asian cities were typically divided into an inner city (šahrestān) and an outer city (rebāṭ). The main bāzār and caravanserais were often at one of the gates of the inner city, where the main bāzār hall, as in Ḵīva, was called a tīm. In other instances, as in Bukhara, the šahrestān was penetrated by two intersecting orthogonal avenues, and at this crossroads (called the čahār-sū [“four-ways,” intersection] or shortened to čār-sū) was the main bāzār, with shops along all four streets. The closer to the čahār-sū, the more prestigious the location (and the higher the rent). Bāzārs in Afghanistan, as in Herat (Figure 1), Qandahār, and Tāšqorḡān (Figure 2), also followed the čahār-sū model. The central intersection sometimes was covered with a huge dome, as in Bukhara or Tāšqorḡān. These unroofed bāzār streets, which are the traditional main avenues of Afghan cities, resemble the bāzār structure of nearby Indian cities as well.

Figure 1. Herat bāzārView full image in a new tab

Figure 2. Tāšqorḡān bāzārView full image in a new tab

The location of the bāzār in Iran also followed the Central Asian model in some cases. In Yazd a new bāzār complex began to evolve outside one of the gates of a new city wall built in the mid-8th/14th century, a wall which was around the inner city. On the other hand, it appears that most Iranian bāzārs have evolved within their major city walls (although the exact historical morphological development of most Iranian cities is still to be determined). Such internal development took place in Tehran, Tabrīz, Isfahan, Shiraz, Kermānšāh, and Mašhad, as well as in numerous smaller towns such as Malāyer or Ardakān-e Yazd. Many bāzārs in Iran are linear, with the main passageways in a single, linked series, with minor branches and caravanserais dispersed along the major axis. The bāzārs of Kermānšāh, Kāšān (Figure 3), Shiraz (Figure 4), and large parts of the market centers in Isfahan and Tehran follow this pattern. Bāzārs of small towns are usually linear as well, often without any side branches. Other Iranian markets are more rectangular, comprised of several principal parallel lanes, with smaller intersecting corridors. Tabrīz (Figure 5) provides one of the best examples, where two major passageways constitute the main axes.

Figure 3. Kāšān bāzārView full image in a new tab

Figure 4. Shiraz bāzārView full image in a new tab

Figure 5. Tabrīz bāzārView full image in a new tab

Long tunnel vaults constitute the major covered bāzār passageways, although elaborate domical vaults and ribbed vaults, sometimes with squinches, window grills, and other decorations, impart to some bāzārs a most majestic appearance. Geometric ornamentation formed by interlocking brick designs adorn many domes and hallways, while most smaller passages have their vaults plastered and the walls painted white. Mosaic or tile decorations are not commonly found in the bāzār, except as part of a mosque or other religious structure. The Isfahan qayṣarīya, Bāzār-e Now in Shiraz, and Bāzār-e Ḵān Walī in Yazd are examples of fine bāzār architecture, although a number of outstanding domed passageways, čahār-sūs, caravanserais, and tīmčas can be found throughout this cultural region.

A bāzār grows by accretion, for the spatial arrangement develops over centuries as new branches and caravanserais are added to existing structures. As a city expanded, the bāzār grew too, as perhaps best exemplified by the bāzārs of the capital cities—Isfahan during the Safavid period and Qajar Tehran in the 13th/19th and early 14th/20th centuries. Benevolent merchants, governors, and other government officials provided the funds for building new bāzārs, often as part of a waqf to support a newly established (or existing) mosque or madrasa. The development of the Yazd bāzār illustrates the pattern (Figure 6). This provincial city’s bāzār began in the 8th/14th and 9th/15th centuries under the Mozaffarids and Timurids. There were two foci at the outset, the Mehrījerd (Mehrīz) gate of the 8th/14th-century wall and the Masjed-e Rīg, built outside and to the west of the wall. A bāzār with two rows of shops flanking a lane was established at the gate outside the wall, and shops (undoubtedly waqf) were around the Masjed-e Rīg, which was about two hundred yards from the Mehrījerd gate. Over the next several centuries more branches, caravanserais, mosques, and madrasas were constructed. For instance, in the last half of the 12th/18th century the governor of Yazd, Moḥammad Taqī Khan, constructed the large Madrasa-ye Ḵān within the bāzār complex. Several new bāzār branches were built as waqf for the support of the new religious school, including the qayṣarīya. Another governor built the Bāzār-e Ḵān Walī in the latter half of the 13th/19th century, and this branch is still the best section of the bāzār of Yazd, with beautiful vaulted ceilings and containing shops with expensive goods (mostly textile shops and goldsmiths). The last major additions came in the early 14th/20th century when two new branches and several caravanserais were constructed by the head of the Yazd finance office. Hence, the Yazd bāzār grew to its present size of about 950 shops and 20 caravanserais owing to the actions of specific individuals, by a process of addition over considerable time. Soon after World War II, a major avenue was constructed through the bāzār, which is its latest major morphological change.

Figure 6. Yazd bāzārView full image in a new tab

Isfahan, with one of the more spectacular Iranian bāzārs, provides a second illustration of the growth process. This bāzār developed in conjunction with the new capital complex of the Safavids established by Shah ʿAbbās I at the beginning of the 11th/17th century. A huge new square (Meydān-e Šāh; aerial view in Ehlers, Bild 5) was the focal point of the shah’s ambitious developments, and a new royal bāzār complex was established on its northern side. Shops also were around the meydān, which was the location of several new mosques as well as the palace complex west of Meydān-e Šāh. The new bāzār was built partly to attract business from the older pre-Safavid bāzār which was located to the northeast around an older meydān and the Friday mosque. This strategy was not entirely successful, however, and over the succeeding centuries more branches and caravanserais were built, eventually linking the two meydāns via a long, linear bāzār. The section immediately north of Meydān-e Šāh remained the most prestigious—it contained the qayṣarīya and was the site of the royal mint of the Safavids. And it is this same part of the bāzār, which today has the shops for higher quality retail goods and traditional crafts, that made the Isfahan bāzār one of Iran’s principal tourist attractions in the later Pahlavi period.

Small neighborhood bāzārs (bāzāṛča) occur in the residential maḥallas of Iranian towns and cities. Comprised of four or five shops providing daily necessities and services, the bāzāṛča usually is located at the crossroads of the principal alleyways of the maḥalla. Often roofed and associated with ḥammāms, mosques, or shrines, these nodes can be waqf-endowed for one or more of the adjacent structures. Although a bāzāṛča may contain several dozen shops, most of these small markets have declined in importance in the last several decades.

Within the 14th/20th century major avenues have been constructed through Iranian cities, which affect the bāzārs considerably. In most cases, as in Isfahan, Tabrīz, or Shiraz, merely small parts of the bāzār have been destroyed. In other cities, such as Yazd or Ardakān-e Yazd, the new streets coincided with the main axes of the bāzārs. In all cities, bāzār-type stalls have been established on the new avenues, and on only a few streets are Western-type walk-in stores situated (and particularly in Tehran). There are now more shops on the avenues in all major Iranian cities, which has affected the economy of the central marketplace substantially. Yet the fact that most shops on the avenues are still small stalls represents a morphological extension of the bāzār onto these modern thoroughfares. And, even though no longer the economic core, the traditional bāzār is still a viable, dynamic commercial center in Iranian cities.

BĀZĀR ii. Organization and Function

1. Rural market.

Both weekly market days and regular fairs occurred in pre-Islamic times. Among the latter, for example, was the bāzār of Māḵ in Bukhara (Naršaḵī, p. 29, tr. Frye, pp. 20-21). There was an annual fair in Ṭawāyes, a borough of Bukhara: “In former times there used to be a fair for ten days in the season of the month of Tīr. The nature of that fair was such that all defective goods, such as curtains, covers (barda wa sotūr; actually “slaves and horses”), and other goods with defects, were sold in this fair. There was no way or means to return goods in the fair, for neither the seller nor the buyer would (return or) accept them back on any condition. Every year more than 10,000 people came to this fair, both merchants and buyers. They even came from Ferghāna, Chāch and other places, and returned with much profit” (Naršaḵī, tr. Frye, p. 13, text p. 17). There was a bimonthly village fair in Varaḵšā (Faraḵšā), another borough of Bukhara: “In this village there is a market every fifteen days. When the market is at the end of the year they hold it for twenty days. The twenty-first day they celebrate New Year’s day and they call it the New Year’s day of the farmers. The farmers of Bokhara reckon from that (day) and count from it” (Našaḵī, text p. 25, tr. Frye, p. 18 [slightly incorrect]). According to Adam Mez, in early Islam markets were only held on certain days, such as the Tuesday market in East Baghdad. Also in ʿAskar Mokram (Ḵūzestān) a Friday market was held (Mez, p. 452; see also Le Strange, Lands, p. 177). Often these fairs were known by the name of the month in which they were held. These types of markets were mainly rural and of a regional nature. They, of course, also were important for urban traders, who went there to sell and/or buy wares. Such rural markets continued throughout Iranian history down to the present day. In many ways they had a function similar to that of the urban bāzār, though less clearly differentiated. For, apart from their purely economic purpose, these markets presented occasions for celebration and for organizing other social functions. In Perrīm in Deylamān, for example, “Every fifteen days a market day is held there, and from all the region men, girls, and young men come there dressed up, frolic, organize games, play on string instruments, and make friends. The custom of this province is such that each man who loves a girl, beguiles her, carries her away, and for three days does with her as he likes. Then he sends some one to the father of the girl that he should give the girl in marriage” (Ḥodūd al-ʿālam, tr. Minorsky, p. 136). Similar social functions are found in contemporary rural Iran, as detailed studies on northern Iran in particular have shown. These rural bāzārs, in addition to their purely economic function, still provide opportunities to meet people, to exchange news, to select partners, to make merry and organize games (e.g., wrestling), and to commemorate important religious events. In the past, they were also the settings for dealing with intervillage conflicts and for collecting taxes (for more information see A. Ḵosravī, Rāhnamā-ye ketāb 9/1-2, 2535 = 1355 Š./1976, pp. 20-29).

2. Urban market.

Because the role of the bāzār has not fundamentally changed throughout the history of Iran, the following discussion is analytical rather than chronological in nature. The urban bāzār was the central business district of the cities in the Iranian cultural area. But it was far from being just a marketplace. The bāzār was and is a social institution, comprising religious, commercial, political, and social elements. The bāzār is the center par excellence of personal transactions, commerce, and communication in urban life; thus one needs to understand the bāzār’s function within its context, the city. In Iran, the city forms a political, commercial, cultural, and religious center for its hinterland. The bāzār has played a very important role in this relationship, reflecting the character of the Muslim city. The unity of the Muslim town was not civic, but functional. There was a rigid allocation of space for public purposes, divorcing the place of public activities and business from the place of residence. The latter was the arena of private life, epitomized by the uninviting narrow streets and by the orientation of private houses away from the streets. Moreover, the city quarters reflected the segregation by religion, ethnic group, occupation, and wealth. The occupants of the several quarters would meet regularly but in the bāzār and mosques; in the bāzār the minorities might have their place, but separated from their Muslim colleagues. Also, public places such as the bāzār were looked after by the government, which saw to it that the moḥtaseb or dārūḡa controlled people’s behavior in public and had the bāzārs cleaned and guarded at night (Ebn Oḵowwa, pp. 7-14; Grunebaum, pp. 141-158; Hourani and Stern, pp. 42-46).

Spatial organization. The morphology of the bāzār is easily described, and its similarity to the markets of classical antiquity has been pointed out by many writers. As in pre-Islamic times the three major functions (government, religion, and commerce) were in close proximity to one another in the Muslim Iranian city. However, the original layout of the cities in the Iranian cultural area was somewhat different from the classical situation in western Asia. The marketplace was often outside the walls of the city proper or šahrestān (q.v.). This situation persisted in many Iranian cities until the 5th/11th century. Around that time the center of urban life gradually passed from the šahrestān to the suburb (rabaż) where the bāzār was located. The cities of Jaxartes province were exceptions to this general rule, for there the bāzār, together with the citadel and Friday mosque, was inside the city walls before the 4th/10th century (Le Strange, Lands, pp. 475, 477-79, 481, 484-85). After the 4th/10th century the suburbs of the city also were circumvallated, though this had taken place in Qom even earlier (see Spuler, p. 287). Another early instance is that of Baghdad, where the caliph al-Manṣūr decided to relocate the markets, which were originally inside the new round city; he had them transferred to Karḵ, a suburb which had constituted a commercial center since pre-Islamic times, and thus restored the status quo ante (Lassner, p. 116).

The bāzār, often on a linear plan, was near the main thoroughfares leading to and from the main city gates (e.g. Nīšāpūr as described by Eṣṭaḵrī, apud Barthold, tr. Soucek, p. 97). The Friday mosque, the royal or gubernatorial palace (kāḵ) or citadel (qalʿa, arg), and the bāzār formed a triad and were the foci in each city. Since the 4th/10th century this configuration was found in most if not all big cities, such as Isfahan, Kermān, Yazd, Tabrīz, Mašhad, Shiraz, Ardabīl, Hamadān, Sūš, Kermānšāh, Nīšāpūr, Marv, Herāt, Kabul, Balḵ, Bukhara, and Samarqand (Le Strange, Lands, pp. 168, 180, 187, 197, 240, 266, 301, 349, 379, 384, 399, 408, 420, 461, 464). The early central bāzārs were often without roofs; however, a roofed bāzār existed in Samarqand around 950 a.d. (Ḥodūd al-ʿālam, tr. Minorsky, p. 113), while in Yahūdīya (near Isfahan) there were both roofed and open bāzārs (Le Strange, Lands, p. 203). In general, they were linear market streets up to one mile long. Arab geographers noted that the bāzārs were mostly well stocked, clean, and pleasant to be in; some were two stories high and others could be closed by gates (Le Strange, pp. 194, 204, 336, 446; Nāṣer Ḵosrow, Safar-nāma, p. 138). In its later form the center of the bāzār was typically a vaulted brick beehive structure. Holes in the roof provided light and ventilation for the occupants. The better parts of the bāzār, in general, were also covered, but only in the most exclusive parts were domed roof used. Parts of the bāzār complex even looked like ordinary shopping streets. Some bāzārs such as those in the Caspian area and the pre-1305/1880 Tabrīz bāzār had very little roofing (Schweizer, pp. 32f.; Wirth, 1971-72).

The central bāzār developed into a complex of streets, lanes, sarāys, bathhouses, mosques, and madrasas. The buildings on transverse connecting streets, which were called rāst or rāsta (quarters), were one or two stories high and included retail shops (called maḵzan in the early period, later dok[k]ān) adjacent to manufacturing stalls (kār-ḵāna). This was often reflected in such names as 13th/19th-century Tabrīz’s rāst-e Bāzār-e Jadīd and rāsta-ye Bāzār-e Qadīm (Schweizer, p. 40) and Kermānšāh’s Bāzār-e rāsta-ye Rajab-ʿAlī Ḵān and Bāzār-e rāsta-ye Kal Ḥasan Ḵān (Rabino, p. 5). These rāstas were connected to one another by means of ḵāns, caravanserais, dālāns (passageways or cul-de-sacs), and tīmčas (shopping arcades; see Gaube and Wirth, pp. 101-3). The caravanserais were used as warehouses, for wholesale trade, as business offices, as hostelries, and for manufacturing, functions which probably date back to Sasanian times (Pigulevskaya, p. 160).

Caravanserais were initially known as ḵāns (probably originally ḵān-anbār) and in Transoxiana as tīms (Moqaddasī, p. 31; Mez, p. 452); it was only after around 390/1000 that the term kārvānsarā (see caravansaries) came into use (Spuler, p. 427 n. 15). The early geographers mention the existence of ḵāns, which were also called dārs (e.g., in Kāzerūn: Mez, p. 452 and Le Strange, Lands, pp. 215, 266) and which were covered and could be closed so that expensive goods could be stored in them. A special development was that of the qayṣarīya, a superior caravanserai, in general a very large, luxurious, and secure market hall, where only the best and most expensive goods were stored and traded. It is certain that the qayṣarīya was developed from the Byzantine basilica. (The term qayṣarīya is perhaps derived from Caesarea, a town in Asia Minor, but the history of the term is not known.) The tīmča or shopping arcade in general is a smaller type of caravanserai, but devoted mainly to retail trade. A ḵān could be small, but generally it was a big building with a large courtyard. Here camels could enter, be unloaded or loaded, and stabled. The first story often was devoted to wholesale trade (warehouses), while the second story often served as offices (ḥojra). An uncovered bāzār lane was called goḏar (Bakhtiar, pp. 320f.; Najmī, pp. 51-53). Where two or three market streets intersected, a new localized business center, called čahār-sū (crossroads), came into being. Depending on its location, such a crossroads bāzār could become the economic heart of that part of the city, as, for example, in Herat (English), Lār (Wirth, p. 255), and Ardabīl (Le Strange, Lands, p. 168). Such crossroads bāzārs were not uncommon, as is attested by the frequent occurrence of čahār-sū in the nomenclature of Iranian cities. In Isfahan alone we know of sixteen čahār-sūs (Honarfar, p. 998; Gaube and Wirth, p. 295).

Bāzārs in general also were adjacent to large open spaces, meydāns, as was true of the earliest bāzārs in Kermān, Karaj, Zarand, Nīšāpūr, Bukhara, and Samarqand (Jaʿfarī, p. 25; Le Strange, Lands, pp. 197, 308, 384, 461, 464, 478-84). The most striking example is that of the Naqš-e Jahān (Meydān-e Šāh) in Isfahan, one of the most beautiful malls in the world (for aerial views, see Gaube and Wirth, pl. 4). But similar malls, albeit less attractive, were also to be found in other cities, such as Tabrīz, Shiraz, Kermānšāh, etc. Here often an open-air market was held, either daily, as in Isfahan in the 11th/17th century, or weekly. Such weekly bāzārs were also organized in other parts of a city, such as the Bāzār-e Kohna in Isfahan and Jolfā (Taḥwīldār, p. 114; Wills, p. 142).

Some of these bāzārs were quite large, well constructed, and crowded (Jaʿfarī, pp. 36, 40, 62, 88). A street in Isfahan, for example, is reported to have had no fewer than fifty caravanserais in 444/1052 (Nāṣer Ḵosrow, p. 139). Chardin reports that in 1047/1673, the bāzār of Tabrīz had 300 caravanserais and 15,000 shops (Schweizer, pp. 32-46). The large number of caravanserais may reflect the fact that, generally speaking, there were two sorts: one for the use of pilgrims, travelers, and caravans and the other for the merchants. It is impossible to have a clear estimate of the former since they were scattered about all over town and many private houses also were used to house the great number of pilgrims who visited the city. Of the latter kind there were only a few, the most important one being occupied by the most important merchants. Kermān in 1876 had eight such caravanserais, Kermānšāh had about twelve (Rabino, pp. 72-75), while Isfahan had twenty-nine around 1890 (Soltani-Tirani, p. 25). Non-Muslims and merchants from out of town had their own caravanserais, for example, the Jews and Zoroastrians had their own caravanserai, as did the Hindu merchants in Kermān; Russian merchants also had their own tīmča. The Khorasanis had their own separate caravanserai (Wazīrī, p. 32).

Functional organization. Because of its accessibility, the central area of the bāzār is highly valued; it is where the best shops are found. This is expressed to some extent in the rent for the location; however, more important than rent is the “key money” (sar-qoflī), which in the 14th/20th century has determined the real value of a location. There is no information on whether this system prevailed in earlier centuries, but the system of ḥaqq-e bonīča resembles it (see asnāf; bonǰča). Sarqoflī is the payment to the owner of the shop to “buy the key.” The sum paid does not depend only on the size of the shop, but also on the site value. The sum is negotiated between seller and buyer and is extremely sensitive to market conditions, and therefore substantial variations occur, even among adjacent properties. The key money sometimes reaches amounts of more than 50,000 tomans (for detailed information see, e.g., Clarke and Clark, p. 24).

Product groups or guilds were found in clusters in the bāzār as early as 390/1000 in Iranian cities. The degree of concentration, however, differed from trade to trade. From 13th/19th-century source material it is clear that trades were concentrated in the central bāzār, had shops in the smaller bāzāṛčas in the city quarters, or were spread out all over the city. For individual trades the combination of these three possibilities was common. In almost all large cities the spatial organization of trades was in accordance with Fraser’s description of 13th/19th-century Iran: “Each class for the most part is keeping to their respective quarters, so that smiths, braziers, shoemakers, saddlers, potters, cloth and chintz sellers, tailors and other handicraftsmen may generally be found together; but confectioners, cooks, apothecaries, bakers, fruit and greensellers are dispersed in various places” (Fraser, pp. 32-33). In some trades the degree of concentration was very high, to the point that particular sections of the bāzār were known by the dominant products sold or produced there. Other crafts could either be clustered or more evenly distributed throughout the main bāzār and/or the smaller bāzārs. As a general rule, luxury trades occupied the best locations, while poorer ones or those that were handicapped by noise and bad smells or presented a fire hazard were relegated to the periphery (Wirth, pp. 239-44). “Approaching to the gates [of the town] one will find, apart from the caravanserais for the people from the rural districts, the makers of saddles and those of pack-saddles whose clients are recruited from amongst those very country people. Then the vendors of victuals brought in from the country who sometimes will form a market outside the gates … ” On the periphery of the town were situated “such industries as require space and whose vicinity might be considered undesirable; the dyers, the tanners, and almost outside the city limits, the potters” (Grunebaum, p. 147). The principle of shop location then was applied rationally in terms of both land and service functions; however, this was not a static process. As the bāzārs changed, so did the choice locations. Rich merchants, waqf (q.v.) supervisors, and the government built new sarāys or extensions of the bāzār, thus changing its spatial organization. Comparing data on the concentration of crafts from the 11th/17th or even the 13th/19th century with contemporary information, we find that changes have occurred. Schweizer, for example, compared data supplied by Wilson for the Tabrīz bāzār in the 1890s with the situation in the 1970s and found that roughly speaking the same commercial activities were carried on in the same bāzārs, but that in the Rāsta-ye Bāzār-e Jadīd and the Tīmča-ye Gorjī structural changes had taken place (Schweizer, p. 42; for the situation in Isfahan, see Soltani-Tirani, p. 5; in general see Wirth, pp. 236f.).

The various functions of the bāzār. The bāzār is a complex where many commercial, economic, and other activities take place; among them are manufacturing, wholesale, retail, and itinerant trade, banking, regional and international commerce, temporary residence, and cultural, social, political, and religious activities. Production of goods was concentrated in the bāzār and caravanserais, where one site served both the purpose of manufacturing, wholesaling, and retailing. Economic specialization was determined by product rather than by process. The production and/or sale of a product was under the loose control of guilds. The distributional difference among the aṣnāf was not caused by the integrity of the guilds, which were loosely articulated, weak organizations. Like other groups the guilds were controlled in the economic sphere by rich guild members and wholesale merchants, who also controlled other economic activities. Manufacturing, therefore, especially of textiles, also was carried out in the residential areas of the city and in the rural areas.

In addition to the fixed stalls and shops there was also a multitude of itinerant providers of goods and services. These either walked around peddling their wares, or had open-air, fixed locations (e.g., barbers and street vendors, dast-forūšān). These peddlers and hawkers were generally also financed by the same economic powers as the craftsmen and traders, in front of whose shops they plied their trades or crafts (Najmī, p. 94; Mostawfī, Šarḥ-e zendagānī, I, pp. 159-64).

The bāzār was also the city’s financial center. Apart from real estate and costly objets d’art, money could only be invested in trade. Iran’s rulers and elite therefore invested heavily in commercial enterprises by either building or buying caravanserais and shops or by participating in commercial ventures. Sultan Maḥmūd of Ḡazna, for example, built a large and lucrative bāzār in Balḵ (Bosworth, Ghaznavids, p. 140). The Buyid Ażod-al-Dawla invested in a caravanserai, which gave him a very profitable return (Mez, p. 452; see also Le Strange, Lands, p. 266). Many members of the elite became the silent partners of wholesale merchants, who held great power over the business community through their influence, which was a function both of their economic power and their political contacts with the elite. When in need of money the elite did not hesitate to borrow from merchants and ṣarrāfs (money lenders). Money could be loaned out at monthly, weekly, and even daily rates; thus anyone with surplus cash would lend it to a ṣarrāf or a merchant of his acquaintance. The role of the “investment bankers” was especially important, for they practically conducted all money transactions in Iran. Advances on crops were another important source of capital, Iran having an economy based on agriculture; advances were mainly made on cash crops such as wheat, rice, silk, cotton, and wool. Another important activity was the organization and financing of textile production and after 1287/1870 of carpets in rural areas. Most peasants had little or no capital and were obliged to seek credit from urban or itinerant dealers or get advances on, for example, unfinished carpets (see, for the 19th century, Floor, 1979; see also Lambton, pp. 121-30).

The bāzār’s interest in the rural hinterland extended beyond the financing and organizing of agriculture. Many guilds, such as those of the bakers, butchers, and grocers, concentrated their activities on providing the city’s population with its basic needs. But among the city’s guilds can be distinguished a great number whose activities for the most part were directly related to the agricultural sector. These activities included the collection, storage, and simple processing of agricultural commodities, the distribution of soil additives (fertilizers), and the production of agricultural implements and equipment. These traders also produced and traded a substantial part of the goods and services bought in the bāzār by peasants and herdsmen. The incomes of these bāzārīs therefore fluctuated with farm incomes (and even more so with the level of agricultural production) rather than with urban incomes (Taḥwīldār, p. 107; Ehlers, 1983).

Another aspect of the bāzār’s economic function was its role in interregional and international trade. Most products produced in a city’s hinterland only served that region’s needs; however, often a city and its dependent region also would produce or manufacture products that were exported to other parts of Iran or the world. Conversely, products not produced in Iran, but for which a market existed, were imported from abroad. The wholesale merchants with their commercial and credit contacts played a pivotal role in the organization and finance of this trade. The qayṣarīya and other important sarāys were headquarters of these operations. These activities more often than not resulted in an influx of foreign merchants who sought permanent or regular residence in the bāzār. From the beginning of foreign trade such foreign merchants as Indians, Arabs, Turks, Greeks, Italians, and many other nationalities were regular visitors to Iran. Of particular interest, if only because their archives provide so much interesting information, are the Dutch East Indies Company and the British East India Company, whose employees lived for long periods in various towns of Iran from the early 11th/17th century on. They, like other merchants, lived in a caravanserai in the bāzār of Isfahan, from which they carried on their import and export trade with Iranian colleagues (Mez, chap. 26; Barbaro and Contarini, p. 127; Floor, 1979; Naršaḵī, text p. 18).

The bāzārīs did not live in the bāzār complex, which had no permanent residential quarters. However, caravanserais, in addition to their trading and manufacturing functions, also served as hostelries, where tourists or visitors on business stayed. The restaurants and bathhouses found in and around the bāzārs also catered to the bāzārīs themselves, who enjoyed the convenience of a nearby bath or of having meals brought to them in their stalls or offices. They also frequented the restaurants as well as the coffeehouses and later teahouses, which could be found in the bāzārs. Several guilds had their own favorite cafés or pātūḡs (hangouts), where they met after working hours. Those bāzārīs who were members of Sufi organizations such as the Faqr-e ʿAjam (q.v.) met in these pātūḡs to stage and attend the soḵanvarī (literary) sessions (Maier and Gramlich). Others would meet in the local zūr-ḵāna or gymnasium, many of which were in or near the bāzār area. The ʿĪd-e Qorbān procession, in which villagers often participated, was also an annual socioreligious event (Floor, 1984). The ʿĪd-e Ābrīzān (water sprinkling) festival, which is of pre-Islamic origin, was also celebrated by some or all of the bāzār population, as in Isfahan (17th century) or in Kāšān up to 1930 (Kuznetsova, ed., p. 86; Narāqī, p. 274). That “bāzār” and “festival” were often synonymous is already attested by Bīrūnī who mentions the occurrence of festivals in Qom (ʿĪd-e Bīst o dovvom or Bāḏrūz) and Isfahan (kazīn or kažīn) in the 4th/10th century (Āṯār al-bāqīa, Pers. tr. A. Dānāserešt, Tehran, 1352 Š./1973, pp. 300-301; tr. Sachau, pp. 214-15). As can still be seen in many bāzārs large sums of money were invested to make them pleasant work environments. The qadak dyers’ guild in Isfahan, for example, occupied rāstas with high domed roofs containing 136 shops, each of which had two stories and was roomy, clean, and pleasant. There were benches to sit on, winter and summer sleeping places, ponds, water pools, wells, cisterns, and apparatus for dyeing and fulling. In the 19th century many government officials and merchants who either knew or had dealings with the guild leaders came to these shops for their daily rest (Taḥwīldār, p. 93).

The bāzār played a social role in another sense. Kinship was especially important in the bāzār. “The bazaar was one large kinship unit, since intermarriage within the bazaar was preferred and practiced” (Thaiss, p. 199). The rate of endogamous marriages therefore was higher among bāzārīs than among other groups. The social aspect of the bāzār was particularly apparent in the joint prayers of traders in nearby mosques, many of which were to be found in the bāzār. It should be stressed here that, with the exception of a few special cases, none of the social events discussed were peculiar to one guild; they cut across guild lines, and being a bāzārī was a more important criterion than being a member of a particular guild (Floor, 1984).

In addition to daily prayers, the bāzār community participated in the weekly hayʾat-e maḏhabī or religious gathering. These gatherings were hosted by a different bāzārī each week and were led by wāʿeẓes, preachers. Special gatherings were organized by the bāzārīs for the Moḥarram processions. These could take the form of participation in the flagellation processions (sīna-zanī, qamma-zanī) and the taʿzīa processions, where bāzārīs (sometimes particular guilds) formed so-called dastas (groups) with special banners to commemorate the martyrdom of the imams. To that end the bāzārīs also maintained special standards (ʿalam), stored in the bāzārs, as in Kāšān to this day. The weekly hayʾat-e maḏhabī not only served religious purposes but also provided a venue to meet and discuss economic and political problems or to arrange marriages. “It is through these interpersonal networks and the participation of the same individuals in several different gatherings during the week that bazaar information, ideas, and rumors are passed on” (Thaiss, p. 202). There is no evidence for the existence of bāzārs that catered in particular to the needs of pilgrims in holy places like Qom and Mašhad as Wirth (p. 299) asserts. In Mašhad, for example, only evidence to the contrary was round (Pagnini Alberti, pp. 7f.).

Political function. The Friday mosque—the main religious and political center of the city—and the bāzār are always found together. In the mosque the population prayed in congregation, came to hear proclamations of its rulers, and gave vent to feelings about the ruler’s policies. Political will was also often expressed through the mobilization of the bāzār community. This could take various forms ranging from supporting the ruler to challenging his authority. In the former case the community might illuminate the bāzār to celebrate a victory or another important political event, or, conversely, could express its disagreement by refusing to celebrate such an event. Political involvement could be expressed in more drastic ways, of which the most powerful was closing the entire bāzār complex (taʿṭīl-e bāzār), which, in fact, amounted to an economic and political strike against the government. The most famous example of the use of this political weapon was the bast (sanctuary) of the bāzārīs in 1906, which triggered the Constitutional Revolution of 1324/1906. Demonstrations and other forms of violence were regular occurrences in the bāzār (See asnāf). An example was the uprising of the Tabrīz bāzār against excessive taxation by Shah Ṭahmāsb I and the brutal behavior by his governor in 979/1571. Although properly speaking it was not purely an uprising of the bāzārīs, craftsmen and traders played the leading roles, according to Ḥasan Rūmlū (Aḥsan al-tawārīḵ, ed. Navāʾī, pp. 455-57). When in 1066/1657 the dārūḡa of Isfahan treated the guilds of Isfahan harshly, the bāzārīs protested to the dīvān -beg (lord high justice), but to no avail. After seeing that demonstrations, too, had no effect they finally shut the bāzār down. This was followed by a peaceful demonstration witnessed by Shah ʿAbbās II, who ordered the chancellor to examine their complaints. When this failed to produce the desired result, the bāzārīs took sanctuary and sought intercession from a powerful religious leader. This finally led to an acceptable solution (Qazvīnī, pp. 219-22). Similar events have occurred throughout Iranian history. In 1362 Š./1983 demonstrations in the bāzār of Tehran were organized in support of one or the other political candidate or to protest a particular economic policy (e.g., nationalization of foreign trade).

BAZAR iii. Socioeconomic and Political Role

1. The bāzār in the Islamic Iranian city.

The bāzār in the Islamic city has been (1) a central marketplace and craft center located in the old quarters of the town; (2) a primary arena, along with the mosque, of extrafamilial sociability; and (3) a sociocultural milieu of a traditional urban life-style. The bāzār in contemporary Iran has performed two more roles of great significance; (4) a socioeconomic and power base of the Shiʿite religious establishment; and (5) a bastion of political protest movements.

The mercantile context of Islam. Merchants and trade have enjoyed great esteem in Islamic civilization. The society of Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, was already a major center of trade in which local, regional and, at times, international markets were organized. The city of Mecca itself was dominated by the merchant patricians at the time of the rise of Islam (see “Mecca,” in EI ²; M. Rodinson, Islam and Capitalism, New York, 1973, pp. 28-29; M. Watt, Islam and Integration of Society, London, 1970, pp. 5-7). Friday was chosen as the day of congregational prayer (one of the most important Islamic institutions articulating the religious community and the state) because it was the day on which the weekly bāzār was mobilized and the people of the town and surrounding areas gathered in the marketplace for business transactions (see S. Goitein, Studies in Islamic History and Institutions, Leiden, 1966, pp. 111-25). The prophet Moḥammad’s first wife, Ḵadīja, and many members of his clan were among the city’s prosperous merchants; the prophet himself was, in the pre-prophetic period of his life, engaged in trade on behalf of his wife (see “Khadīdja” and “Muḥammad” in EI ²), which must have made him quite knowledgeable about business and trade and their social significance. Thus the reform of the world as envisaged by Moḥammad included the reform of the bāzār as the main arena of extrafamilial sociability and the main public center of the community of believers (omma). This concept was projected in Islam onto the ideal arrangements of the religious community, onto the order of the whole cosmos, and even onto the character of God. “The mutual relations between God and man are of a strictly commercial nature. Allah is the ideal merchant. He includes all the universe in his reckoning. All is counted, everything measured” (C. C. Torrey, Commercial-Theological Terms in the Koran, Leiden, 1892, p. 51). The bāzār was recognized by Islamic law as a designated locus of sociability. The purpose of transactions in the bāzār was beyond a mere exchange of commodities; it was exchange in the context of religious norms and cultural values (see A. Udovitch, “The Constitution of the Traditional Islamic Marketplace: Islamic Law and the Social Context of Exchange,” in S. Eisenstadt, ed., Patterns of Modernity III: Beyond the West, New York, 1987, p. 163).

Big merchants (tojjār) were an identifiable group and often considered among the urban notables in the Islamic town (see, e.g., R. Mottahedeh, Loyalty and Leadership in an Early Islamic Society, Princeton, 1980, pp. 116-20, 126, and Fasāʾī, pp. 23-132 for the late Qajar period). Lambton observed that “the anti-ascetic attitude of Islam contributed to the growth of the merchant community and helped to raise the status of the merchant. Man’s salvation was, broadly speaking, to be ensured not by withdrawal from the worlḍ … but by integrity and moderation in the conduct of the affairs of this world” (“The Merchant in Medieval Islam,” in W. B. Henning and E. Yarshater, eds., A Locust’s Leg, London, 1962, p. 121). The bāzār was, hence, basically a religious and commercial whole. While commercial transaction “is the raison d’être for the existence of the bazaar,” as G. Thaiss pointed out in his observations on the bāzār of Tehran, “[t]he religious idiom is the basic common denominator in the bazaar and functions to create crosscutting ties and bonds among bazaris of different guilds and professions” (G. Thaiss, “The Bazaar as a Case Study of Religion and Social Change,” in E. Yar-Shater, ed., Iran Faces the Seventies, New York, 1971, pp. 193-94).

The bāzār’s internal hierarchy. The social hierarchy of the bāzār had the big merchants (tojjār) at the top of the pyramid, the headmen (kadḵodā) and the masters (ostād) of artisans and shopkeepers of well over 100 guild-like associations (aṣnāf) at the middle level, and the masses of apprentices (šāgerd) and footboys (pādow) at the bottom, with some marginal elements such as poor peddlers, dervishes, and beggars at the lowest level (see A. Ashraf, “The Roots of Emerging Dual Class Structure in Nineteenth Century Iran,” Iranian Studies 14, 1981, pp. 5-27). The census data of 1928 show the following composition of some 31,000 people working in the bāzār of Tehran: tojjār, over 2 percent; ostāds of aṣnāf about 40 percent (24 percent petty traders and 16 percent artisans); šāgerds, 45 percent; and pādows, 13 percent (Sāl-nāma-ye eḥṣāʾīya-ye šahr-e Tehrān, Tehran, 1310 Š./1931, pp. 72-83).

During the election of the first Majles, merchants and masters of aṣnāf were, along with the ʿolamāʾ and patrimonial agents (ʿommāl-e dīvānī ) granted the franchise, whereas the masses of bāzārīs were denied even the right to vote in the elections. The political leadership of the bāzār was at the disposal of merchants and aṣnāf leaders, with the former at the top of the bāzār status hierarchy. “This assembly is called the Majles, where all members are equal, not the bāzār where you, as a merchant, are allowed to humiliate and command a petty trader,” said Mīrzā Moḥammad-Ṣādeq Ṭabāṭabāʾī addressing a merchant in the midst of a bitter controversy among the bāzārī deputies in one of the early sessions of the first Majles (“Moḏākarāt-e Majles, dawra-ye awwal-e taqnīnīya,” in Rūz-nāma-ye kešvar-e šāhanšāhī-e Īrān, Tehran, 1 Ḵordād-30 Mordād 1325 Š./1946, p. 12).

The bāzār and the state. The bāzār served the state as the financial source of taxes, duties, custom dues, road tolls, credit, and corvee for the political and military notables. In return, the governing notables provided the bāzārīs with protection and overall administration of justice. Also supervised by the state were the daily activities of the bāzār concerning quality of products and merchandise as well as the fairness of prices and accuracy of weights. The state dealt with the bāzārīs collectively, i.e., through the chief of merchants (malek al-tojjār) and headmen and masters of aṣnāf. These leaders of the bāzār were in contact with the governor of the town through the office of the town’s mayor (kalāntar). These offices were all intermediary offices involving dual roles as trustees of the bāzār (and city quarters in the case of mayor) and appointees of the state (see W. Floor, “The Guilds in Iran, an Overview,” in ZDMG 125, 1975, pp. 99-116).

Bāzār-mosque interdependence. For many centuries, the bāzār and the mosque, as inseparable twins, have served as the primary arena of public life in urban Iran. In pre-modern Iran, they were foci of the two principal networks of sociability beyond the kinship relations. Combined, the bāzār and the mosque made a world in which the city dwellers organized their everyday communal life. Deriving from this communal network was an active alliance between the bāzār and the mosque with political consequences of utmost significance in Iran (on protest movements, see below).

The alliance of the ʿolamāʾ and the bāzārīs in Iran has developed in several areas and for a variety of reasons. The bāzārīs have been allied traditionally with the independent Shiʿite ʿolamāʾ in their mutually held belief that the patrimonial mode of administration though often recognized as legitimate on a de facto basis, was in fact only quasi-legitimate.

Further, the physical proximity and the interdependence of the mosque and the bāzār in the structure of the Islamic town were important factors. The bāzār as a closely knit community, in part owing to its enclosed physical space, increased the merchants’ awareness of each other’s public activities. Paying one’s religious taxes, contributing to charitable funds, and maintaining a generally good relationship with the ʿolamāʾ were all signs of piety and, as such, helpful to maintaining one’s respect and honor in the bāzār community. For their part, the ʿolamāʾ needed the mass adherence of the bāzārīs as a basis for their own political power. Encountering the arbitrary and oppressive domination of the governing authority without countervailing powers of their own, the bāzārīs needed the canopy of the ʿolamāʾ’s protection. Furthermore, the religious sentiment and traditional orientation of the bāzārīs were reinforced by their ties with the ʿolamāʾ, by the physical setting of the bāzār, and by its communal character. These communal and ideological ties led the bāzārīs and the ʿolamāʾ to share certain similarities in their life-style and world view.

Above all else, it was the dependence of the Shiʿite establishment upon the bāzār’s financial support for mosque and religious schools (madrasas) that led to the articulation of the mosque-bāzār alliance. The power, prosperity, and popularity of the ʿolamāʾ were related to the size and values of religious endowments (awqāf) under their control and the amount of ḵoms (one-fifth of net profits) that they received from the bāzārīs and others.

The bāzār-mosque mobilization capability. The major vehicle for effecting social cohesion among various groups of the bāzārīs as well as the network for successful mobilization was small religious groups (hayʾat), sermons of preachers, and congregational prayers of noon and late afternoon/early evening. The prominent merchants and leaders of aṣnāf were expected to gather in the major mosque of the bāzār. The leading bāzārīs took this occasion to discuss matters of mutual interest in business and occasionally political realms.

The term hayʾat is, however, of recent usage. The religious groups, in the early 14th/20th century were called jalasa (session). The religious groups are multifaceted, informal, face-to-face groups which serve as occupational, neighborhood, religious, interpersonal, friendship, cooperative, self-help, or political networks in various sections of the bāzārs and neighborhoods of different communities. “Many of the functions that the guilds formerly fulfilled [were recently] being assumed by the heyʾats, such as helping the poor, organizing cooperative relief efforts … , helping bankrupt merchants … and collecting funds … for building schools, contributing to hospitals, and the like” (Thaiss, p. 202).

There are three types of religious groups: guild (ṣenf) hayʾats, organized by members of each guild of the bāzār; neighborhood hayʾats, organized primarily by traders and artisans living in the neighborhood; and finally ethnic and special group hayʾats such as Hayʾat-e Zanjānīhā and Hayʾat-e Karbalāʾīhā. The role of merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and apprentices in initiating and mobilizing these religious groups is crucial. Thus, through the periodic meetings of the hayʾats (weekly, monthly, or bimonthly), a network of communication is developed throughout the city for which the bāzārīs constitute the articulating element. “It is through these interpersonal networks and the participation of the same individuals in several different gatherings during the week that bazaar information, ideas, and rumors are passed on. Participants in these religious gatherings are not only merchants (tājer) but also smaller businessmen (kasabeh), [lower] religious leaders (ʿulama), workers and porters (kārgar and hammāl), and some government bureaucrats as well” (Thaiss, p. 202). Mobilizing the processions of mourners, feeding large groups, and arranging congregational prayers promote capability for mass mobilization, which can be channeled easily into collective protest movements (on protest movements, see below).

2. The impact of recent socioeconomic changes.

The recent socioeconomic changes, which began mainly in the 1920s and 1930s and continued at an accelerated pace in the 1960s and 1970s, affected the overall position of Iran’s bāzārs and the various bāzārī classes and strata. The response of the bāzārs to the challenges of new urban developments varied from city to city, depending on the role and function of each bāzār in the city’s economy and its place in market hierarchies. The size of population, the rate of population growth and urban development, the pattern of development of new avenues in relation to the bāzār, the distance of modem quarters from the bāzār areas, and the accessibility of the bāzār areas to motor transportation are among the main factors that have influenced the overall position of the bāzār in the processes of urban growth and socioeconomic development.

Functionally, three major types of bāzārs have developed in modern Iran: (1) the unique bāzār of Tehran, functioning as a strategic center for local, national, and international trade; (2) the provincial bāzārs engaged primarily in wholesale and retail trade for the central city and its hinterland; and (3) the local bāzārs of small towns and large villages in which retailers and peasant peddlers serve primarily the town and surrounding rural areas (see Ašraf, 1968, pp. 37-40; Bonine, 1980, pp. 78-148; English, pp. 65-97; Rotblat, 1972, pp. 6-18; Ehlers, pp. 38-52). Traditionally, the provincial bāzār served either a large province (ayālat) or a large district (welāyat). The more significant provincial bāzārs also played an important role in foreign trade. The bāzārs of Isfahan, Kermān, Kermānšāh, Mašhad, Shiraz, Tabrīz, and Yazd were included in this category in the late 13th/19th and early 14th/20th centuries. The bāzār of Tehran, however, monopolized most of the foreign trade in the last few decades and became the main center of import, export, collection, and distribution of agricultural cash crops, modern manufactured consumer items and Iran’s most important handicraft product, carpets (Seger, 1978, pp. 125-69). A gradual transition of the bāzār from its more traditional to its more modern form over the past century has been accompanied by an increase in the total volume of trade and by extension of specialization among merchants, retailers, and various business agents. Along with this expansion, there has taken place a general shift from handicraft production to distributive activities as well as the emergence of further status differences and inequalities within the bāzār community as a whole.

Bāzār vs. modern avenues. The rapid growth in the population and physical size of Iranian cities in the present century has led to the creation or expansion of many new shopping areas. In such large and rapidly growing urban centers as Tehran, Tabrīz, Mašhad, Isfahan, Shiraz, Ahvāz, and Kermānšāh this growth and expansion could not be accommodated within the physical boundaries of the bāzār, and thus there was a shift of retail sales and a number of trades from the bāzār areas to the other parts of the old quarters or to the new avenues. In addition, the introduction of motorized transportation required that some of the new businesses be relocated outside of the bāzār. In Tehran, for example, food wholesalers moved from the bāzār to Ḵīābān-e Eʿdām, while wholesalers of building materials relocated themselves in the Ḵīābān-e Ḵayyām area.

In some cases the development of new avenues led to the relative decline of retailing in the bāzār itself. In Qazvīn, for example, many stores moved from the old bāzār to the modern main avenues largely as a result of the need to be close to their new, mostly middle-class clientele (Rotblat, 1972, p. 154). These developments led to the decline of sections of the bāzārs of some cities. In Kermānšāh (now Bāḵtarān), for example, even the central section of the bāzār, where the better quality goods, were offered, showed signs of physical deterioration (Clarke and Clark, p. 77). In many larger cities, the changes in the bāzārs were highly uneven. In Tehran, for example, the oldest sections of the bāzār became the shopping area for the urban poor and rural customers, whereas other sections geared themselves to the more middle-class clients and prospered especially in the 1960s and 1970s (Seger, 1978, pp. 163-67). In Malāyer, parts of the bāzār were converted to storage space, other parts to the lower-ranking crafts and trades, and still other parts (close to the modern areas of the city) experienced considerable prosperity (Momeni, p. 191).

A central feature of the type of urban design that was implemented in many Iranian cities in the 1920s and 1930s was the construction of a number of wide and long avenues serving as the east-west and north-south axes of the towns and suitable for motor transportation. In some cities, including Hamadān, Kermānšāh, Shiraz, and Yazd, the new avenues went through the bāzār areas, cut them into two or more enclaves, compromised their physical integrity, and, in many cases, led to the segmentation of the old city as a whole (Kano, pp. 309, 314; Bonine, 1981, p. 241; Clarke, p. 27; Wirth, 1968, p. 125). The bāzār of Kermānšāh, for example, was truncated by the major new avenue (Ḵiābān-e Šāhpūr) which was driven through the heart of the bāzār complex (Clarke and Clark, p. 77). The new avenues did not, however, truncate the bāzārs of such other cities as Isfahan, Kāšān, Kermān, Qazvīn, and Tabrīz (Wirth, 1968, pp. 108, 109, 113; Schweizer, p. 37; Costello, p. 139; Rotblat, 1972, pp. 45, 56).

The economic resilience of the bāzār. The survival of the bāzār has been at least partially due to the processes of overurbanization and underurbanism in Iran, i.e., the lagging rate of industrialization relative to the rapid growth of the urban population. On the other hand, overurbanization required a rapid expansion of a tertiary sector of the economy in general and intermediary trade activities in particular. As a result, a large segment of the urban population became engaged in retail sale of imported commodities as well as the products of local and national industries. A survey of social stratification and occupational mobility in Tehran and Shiraz in 1977 showed that over one-fourth of the economically active work force of these cities was employed in small trade and craft activities both inside and outside of the bāzār areas (Banū ʿAzīzī and A. Ašraf, p. 43). Having already established themselves as the main elements of social, religious, and economic activities, the bāzārs continued to grow even further with the increasing expansion of the tertiary sector and urbanization.

The shopping areas of the new avenues normally do not compete with the bāzār, but rather supplement it in many respects by tailoring the needs of different groups of customers (Wirth, 1968, p. 101). To some extent, the recent economic and urban developments have led to a division of labor between the shops in the bāzār and those in the new avenues, a manifestation of the

resilience of the bāzār. The provincial bāzārs have often maintained their specialization in such main traditional trades as textile, carpet, and metalwork. The bāzārs of Yazd, Qazvīn, Shiraz, and Kermānšāh have specialized mainly in textile-related retail sales, whereas the bāzārs of Tehran, Isfahan, Kāšān, Kermān, and Tabrīz have also specialized in the carpet trade (Seger, 1978, p. 140; Bonine, 1981, p. 243; Rotblat, 1972, p. 67; Clarke and Clark, p. 73; Clarke, p. 29; Schweizer, p. 40).

The large and well-established bāzār of Tabrīz, despite the city’s rapid urban growth, resisted pressures for relocation of its shops to the new shopping areas (Schweizer, pp. 32-33). The bāzār of Qazvīn, while challenged by the retail shops of the new avenues, maintained its relative dominance in the commercial life of the town and its hinterland (Rotblat, 1972, p. 67). The bāzār of Kāšān, which did not encounter any significant competition from the new shopping centers, maintained its commercial dominance, thanks to a relatively low rate of urban growth and the continuing vigor of the carpet trade (Costello, p. 149). The bāzārs of many middle-sized cities and of most small towns, in which the modern shopping areas have not yet been well developed, have maintained their commercial as well as morphological and even cultural dominance in their cities.

The bāzār of Tehran underwent a rapid expansion in area in the 1960s and 1970s as large portions of the residential sections within the bāzār and neighboring quarters were increasingly used for commercial and small-scale manufacturing establishments (Seger, 1978, pp. 126-33). The bāzār of Tehran managed to maintain its production function through a shift from some traditional handicrafts to small scale industrial production with light machinery. However, as shops became increasingly expensive for production space, the small scale manufactures moved out from the shops in the bāzār to houses within the bāzār quarter. These new industrial establishments have maintained many essential characteristics of the traditional relations of the artisans and apprentices. One index of economic prosperity of the bāzār during this period was a rapid increase in the “key money” (sarqoflī) of the bāzār shops and business offices. In many cases, the key money increased several times, reaching as high as $300,000 for some well-located shops in the late 1970s (Seger, 1978, p. 165).

The bāzār’s traditional life-style. The processes of modernization and urban development created a morphological, socioeconomic, and cultural duality in large urban areas of Iran, particularly in Tehran. A dual society, consisting of the religious and bāzārī strata with urban traditional life-styles living mainly in the bāzār area and the old quarters of the town, on the one hand, and the new middle strata living in the modern quarters on the other. Petty traders, shopkeepers, craftsmen, and peddlers have been the main carriers of traditional urban life-styles, both inside and outside of the bāzār (Seger, 1978, pp. 215-17; 1975, pp. 21-38; Ašraf, 1981, pp. 5-27). Many of the petty traders and craftsmen in the new areas of the cities outside of the bāzārs displayed attitudes and modes of behavior that were essentially the same as their counterparts in the bāzār. Some of the more pious members of the bāzār refrained from using such modern (state-controlled) means of communication as radio and television or the cinema. Their family recreation often included visits to the holy shrines at Ray or Qom. Their wives, daughters, and unmarried sisters would rarely be seen outside the home without the veil (čādor). There was also a higher rate of endogamous marriage among the petty traders and craftsmen within the bāzār than among other groups (Thaiss, 1971, pp, 199-200).

The bāzār and social mobility. Four surveys on the social origins of bāzārī proprietors in Tabrīz, Yazd, Hamadān, and Malāyer in the mid-1970s suggest that the larger and more established the bāzār of a city is the less likely it is that bāzārī proprietors will be of agrarian origin. In the large and prosperous bāzār of Tabrīz all of the 86 cases interviewed were born in the city, and only 7 cases had fathers who were born in the countryside (Kano, p. 325). In the old and active provincial bāzār of Yazd “non natives” were “not common” (Bonine, 1981, p. 247). In a medium-sized but well-established bāzār of Hamadān, 10 respondents of 141 came from rural areas (Kano, p. 325). In the bāzār of Malāyer, which exemplifies the marketplace of a smaller but fast-growing town, however, 69 of 196 bāzārī proprietors, or over 35 percent of the total, came from rural areas (Momeni, p. 78). The high rate of influx of rural traders and craftsmen into the rapidly growing small town led to the ruralization of the bāzār, particularly in the middle and lower class sections where land was cheaper (Momeni, pp. 147, 190-91).

A survey of the changes in the bāzār of Hamadān the 1970s showed that the concentration of specific trades in different sections of the bāzār was giving way gradually to a more even distribution of trades throughout the bāzār. The same survey revealed considerable occupational mobility both between generations and within the new generation of bāzārīs (Kano, p. 324). In the bāzār of Yazd, according to the findings of another study, about one-fourth of the shops changed hands over a six-year period, while five percent of shopkeepers changed their lines of trade (Bonine, 1981, pp. 252-53).

The recent socioeconomic and morphological changes in urban Iran reduced the traditional importance of the bāzār as the sole urban marketplace, but did not lead to its decline. The new shopping centers in many respects supplemented, rather than replaced, the bāzār’s shops. Moreover, having projected itself into areas outside its former physical boundaries, the bāzār extended its life-style into other urban quarters as well. And finally, the bāzārs of Tehran and several other major cities underwent considerable spatial, demographic, and commercial expansion during the 1960s and 1970s. Thus the bāzār remained a resilient commercial and sociocultural component of urban life in Iran with a significant political potential.

A comprehensive monograph on a provincial bāzār (Qazvīn) is H. Rotblat, “Stability and Change in an Iranian Provincial Bazaar,” Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Chicago, 1972. Two papers from this work have been published: “Structural Impediments to Change in the Qazvin Bazaar,” Iranian Studies 5/4, 1972, pp. 130-48; and “Social Organization and Development in an Iranian Provincial Bazaar,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 23/2, 1975, pp. 292-305. A comprehensive monograph on a regional market system is M. Bonine, Yazd and Its Hinterland: A Central Place System of Dominance in the Central Iranian Plateau, Marburg/Lahn, 1980. Other monographs on Iranian bāzārs include M. Bonine, “Shops and Shopkeepers: Dynamics of an Iranian Provincial Bazaar,” in M. Bonine and N. Keddie, eds., Modern Iran, The Dialectics of Continuity and Change, Albany, 1981, pp. 233-58; idem, “Islam and Commerce: Waqf and the Bazaar of Yazd, Iran,” Erdkunde 41, 1987; P. English, City and Village in Iran: Settlement and Economy in the Kirman Basin, Madison, Wis., 1966; G. Schweizer, “Tabriz (Nordwest-Iran) und der Tabrizer Bazaar,” Erdkunde 26, 1972, pp. 32-46; E. Wirth, “Strukturwandlungen und Entwicklungstendenzen der orientalischen Stadt,” ibid., 22, 1968, pp. 101-28; idem, “Zum Problem des Bazars (sūq, çaṛşı),” Der Islam 51, 1974, pp. 203-60; 52, 1975, pp. 6-46; H. Kano, “City Development and Occupational Change in Iran: A Case Study of Hamadan,” The Developing Economies 16/3, September, 1978, pp. 298-328; G. Thaiss, “The Bazaar as a Case Study of Religion and Social Change,” in E. Yar-Shater, ed., Iran Faces the Seventies, New York, 1971, pp. 189-216; A. Bakhtiar, “The Royal Bazaar of Isfahan,” Iranian Studies 7/1-2, 1974, pp. 320-47; P. Peberdy, “The Bazaar Economy,” in J. Connell, ed., Semnan, Persian City and Region, London, [1970]; idem, “Problems of the Bazaar,” Echo’s Economic Reports, no. 119, Tehran, 1965. A number of monographs on Iranian cities contain useful sections on the bāzār, including J. I. Clarke, The Iranian City of Shiraz, University of Durham, Department of Geography, Research Paper Series 7, 1963; J. I. Clarke and B. D. Clark, Kermanshah, An Iranian Provincial City, ibid., 10, 1969; V. Costello, Kashan: A City and Region in Iran, London, 1976; D. F. Darwent, Urban Growth in Relation to Socio-Economic Development and Westernization: A Case Study of the City of Mashhad, Ph.D. thesis, University of Durham, 1965; M. Momeni, Malayer und sein Umland, Geographisches Institut der Universität, Marburg, 1976; M. Seger, Tehran, Eine stadtgeographische Studie, Vienna, 1978; idem, “Strukturelemente der Stadt Teheran and das Modell der modernen orientalischen Stadt,” Erdkunde 29, 1975, pp. 21-38; E. Ehlers, “Die Stadt Bam und ihr Oasen-Umland/Zentraliran,” ibid., 29, 1975, pp. 38-52; A. Ašraf, Jāmeʿa wa eqteṣād dar sokūnatgāh-e Ferdows, Tehran, Institute for Social Studies and Research, 1347 Š./1968. Census reports, manpower surveys, and socioeconomic studies of the urban centers contain some useful material concerning the social and demographic characteristics of the bāzārs; see, e.g., ʿA. Banū ʿAzīzī (Banuazizi) and A. Ašraf, Tarkīb-e qešrhā-ye ejtemāʿī wa taḥarrok-e šoḡlī dar Tehrān wa Šīrāz, Tehran, Bureau of Social Planning, 1359 Š./1980. On the issue of conflict between the traditional bāzārī life-style and that of the modern middle class see A. Ashraf, “The Roots of Emerging Dual Class Structure in Nineteenth-Century Iran,” Iranian Studies 14/1-2, 1981, pp. 5-27; see also Seger, 1975 and 1978. For the impact of urban development on the physical integrity and relative economic importance of the bāzār and avenues of the major Iranian cities, see the historical sections of the reports of the city master plans available in the Archive of the Secretariat of the High Council of City Planning, affiliated with the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, Tehran, Iran.

3. The bāzār and protest movements.

In pre-modern Iran, the political orientation of the bāzārīs was influenced mainly by their relationship with the ʿolamāʾ on the one hand and the governing notables on the other. In the course of the 13th/19th century, the traditional alliance between the bāzārīs and the ʿolamāʾ was further bolstered by the strains and antagonisms between their interests and those of the state. Deeply rooted in their common history the conflict between the state and the bāzārī-ʿolamāʾ alliance intensified considerably from the late 13th/19th century onward. The alliance served as the driving force or as a significant component of all the major political movements, starting with the Tobacco Rebellion of 1309/1891-92 and continuing with the Constitutional Revolution of 1324-29/1906-11, the anti-republican movement of 1303 Š./1924, the oil nationalization movement of 1329-32 Š./1950-53, the urban uprising of 1342 Š./1963, and finally the revolution of 1356-57 Š./1977-79.

Assembly of merchant deputies of 1301/1884. An early protest by the bāzārīs against the Qajar state took place in the mid-1880s when a number of leading merchants demanded the dismissal of the minister of commerce and the establishment of an assembly of merchant deputies (majles-e wokalā-ye tojjār).

The accelerated growth of foreign trade and increasing contact with the West in the late 13th/19th and early 14th/20th centuries led to the growth and prosperity of the bāzārs of the major cities. The balance of economic power, therefore, changed gradually from the government’s patrimonial agents (ʿommāl-e dīvān ī) to the big merchants. There also emerged a group of successful and relatively enlightened merchants in the principal urban centers who began to articulate new economic and political demands (Ashraf and Hekmat, pp. 725-50; Gilbar, pp. 275-303). As a result of these shifts in the balance of power, in 1289/1872, in the course of an administrative reform, the Ministry of Commerce (Wezārat-e Tejārat) was formed to protect the interests of merchants from the rapacity of the court functionaries and to create an environment conducive to trade. ʿAbbās Mīrzā Molkārā, Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah’s brother, who headed the new ministry, complains in his memoirs about widespread corruption and the total lack of interest on the part of government leaders in the promotion of commerce (pp. 167-69). Dissatisfaction with the newly created ministry was later voiced by merchants in a petition to the shah in which they asked for the appointment of a patriotic official who was religious, unbiased, and not avaricious and whose authority would extend to all places and ministries (Ādamīyat and Nāṭeq, p. 309). The merchants’ repeated appeals and protests caused the shah to remove the minister of commerce and to issue a proclamation in Šawwāl, 1301/July-August, 1884, calling for the formation of a merchants’ assembly (majles-e mašwarat). In response, the merchants of Tehran issued a manifesto of six recommendations that demanded, inter alia, the convening of an assembly of merchants’ deputies composed of ten representatives selected from the merchants of Tehran, which was to hold three sessions every week, and submitted it to the shah. The essential rationale of the recommendations was the argument that the merchants’ collective interests could be protected only by limiting domestic forces of oppression and external forces of colonialism: Protecting private property, preventing state functionaries from taking advantage of merchants, and empowering merchants to settle their own affairs in an assembly of their peers and liberating them from the traditional judicial system were all measures designed to reduce oppression from within. Protecting local merchants from European competition both in and out of the country, developing a network of modern industries to replace the declining handicrafts—which were increasingly incapable of competing with Western products—creating a national banking system that would reduce British and Russian control over the country’s money markets, and reducing the control exercised by foreign powers and their entrepreneurs over customs houses were the measures directed against the semi-colonial control on the country’s economy (Ādamīyat and Nāṭeq, pp. 312-20). Although the efforts of these merchants to increase their political power were unsuccessful, their grievances and their opposition to the regime continued until, in alliance with the ʿolamāʾ, it received a forcible and successful expression.

The Tobacco Rebellion of 1309/1891-92. The first successful protest movement originating in the bāzārī-ʿolamāʾ alliance was the Tobacco Rebellion of 1309/1891-92. The tobacco concession granted to a British subject in Rajab, 1307/March, 1890, could seriously undermine the economic status of thousands of Iranian tobacco dealers, turning them in effect into salesmen working on commission for an English firm. In the major cities of Tehran, Tabrīz, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Mašhad protests and riots were set off in the bāzārs in opposition to the British concessionaire. The bāzārīs’ action included preventing the agents from entering the tobacco fields, burning the tobacco stock, writing petitions and sending delegations to the shah, taking sanctuary ( bast ) in the shrine of Shah ʿAbd-al-ʿAẓīm, and disseminating a religious edict (fatwā) issued apparently by Mīrzā Ḥasan Šīrāzī (the highest religious authority) forbidding the public to smoke. On 2 Jomādā II 1309/3 January 1892 Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah ordered Mīrzā Ḥasan Āštīānī, the leading jurisconsult of Tehran, either to smoke a water pipe on the pulpit or leave the town (Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, p. 785). The next day in a gathering to commemorate the death of Fāṭema (the daughter of the prophet), Āštīānī announced his decision to leave the town. Soon the bāzārs of Tehran were closed down and several thousand bāzārīs and theology students gathered around the citadel shouting slogans against the shah. In a confrontation between the royal troops and the crowd seven people were killed and a score of others injured. Under these mounting pressures from the bāzārī-ʿolamāʾ alliance, the shah eventually canceled the tobacco concession. This movement served as a prelude to the Constitutional movement of 1324-29/1906-11 (Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, pp. 767-70, 780-91; Karbalāʾī; Nāẓem-al-Eslām, I, pp. 19-59; Dawlatābādī, pp. 105-11; Molkārā, pp. 182-91; Saʿīdī Sīrjānī, pp. 374-98; Keddie, 1966a).

The Constitutional Revolution of 1324-29/1906-11. The Constitutional Revolution was set in motion by a coalition of a small segment of less conservative ʿolamāʾ, a large group of the bāzārīs, and a tiny group of the emerging Western-oriented intelligentsia, most of whom came from the ranks of the ʿolamāʾ, governing notables, and merchants. The merchants, who had made several unsuccessful pleas to the court for relief from the allegedly illicit and excessive demands of customs agents under Belgian command, took refuge in the shrine of Shah ʿAbd-al-ʿAẓīm on 19 Ṣafar 1323/25 April 1905 (Nāẓem-al-Eslām, I, pp. 295-96; Šarīf Kāšānī, pp. 19-21; Kasrawī, 1977, pp. 29-31, 51-52). The dramatic detention and bastinado of two prominent sugar merchants (Sayyed Hāšem Qandī and Sayyed Esmāʿīl Khan) on 14 Šawwāl 1323/11 December 1905 aroused the Tehrani merchants and shopkeepers and resulted in a shutdown of the bāzārs. Accompanied by a number of prominent ʿolamāʾ and a few hundred students of religious schools (ṭollāb), hundreds of the bāzārīs took refuge again in Shah ʿAbd-al-ʿAẓīm (Šarīf Kāšānī, I, pp. 28-47; Nāẓem-al-Eslām, I, pp. 331-42; Dawlatābādī, II, pp. 10-33). Finally, in the course of a continuing dispute and struggle with the government, a group of prominent ʿolamāʾ left Tehran to take refuge in the shrine of Qom on 23 Jomādā 1324/16 July 1906, while some twelve to fourteen thousand bāzārīs, theology students, and others took refuge on the grounds of the British legation in Tehran. The bāzārs of a number of other major cities were also shut down. The protesters demanded, among other things, the dismissal of the grand vizier ʿAyn-al-Dawla and the establishment of a “House of Justice” (ʿadālat-ḵāna). It was under these pressures that the shah permitted the establishment of a representative assembly on 14 Jomādā II 1324/6 August 1906 (Šarīf Kāšānī, I, pp. 49-91; Nāẓem-al-Eslām, I, pp. 500-66; Kasrawī, pp. 58-126; Tafrešī Ḥosaynī, pp. 27-33).

In the course of the revolution, merchants and guildsmen actively participated in and supported the various revolutionary and Constitutional organizations, notably the Majles itself. The guilds of Tehran organized a number of active anjomans which in turn formed a central committee (Anjoman-e Markazī-e Aṣnāf). Merchants and bankers (ṣarrāfs) of Tehran also organized their own associations, which along with the one organized by the guildsmen, helped coordinate a variety of collective actions by the bāzārīs. Merchants and guildsmen also played leading roles in other anjomans (Hedāyat, p. 219; Dawlatābādī, II, pp. 116-77, 131, 136, 292-93, 297-98, 317-25; Ketāb-e ābī I, p. 36; Rabino, pp. 111-12). The merchants and bankers provided financial support for the movement by providing food for the crowds who took refuge in sanctuaries, paying the salaries of apprentices and footboys during the bāzār strikes, and providing food and financial support for the needy during the civil war and its ensuing famine (Šarīf Kāšānī, I, pp. 33, 73; Dawlatābādī, II, pp. 72, 303; Nāẓem-al-Eslām, I, pp. 344-45, 514, 590-91; Kasrawī, 1977, pp. 65, 110; Ketāb-e ābī I, p. 10). Theology students were also active in the movement and founded the Anjoman-e Ṭollāb, which along with the Anjoman-e Aṣnāf participated in the revolution. Merchants and guild masters who resided in neighboring countries also contributed to the anjoman movement. Anjoman-e Saʿādat, for example, was formed in Istanbul by ten representatives of merchants and twenty representatives of guild masters. They were highly active in providing both financial and moral support for the Constitutionalists during the critical period of 1326-29/1908-11 (Rafīʿī, pp. 34-35; Dawlatābādī, III, pp. 33-37; Bahār, pp. alef-be; Kasrawī, 1977, pp. 724, 730-32).

In Rašt the provincial council and a number of anjomans in which the aṣnāf and some merchants were among the most active members made an important contribution to the Constitutional movement (Rabino, pp. 9-10, 12, 37, 93, 110-12). In Mašhad, Anjoman-e Saʿādat, in which merchants, theology students, and guild masters were especially active, served as the main organizer of the resistance movement. In many confrontations with the monarchist forces, the mosque and the bāzār of the city of Mašhad served as the bastion of resistance movement fighting against the government (Bahār, pp. alef-be; Rabino, pp. 117-45; Ketāb-e ābī I, p. 34).

Tojjār and aṣnāf, along with a small group of the ʿolamāʾ, supported the intelligentsia in Tehran and took measures to promote liberal ideas in the Constitutional movement. The organizational network and coordinated action of three major bāzārī anjomans of tojjār, aṣnāf, and ṣarrāfs were instrumental in securing the Constitution and establishing the first Majles. Inspired by the liberal intellectuals, the bāzārīs rejected the shah’s decree of 13 Jomādā II 1324 granting the establishment of the Majles but making it subservient to the shah; they argued that the shah should accede to the will of the Majles, and that not only Tehran but all provincial towns should be represented in the legislative body (Dawlatābādī, II, pp. 75-76; Nāẓem-al-Eslām, I, p. 548, Ṣafāʾī, pp. 92-93; Tafrešī Ḥosaynī, pp. 34, 36, 40-41). The bāzārīs also supported, along with the Constitutionalist ʿolamāʾ and the intellectuals, the idea of a national assembly rather than an Islamic one (Nāẓem-al-Eslām, I, p. 561; Ṣafāʾī, pp. 120-21; Ādamīyat, pp. 170-71). The bāzārīs also prevailed on the issue of an election bill. Hundreds of tojjār and aṣnāf actively participated in such protest actions as the shutdown of shops and a second refuge on the grounds of the British legation in defense of the interest of the bāzārīs of the major cities (Nāẓem-al-Eslām, I, pp. 594-608; Ādamīyat, pp. 174-75; Ṣafāʾī, pp. 148-49; Dawlatābādī, II, pp. 86-89; Ketāb-e ābī I, pp. 11-12).

In many of these protest actions most of the big merchants and the majority of the ʿolamāʾ who were in the Constitutionalist camp often opted for more moderate and even conservative actions, whereas guild members showed a greater inclination toward more militant and radical actions. When the most radical movement of the lower bāzārīs took place in Rašt and guild members organized Anjoman-e ʿAbbāsī, which called for abolishing guild taxes (mālīāt-e aṣnāf) and rents from peasants, the leading Constitutionalist ʿolamāʾ of the city openly opposed their radical move (Rabino, pp. 30-40, 47-56; Ādamīyat, pp. 471-73).

When the first Majles met, the ʿolamāʾ and bāzārīs were well represented. Of the total number of deputies, 29 percent came from the ranks of the ʿolamāʾ, 17 percent from merchants, and 18 percent from guild masters, comprising a total of 64 percent. The leading ʿolamāʾ were not only well represented, but also assumed leadership in the Majles. The bāzārī representatives, too, played an active role in discussions and policy-making in the first Majles. The focus of the bāzārīs’ concern in the first Majles was on such issues as the rejection of foreign loans, establishment of a national bank, protection of people from arbitrary and repressive measures, rationalization of financial affairs (Ašraf, 1980, pp. 116-23; Ādamīyat, pp. 347-460; Majles-e Šūrā-ye Mellī). But in later sessions of the Majles, the role played by the bāzārī-ʿolamāʾ alliance declined. While the guilds were not represented in the Majles from the second session onward, the ʿolamāʾ continued to be well represented up to the 7th session (1347-49/1928-30), the tojjār’s representations and influence, however, did not decline significantly until the mid-1330s Š./1950s (Šajīʿī, p. 176).

In Tabrīz, a city which played a central role throughout the Constitutional movement, the Provincial Council of Azerbaijan (Anjoman-e Ayālatī-e Āḏarbāyjān) was instrumental in grass-roots mobilization. Merchants and guild masters in the city played a major role in the successful operation of the Council which conducted its business in two sets of separate sessions. First, there was the general session to receive and review complaints from the public. This session convened every working day, and three representatives of tojjār and two representatives of aṣnāf were present from dawn to dusk to assist in its operations. Second, there was the special session of the twelve representatives of the people of whom six represented the aṣnāf. This session met twice a week to discuss issues concerning the relationship between the government and the people. In addition twelve persons from the guilds were present in the Council every day to assist it in running city affairs (Rafīʿī, pp. 40-42). In Tabrīz, which later became the most active center of resistance, the vocal and active elements of the bāzār and mosque bore the brunt of the ruthless measures taken by the Russian soldiers during the 1329-30/1911-12 occupation of Azerbaijan. Of the thirty-five individuals reported slain by the Russians, eighteen were guild masters, six were merchants, and another six were ʿolamāʾ, making up about 86 percent of the casualties (Browne, 1972, pp. 200-48).

The role of the two components of the bāzārī-ʿolamāʾ alliance in the Constitutional Revolution differed significantly in the course of the movement. Whereas a large segment of the bāzārīs supported the Constitutional movement to the end, the ʿolamāʾ split in the midst of the movement. A large group of the leading ʿolamāʾ, including Shaikh Fażl-Allāh Nūrī of Tehran and Sayyed Kāẓem Yazdī of Najaf, supported the monarchists. To fight the Constitutionalists, reactionary forces were mobilized in major cities by some leading ʿolamāʾ, a group of their theology students, and some of the bāzārīs (Kasrawī, 1977, pp. 489-98, 628-29; 1971, pp. 402-408; Żamīrī, pp. 31-36; Jūrābčī, pp. 1-30; Hedāyat, pp. 223-31; Rabino, pp. 103-4, 120-29; Nāẓem-al-Eslām, II, p. 112; Bahār, pp. alef-be; Ketāb-e ābī I, p. 34).

On the whole, the overwhelming majority of the ʿolamāʾ, who were part of the traditional power structure, rose against the dominant ideology of the Constitutional Revolution. In this opposition they were joined by a segment of their bāzārī followers. A much larger segment of the bāzārīs, however, due to the elective affinity of their material and nonmaterial interests with the liberal ideas of national sovereignty and rational political authority, joined the intelligentsia and supported Constitutional ideas. After all, if the Constitutional movement had not enjoyed the full support of at least a small number of the leading ʿolamāʾ, particularly those of Aḵūnd Mollā Moḥammad-Kāẓem Ḵorāsānī and Ḥājj Shaikh ʿAbd-Allāh Māzandarānī, a large part of the bāzārīs would not have participated actively in the revolutionary coalition (see Qūčānī, p. 366; Nāẓem-al-Eslām, II, pp. 156-61, 193-95, 237, 241-43, 264-67, 272, 382-442; Dawlatābādī, II, pp. 129-32, 167-79, 297-334; Kasrawī, 1977, pp. 358-63, 505-15, 606, 614-18, 626-30, 729-32).

The bāzārī-ʿolamāʾ alliance and the republican movement of 1302-3 Š./1924. The bāzārī-ʿolamāʾ alliance once again gained momentum and led to collective action in the mid-1920s, when Prime Minister Reżā Khan (later Reżā Shah) first made an attempt to establish a republic and later to transfer the kingship from the Qajars to one of his own making. Following the lead of the ʿolamāʾ, in general, and Sayyed Ḥasan Modarres, a prominent religious leader and a leading Majles deputy, in particular, the bāzārīs mobilized demonstrations against Reżā Khan’s campaign to establish a republic in Iran. Reżā Khan tried to have the bāzārs closed in his own support, but the bāzārīs resisted police pressures. On 29 Esfand 1302 Š./20 March 1925, failing to gain the support of the bāzārīs, the police chief had the doors of the mosques locked and mobilized a group of demonstrators to shout pro-republic slogans and fire guns in the bāzār areas to force the bāzārīs to close down the shops and retreat to their homes. Hundreds of angry bāzārīs followed the lead of a militant religious leader, Ḵāleṣīzāda and attended congregational prayers in the alleys of the bāzār. The preachers took the opportunity to deliver political sermons and thousands of the agitated bāzārīs signed the petitions against the republican movement. The bāzārīs also sent a delegation consisting of some of their own leaders and a number of the ʿolamāʾ to meet Moʾtamen-al-Molk Mīrzā Ḥosayn Khan Pīrnīā, the speaker of the Majles, present their petitions, and express their discontent with the republican movement. On 2 Farvardīn 1303 Š./22 March 1924 several thousands of the bāzārīs accompanied by some of the ʿolamāʾ gathered in the Majles to await the response of the Majles to their earlier petitions. The prime minister with a group of his officers rushed to the Majles in order to disperse the crowd, only to be greeted with violence, which prompted Moʾtamen-al-Molk to threaten Reżā Khan with a vote of no confidence. Mounting pressures finally forced Reżā Khan to call off the campaign (Mostawfī, pp. 594-602; Makkī, II, pp. 486-502; Hedāyat, pp. 462-68; Dawlatābādī, IV, pp. 345-61; Bahār, II, pp. 43ff.).

Later in the fall of 1304 Š./1925, when Reżā Khan launched his campaign to establish a new dynasty, he organized a public ceremony in the Military Academy, but the bāzārīs declined to participate. To attract some bāzārīs, a small group of leading merchants, who were apparently either the supporters of Reżā Khan or could be persuaded to collaborate with him, were invited to meet the prime minister at his residence on 7 Ābān 1304 Š./30 October 1925 for consultation. When a group of some thirty to forty merchants arrived, they were directed to the Military Academy to participate in the ceremony in honor of Reżā Khan, which was already in progress (Makkī, III, p. 395; Dawlatābādī, IV, p. 366).

The attitude of the bāzārīs during Reżā Shah’s reign (1304-20 Š./1925-41) was ambivalent. While welcoming the establishment of law and order and economic growth, the bāzārīs resented excessive state intervention in commercial activities, suppression of the bāzārīs by the state, new urban developments that undermined the physical integrity of the bāzār, and deviations from Islamic rules of conduct which were the results of the processes of westernization. However, prosperous merchants, who either managed to move out of the bāzār or were engaged in modern business activities and benefited more from the fruits of modernization, collaborated with his regime.

The oil nationalization movement and the uprising of Tīr, 1331 Š./July, 1952. Following the abdication of Reżā Shah, the bāzār served as a social base for a new nationalistic movement. As early as 1323 Š./1944, during the election of the fourteenth Majles, the support of the bāzār gave Moḥammad Moṣaddeq the largest number of votes for any elected representative. In March of 1945, when Moṣaddeq denounced the Majles as a den of thieves (dozdgāh), the entire bāzār closed and joined university students in a show of support for the rising nationalist leader (Key Ostovān, pp. 289-95). At the same time, Moṣaddeq enjoyed the support of some of the ʿolamāʾ who, from the mid-1940s to the uprising of Tīr, 1331 Š./July, 1952, recognized the possibility of alliance with him. Ayatollah Moḥammad-Taqī Ḵonsārī was the only one among the several “models of emulation” (marājeʿ-e taqlīd) who issued an edict (fatwā) in support of nationalizing the oil. Other prominent ayatollahs who supported the movement included Sayyed Abu’l-Qāsem Kāšānī, ʿAbbās-ʿAlī Šāhrūdī, and Shaikh Bahāʾ-al-Dīn Maḥallātī (Bāzargān, 1984, pp. 178-79; Resālat, 25 Bahman 1365 Š./14 February 1987, p. 7; Rāzī, I, pp. 149-50; Najātī, pp. 89-90, 115).

In Tīr, 1331 Š./July, 1952 the bāzārīs, the ʿolamāʾ, and the intelligentsia demonstrated their support of Moṣaddeq against the court and the ruling elite. On 19 Tīr/9 July, the Association of Merchants, Guilds, and Craftsmen (Jāmeʿa-ye Bāzargānān, Aṣnāf, wa Pīšavarān) held an emergency meeting, attended by some 500 of its members, to close the bāzār in protest against the Senate’s indecisiveness when asked to give Moṣaddeq a vote of confidence. The Association delegated 40 of its members to meet with Ayatollah Abu’l-Qāsem Kāšānī in order to ask him to issue a call for a general strike in the bāzār (Šāhed, 20 Tīr 1331 Š./10 July 1952). When Moṣaddeq resigned over differences with the shah on 26 Tīr/16 July, mass demonstrations and riots broke out in Tehran and other major cities with bāzārīs, ʿolamāʾ, and students playing a major role. During the three days of nation-wide uprising (28-30 Tīr/19-21 July) the bāzārs of Tehran and major cities were shut down. On 29 Tīr/19 July, some leading Majles deputies appeared in the bāzār of Tehran, delivered speeches and instigated the bāzārīs to rise up and support the ousted premier (Torkamān, pp. 186-87). On the 20th, the bāzār area in Tehran became the site of major clashes between demonstrators and security forces (Eṭṭelāʿāt, 30 Tīr 1331 Š./20 July 1952). The government’s main objective was the prevention of another shutdown of the bāzārs. Therefore, on 30 Tīr/20 July, the military governor of Tehran instructed the police to “specially strengthen the police station of the bāzār and take all necessary measures in that area” (Torkamān, pp. 308, 649). Despite all these precautionary measures, the bāzārīs closed down their shops on the 31st/21st with a main group of demonstrators making their way from the bāzār to the Majles square and confronting the police along the way. The first casualty occurred in the bāzār area at 7:00 a.m. (Torkamān, p. 323; Najātī, pp. 221-22). At the same time, bāzārs of other major cities, including Ābādān, Arāk, Ḵorramšahr, Tabrīz, Mašhad, Hamadān, Ahvāz, Kermān, Kermānšāh, Qom, and Qazvīn, also closed down in support of Moṣaddeq (Torkamān, pp. 171-73, 183-84, 198-201, 348-50, 359; Najātī, pp. 220-22). In Isfahan, for example, the chief of police reported that “1,000 of petty traders and various guild members have closed down their shops and gathered in the Telegraph Office in a show of support for Moṣaddeq” (Torkamān, 1993, p. 199). Of a total of 35 demonstrators who were arrested in Tehran during the uprising, 25 were petty traders, craftsmen, apprentices, and footboys, 4 were drivers, 2 journalists, one was a white-collar worker, one a student, and one an unskilled worker (Torkamān, pp. 455-56). It is likely that of a total 235 people killed and injured (Torkamān, pp. 465-66) the majority were middle and lower bāzārī members.

Following the victory of 30 Tīr/21 July, the court, landowning classes, and prosperous businessmen, in collaboration with the CIA and British Intelligence, made a concerted effort to undermine support for the National Front (Jebha-ye Mellī). Hundreds of threatening and humiliating leaflets and letters with fabricated signs of the Tūda (Tudeh) party and communist groups were mailed to the leading ʿolamāʾ in major cities (Ṭālaqanī, pp. 47-49).

Frightened by the menace of a possible communist takeover during the last year of Moṣaddeq’s rule, the ʿolamāʾ either became indifferent or actively supported the monarchist camp. As a result of factional infighting and splits among the leadership of the National Front, and the abandonment of Moṣaddeq by the bulk of the religious establishment, a large segment of the bāzārīs became increasingly apolitical, and a small segment, following the lead of the ʿolamāʾ changed sides and supported the monarchists. Most of the latter were either such prosperous merchants as the Rašīdīān brothers or came from the lower echelons of the bāzār and thus were particularly receptive to exhortation by religious leaders. It was under these circumstances that hundreds of people from the vegetable market of Tehran (meydān) and their leaders (e.g., Ṭayyeb Reżāʾī, Ḥājj Ḵodādād) together with a group of ʿolamāʾ organized the mob riots which served as a warm-up phase for the coup d’état of 28 Mordād 1332 Š./19 August 1953 (Najātī, pp. 258, 264, 339, 365-67; Cottam, pp. 226-27).

A large number of the middle-level bāzārīs supported Moṣaddeq to the end of his rule by mobilizing demonstrations, participating in elections and a national referendum, and by purchasing bonds issued by his government. In spite of factional differences among the ʿolamāʾ and the bāzārīs in the final hours of the government, a segment of the bāzārīs kept their allegiance to Moṣaddeq and later closed down their shops again as a protest against the coup d’état regime. The popularity of Moṣaddeq in the bāzār had political as well as economic bases. His nationalist economic policies helped promote certain local industries and expanded the export of local products. As a result of these policies, the value of non-oil exports was almost doubled from 4.4 billion rials in 1330 Š./1951 to 8.4 in 1332 Š./1953 (PBO, p. 232). Moreover, not only the inflationary trends, but also better access for merchants to foreign exchange from exports were all of direct interest to many in the bāzār (Melbourne, pp. 1-5). Much more important than these material interests, however, was the bāzārīs’ feeling during Moṣaddeq’s rule that they were granted a rare opportunity to participate in the political life of the country, giving them a sense of civic and political worthiness they had not had before. Moṣaddeq, as a champion of the material and nonmaterial interests of the Iranian nationalist petty bourgeoisie, inaugurated a new role for this group in national politics.

The urban uprising of 1342 Š./1963. Two major developments in the early 1340s Š./1960s helped bring about the uprising of Ḵordād, 1342 Š./June, 1963. First, external pressures came from the revolution in Iraq, supported by the Soviet Union and the United Arab Republic and, above all, from the new foreign policy of President John F. Kennedy, who pressed his client regime for social and political reforms (Pahlavi, pp. 23, 102, 118, 141, 146). Domestically, there was a severe economic recession in 1340-41 Š./1961-62, which led to many bankruptcies in the bāzār. The land reform program, the granting of voting rights to women, and the omission of specific references to Islam and the holy Koran in the local election bill marked the beginnings of a new era in Iran, i.e., a shift of the social bases of the shah’s regime from the traditional urban forces of the landowning classes, the ʿolamāʾ and the bāzārīs to the rapidly growing modern classes of bureaucrats, professionals, and new bourgeois elements.

Second, there occurred simultaneously a number of developments in the Qom theological center. The death of the well-established, highly conservative and apolitical grand ayatollah Ḥosayn Borūjerdī in 1340 Š./1961 led to the emergence of a number of “models of emulation” in Qom and Najaf. It also granted an opportunity to a group of young students of theology who were inclined toward modern education, political activities, and even militant behavior to assert themselves and emerge as a new force on the political stage. The time was ripe, therefore, for the emergence of a new religio-political protest movement.

Ayatollah Rūḥ-Allāh Ḵomeynī who had recently risen to prominence with the title of grand ayatollah (āyat-Allāh al-ʿoẓmā) and was being recognized as a new model of emulation for the Iranian Shiʿite community, together with a group of his students, took advantage of this opportunity and assumed the leadership of the movement (Bāzargān, pp. 118-19). The new possibilities for mobilization transformed the bāzārs and major mosques and shrines of Tehran and other major cities into centers of resistance. The ʿolamāʾ acted in unison to boycott the referendum of 6 Bahman 1341 Š./26 January 1963 on the shah’s reform programs. The security forces invaded Fayżīya (the main religious seminary in Qom) on 2 Farvardīn/22 March and left a score of casualties. The struggle between the ʿolamāʾ and the state intensified during the month of Moḥarram Ḵordād/June of the same year. The arrest of Ayatollah Ḵomeynī on 15 Ḵordād/4 June, transformed the antigovernment demonstrations into violent confrontations during the next two days. Massive urban riots and clashes with security forces broke out in the bāzār areas and religious centers in a number of cities (Rūḥānī, pp. 229-600; Karbāsčī, pp. 21-57). News releases reported from Tehran that the bāzār area looked as if a tornado had hit it (New York Times, 6 June 1963). The American consul in Tabrīz reported that the bāzār remained closed for almost a month (Coon, p. 12). Tens of thousands of lower bāzārīs participated in these demonstrations (Rūḥānī, pp. 437, 484-87; Resālat, 6-7 Esfand 1365 Š./25-26 February, 1987, p. 8); 200 to 300 demonstrators, many of whom came from the masses of the lower bāzārīs (apprentices and footboys), were killed in clashes with the security forces (Karbāsčī, pp. 34, 49, 51, 55; Die Welt, Le Monde, and New York Times 6 and 7 June 1963).

Whereas the Constitutional Revolution and oil nationalization movement occurred during the periods of rising nationalism, modernism, and secularism which in turn led to the relative eclipse of religion, the 1340s Š./1960s marked the opening of an era of Islamic revival and militant-radical action combined with the decline of liberal nationalism and nonviolent protest. In the 1342 Š./1963 uprising for the first time a small number of militant ʿolamāʾ played a critical role while the bāzārīs had a secondary role and the intelligentsia only a minimal one. The ʿolamāʾ had the leadership of Ayatollah Rūḥ-Allāh Ḵomeynī, a jurisconsult (faqīh), who combined the charisma of the office with strong will to power and personal charisma; the bāzārīs played a more passive role vis-à-vis the ʿolamāʾ; and, finally, a new alliance between the militant ʿolamāʾ and the politically active intellectuals and university students, who were attracted to Ayatollah Ḳomeynī’s militant discourses, was forged for the first time. The urban uprising of 1342 Š./1963 served, therefore, as a prelude to the revolution of 1356-57 Š./1977-79.

The bāzār and the revolution of 1356-57 Š./1977-79. Bāzārīs, along with the ʿolamāʾ and young intelligentsia, constituted a major faction in the revolutionary coalition of 1356-57 Š./1977-79. The bāzār and the mosque provided a strong organizational base for the militant ʿolamāʾ in the effort to mobilize the revolution. Many of the strategies and tactics for revolutionary mobilization were planned and carried out by the bāzārīs under the supervision of a small group of the militant ʿolamāʾ (Resālat, 20 Esfand 1365 Š./11 March 1987, p. 8).

The bāzār ‘s relationship with the Pahlavi regime was fraught with tensions and conflicts. The increasing animosity since the 1330s Š./1950s between the state and the bāzār was focused on political and sociocultural issues as well as the basic processes of economic development. It has often been stated that the bāzārīs revolted against the Pahlavi regime because the government had favored, particularly in the post-land-reform era, the big modern “dependent bourgeoisie” (through its promotion of supermarkets and shopping malls) at the expense of the “petty bourgeois” bāzārīs and shopkeepers (Pūr(-e) Āḏar, pp. 27-31; Pahlavi, pp. 155-56). However, given the considerable material gains that the bāzārīs made in this period, the threats to the bāzārīs were, more often than not, in various forms of state intervention in commercial activities and the regime’s repressive policies toward them, rather than the expansion of the new shopping areas. Increasingly arbitrary and discriminatory implementation of commercial regulations and tax laws against the bāzārīs and guildsmen in the 1340s Š./1960s and the 1350s Š./1970s were two major sources of the bāzārīs’ hostility to the state (Cook, p. 10; Rotblat, pp. 217-18). Added to these factors was the expansion of government-sponsored cooperative societies and discount sale centers known as city-village cooperatives (Šerkathā-ye Taʿāwonī-e Šahr o Rūstā). Reporting after the urban uprising of 1342 Š./1963, the American consul in Tabrīz commented on the situation, “the establishment of a variety of commissaries and small cooperatives by the Iranian government for various of its employees … [has removed] a segment of retail shoppers from the bazaar” (Coon, p. 10). Later, in 1348 Š./1969, in a bitter conflict with the ruling Īrān-e Novīn party, the chairman of the High Council of Tehran Guilds “blamed the Government for harmful rivalry with the guilds by expan[ding] … Government sale centers” (Iran Almanac, 1969, p. 562). The establishment of rural cooperatives, as part of the land reform measures, was also threatening to the bāzārīs. Thus, to win the support of the bāzārīs, Ayatollah Ḵomeynī, in an edict (fatwā) that forbade participation in the national referendum of 6 Bahman 1342 Š./26 January 1963, condemned the creation of cooperative societies as being “detrimental to the vested interests of the bāzārī shopkeepers and merchants as well as those of peasants” (Rūḥānī, p. 231). Another contributing factor was the shah’s and his regime’s thinly disguised contempt for the bāzārīs. There was little room in the shah’s grand modernization scheme for the bāzārīs, whom he felt ashamed of: “The bazaaris are a fanatic lot, highly resistant to change because their locations afford a lucrative monopoly. Moving against the bazars was typical of the political and social risks I had to take in my drive for modernization” (Pahlavi, 1980, p. 156).

After a hiatus of a decade or so, the repression of the bāzārīs and guildsmen was resumed immediately after the coup d’état of 1332 Š./1953. After the general strike of the bāzārīs in support of Moṣaddeq on 21 Ābān 1332 Š./12 November 1953, the government stepped in to demolish the roof of the bāzār of Tehran, an attempt that was thwarted at the last minute by a promise by the bāzārīs that they would no longer become involved in protest movements or close down their shops without the assent of the government. As a punitive measure against the bāzār, furthermore, the bus lines in Tehran were rerouted so that only one rather than several lines ran into the bāzār area (Melbourne, p. 5).

Meanwhile, the government supported the Merchants Association of Tehran, which included many of the city’s major merchants (Kayhān, 12 Āḏar 1332 Š./3 December 1953) who were to collaborate with the regime over the next quarter of a century; a number of these merchants later served as loyal senators and Majles deputies. Further, the state initiated a new plan to organize and supervise the guilds under the firm control of the state machinery. A new law (Qānūn-e Neẓām-e Ṣenfī) was enacted in 1336 Š./1957, stipulating the formation of individual guilds and a high council of guilds (Šūrā-ye ʿAlī-e Aṣnāf) in each town. By the late 1340s Š./1960s, approximately 110 different guilds with a membership of about 120,000 formed the High Council of Guilds in Tehran (Iran Almanac, 1969, p. 562). The main function of the guilds and the councils was to negotiate the amount of taxes to be paid by guild members, but this function was often ignored by the authorities. The tension between the state and the guilds reached a peak in 1348 Š./1969, when the mayor of Tehran dismissed all members of the High Council of Guilds (Iran Almanac, 1969, p. 562).

Later, in 1350 Š./1971, a new law entitled the Guilds’ Codes (Qānūn-e Neẓām-e Ṣenfī), with special provisions for setting up a chamber of guilds, was enacted by the Majles. In the same year the chamber of guilds (Oṭāq-e Aṣnāf) consisting of some 124 guilds with a total membership of approximately 200,000 members was established in Tehran (Iran Almanac, 1972, p. 583). First a former governor, then a police colonel, and finally a police major were elected by the members, under government pressure, as heads of the chamber.

One of the main intended functions of the chamber was to launch an anti-price-gouging campaign against both the bāzārīs and manufacturers and big traders. Three agencies, including the Center for Price Determination (Markaz-e Barrasī-e Qaymathā), the Chamber of Guilds, and the Special Tribunal for the Prosecution of Price Gougers (Dādgāh-e Kayfar-e Gerānforūšān) were put in charge of the antiprofiteering campaign. Furthermore, the government organized the National Association for the Protection of Consumer Rights (Anjoman-e Mellī-e Ḥemāyat az Maṣrafkonanda) to enforce price monitoring measures; a former chief of the national police force was appointed as its director. The anti-price-gouging campaign reached its climax in the summer of 1975, when it was included as the fourteenth principle of the shah’s White Revolution (Eṭṭelāʿāt, 23 Tīr, 29 Mordād 1354 Š./14 July, 20 August 1975). A special task force (Setād-e Mobāreza bā Gerānforūšī) was immediately formed in the Rastāḵīz party for planning and implementing the anti-profiteering campaign with the minister of commerce

and the deputy secretary-general of the party as its chief. The task force recruited some 2,000 students to monitor prices and file charges before the tribunal against the violators (Eṭṭelāʿāt, 3 Šahrīvar, 5 Mehr 1354 Š./25 August, 27 September 1975). Many industrial and commercial establishments in Tehran, including thousands of small shops as well as scores of major industrial units, were targeted with their owners and often harassed and humiliated by the student inspectors. The penalties for price gouging included heavy fines, temporary and permanent closing of shops, deportation to remote areas, imprisonment, and even, potentially, execution (Eṭṭelāʿāt, 25 Tīr, 26 Šahrīvar 1354 Š./16 July, 17 September 1975). When the guild chambers proved to be less than cooperative in implementing such repressive measures, the minister of commerce dismissed 17 top guild leaders from the Chamber of Guilds of Tehran and dissolved most of the guild chambers throughout the country (Eṭṭelāʿāt, 18, 29 Mordād, 8 Šahrīvar 1354 Š./9, 20, 30 August 1975). The anti-price-gouging campaign was one of the decisive factors in causing the bāzārīs to join in the revolution of 1977-79.

Another arbitrary, though much more limited but symbolically important, measure was taken by the government in the mid-1970s against the vested interest of the bāzārīs when thousands of small shops and stands around the shrine of the eighth imam in Mašhad were demolished in order to renovate the area and turn it into green space. This policy cost thousands of petty traders and artisans, who were maltreated, their businesses.

The bāzārīs also resented the regime’s sociocultural policies promoting Western secular life-styles at the expense of traditional urban ways of life; included in these grievances was the appearance in public of the more privileged Westernized classes, particularly the unveiled and often “provocatively clad” upper-class women (lebāshā-ye zananda wa taḥrīkāmīz), and among other things violation of Islamic codes of behavior in public, un-Islamic or anti-Islamic ideas disseminated by the state-controlled media, non-Islamic contents of the curriculum of modern schools, and the increasing influence and presence of Americans and Europeans at all levels of the country’s economic and social life.

The big merchants and prosperous bāzārīs supported the revolution on the assumption that they would pay no more illegitimate state taxes in an Islamic regime, that their life-styles would be respected by the Islamic state, that they would be free from arbitrary domination of the state, and that in the new regime they would have many more contacts within the state bureaucracy. For many bāzārīs, therefore, the revolution meant a collective show of force and self-assertion vis-à-vis the state. The lower bāzārīs also thought the revolution would bring them Islamic social justice and equality. While offering a variety of appealing Islamic ideologies, the revolution mobilized almost all urban social forces of different ideal and material interests under the charismatic leadership of Ayatollah Ḵomeynī.

On the eve of the revolution, the bāzārīs prepared to contribute a number of protest tactics against the regime, including closing down of the shops, taking sanctuary in mosques and public buildings, providing financial support for the movement, and participating in mass meetings and street demonstrations. The bāzārīs were in a position to make a major contribution to the revolutionary mobilization.

In the early stages of the revolution from Dey, 1356 Š./January, 1978 to Ḵordād, 1357 Š./June, 1978 their participation was limited mainly to public processions and meetings honoring the victims of the urban riots in Qom, Tabrīz, and Yazd. In the bāzārs, the closing of shops immediately affected the urban economy and created a state of crisis in many cities. The bāzār of Qom was the first to close down its shops which it did on 19 Dey 1356 Š./9 January 1978, and thereafter it did so frequently until the collapse of the Pahlavi regime. Ten days after the events in Qom many bāzārīs of Tehran, too, closed down their shops in order to commemorate the martyrs despite pressures from the regime to prevent it. When the bāzār in Tehran followed suit, the Chamber of Guilds responded by suspending the business operation of fifteen shops, whose owners were among the leaders of the movement (Davānī, VII, pp. 38-41, 67-68; Bādāmčīān, 3-4 February 1987, p. 7). The bāzārīs of Isfahan, Shiraz, and Ahvāz, among others, reacted by closing their own. Later the bāzārs of Tehran, Qom, and many major cities closed down again on the occasion of the fortieth day of the martyrs of the Qom uprising (Bādāmčīān, 22 Esfand 1365 Š./12 March 1978, p. 7). At the instigation of the Society of Merchants and Artisans of the Bāzār of Tehran (Jāmeʿa-ye Bāzargānān wa Pīšavarān-e Bāzār-e Tehrān), the first coordinated action to close down the bāzārs nationwide was made on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the 15 Ḵordād 1342 Š./5 June 1963 uprising. The entire bāzār of Tabrīz, Isfahan, and Mašhad, about 70 percent of the bāzār of Tehran, and a large part of the bāzārs in several other cities shut down completely (Bāzargān, p. 45; Davānī, VII, pp. 198-200). The first successful shutdown of all the bāzārs throughout the country occurred on 24 Mehr 1357 Š./16 October 1978, when Ayatollah Ḵomeynī and the three grand ayatollahs (Moḥammad-Kāẓem Šarīʿatmadārī, Moḥammad-Reżā Golpāyegānī, and Šehāb-al-Dīn Maṛʿašī Najafī) of Qom called for a universal strike in commemoration of the 40th day of the martyrs of the Black Friday (Jomʿa-ye Sīāh) killings of unarmed demonstrators by the troops in Tehran’s Žāla Square (Davānī, VIII, pp, 161-71; Eṭṭelāʿāt, 24 Mehr 1357 Š./16 October 1978). Thereafter, the closing of the bāzārs became a fairly regular occurrence during the revolution (Resālat, 21 Esfand 1365 Š./11 March 1987, p. 8).

Organizing and participating in mass demonstrations and street rallies were other forms in which the bāzārīs contributed to the revolutionary protests. Approximately two-thirds of some 2,500 reported demonstrations that took place in the course of the revolution were mobilized by the bāzārī-ʿolamāʾ alliance (Ashraf and Banuazizi, p. 25; Bāzargān, p. 39; Resālat, loc. cit.).

The provision of financial resources to various revolutionary groups and organizations was made by many prosperous merchants, with amounts increasing rapidly as the revolution gained momentum. Financial help for the families of those who were killed, injured, and imprisoned in the course of the revolution, as well as compensation to the apprentices, footboys, and workers during the bāzār’s repeated strikes, was provided by the bāzār merchants. The bāzārīs also provided considerable financial support for many of the demonstrations, strikes, riots, and publication and distribution of newspapers, leaflets, and revolutionary messages, recorded on cassette tapes. They supported welfare committees and Islamic cooperatives during the last months of the revolutionary movement. From Ābān to Bahman, 1357 Š./November, 1978 to February, 1979, for example, some forty-five welfare committees were formed by the bāzārīs in different cities (Ashraf and Banuazizi, p. 16). Their role was also important in organizing patrol committees to protect the bāzār areas. These committees became the forerunners of the revolutionary committees formed later to assist in the consolidation of the Islamic state. Moreover, a survey of the “martyrs” of the revolution in Tehran, shows that over one-half of the total of 646 who were killed came from the lower-middle and lower strata of young bāzārīs and their families.

At the conclusion of the revolution, it appeared at first that the bāzār-mosque alliance would be its main beneficiary. The Islamic Revolution was, however, dramatically different from the Constitutional Revolution and the oil-nationalization movement. While in the first Majles after the Constitutional Revolution some 35 percent of the deputies represented the bāzārīs and 29 percent the ʿolamāʾ, in the first Majles after the Islamic Revolution, half of the deputies represented the ʿolamāʾ, 45 percent the new intelligentsia, and only 2 percent the bāzārīs (Majles-e Šūrā-ye Eslāmī, p. 204). The bāzārīs were, however, represented indirectly in two other ways. First, through their younger generation, who had joined the ranks of professionals and young intelligentsia (mainly students and teachers) and, second, by a coalition of conservative and traditional deputies that was formed in the Majles in order to support the interests of the bāzār and the private sector vis-à-vis the state and the public sector. In general many lower-rank bāzārīs have managed to maintain and promote their interests in post-revolutionary Iran. The upward economic mobility of many members of this group has often been at the expense of the better-established and prosperous bāzārīs.

On the whole, however, the bāzārīs have been threatened by such unprecedented governmental measures as nationalization of foreign trade and elimination of intermediaries through the development of cooperative societies. Further, comparing the 1350 Š./1970s to the 1360s Š./1980s, one can observe a much more vigorous and ruthless anti-profiteering campaign launched by the revolutionary organizations against the bāzārīs. Again a bitter conflict between the state and the bāzārīs seems to be developing.

BAZAR iv. In Afghanistan

In Afghanistan a bāzār is a collection of shops and workshops forming a topographic unit. As regards size and layout, however, there can be great differences. The name bāzār is given (1) to a relatively small group of shops in a country town or large village or in a suburb, (2) to the traditional business district of a city, (3) to a section, usually a single street or part of a street, of a city bāzār occupied by practitioners of a particular trade, e.g., bāzār-e āhangarān (blacksmiths’ bāzār), bāzār-e bāzzāzī (drapery bāzār).

A bāzār does not normally contain living quarters. In some modernized bāzārs, however, the top floors of multi-story commercial buildings are used as residential apartments, and in some small bāzārs a shop may have an attached room in which the nonresident shopkeeper can spend the night.

The buildings comprised in the bāzārs fall into three main categories: retail shops and small workshops, both called dokkān; commercial buildings in courtyards, called sarāy; and markets, called manday.

The traditional dokkān is a small covered space, open to the street, in which the retailer sits amid his stock or the craftsman produces his wares. Some large bāzārs, e.g., at Kabul, Herat, Mazār-e Šarīf, and Qandahār, also contain modern shops equipped with display windows, doors, and counters. Shops selling western-style clothes, household appliances, and electrical gear, and also pharmacies, are generally of this type. Only at Kabul, however, has commercial bipolarization (as defined by Wirth) taken place. There the modern shopping center in Šahr-e Now served westernized Afghans and foreigners, while the bāzār in the old town, which underwent only limited modernization, was frequented by the traditionally minded and poorer urban classes and also by rural customers (Hahn, 1964).

A sarāy is a complex of buildings set around a square or rectangular courtyard and accessible by a single passageway. In bāzārs in country towns a sarāy is still often used in part as an inn (kārvānsarāy), offering accommodation for visitors and their mounts and pack animals. The sarāys in the big bāzārs are large-scale commercial establishments providing either a number of shops, workshops, and storerooms or, less frequently, office and warehouse space for wholesale merchants. In some cases the top floors are used as residential apartments. Sarāys are often reserved for particular branches of business, e.g., at Kabul for carpets, imported textiles, secondhand clothes, and currency exchange. Frequently also a sarāy is shared by traders who have a particular ethnic affinity or regional origin (Wiebe, 1973). A new and widespread type is the motor-sarāy consisting of repair garages and automotive parts stores. Sarāys are particularly numerous in the bāzārs of northern Afghanistan, perhaps as a result of the local importance of market days. In the late 1970s, 2.5-5 percent of all bāzār businesses (including handicrafts and services) in the north were housed in sarāys, as against 1.5 percent or thereabouts at Kabul and Qandahār, 0.2-0.6 percent at Farāh, Gerešk, Ḡaznī, Gardīz, and Ḵōst, and nil in the new town of Laškargāh (Grötzbach, 1979, table 7).

The center of the bāzār in many towns was, until recently, a domed structure forming a sort of hall in which shops selling high-value goods were accommodated; if situated at the intersection of the bāzār’s four (or in some cases three) principal streets, as at Kabul, Herat, Qandahār, Ḡaznī, and Ḵānābād, it was called the čahārsūq. Another term, used at Tāšqorḡān and Sar-e Pol, was tīm. Most of the čahārsūqs and tīms have been demolished in urban reconstruction schemes, but the old terms remain in use to denote the now unroofed bāzār centers. Only at Tāšqorḡān (Ḵolm) was the tīm, dating from 1264/1845, kept intact under a conservation order.

Another component of a bāzār is the market, which the Afghans call the manday. While the small bāzārs most often have only single markets for grain, fruit, and vegetables (as well as a cattle market outside the bāzār area), the large bāzārs have special markets for particular commodities such as wheat, rice, timber and firewood, fruit, etc.

Many bāzārs contain small mosques which the shopkeepers and craftsmen and their customers frequent. The principal mosque (masjed-e jāmeʿ) is usually located near the bāzār but seldom forms its central point. This is the case at Kabul, Herat, and Qandahār. At Mazār-e Šarīf, however, the bāzār grew around the mosque in which the remains of ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭāleb are believed to be buried.

In many Afghan bāzārs, even those of recent construction such as the one at Ṭālaqān built since 1960, a more or less clear spatial segregation of the shops and workshops engaged in particular trades can be seen. This may be due to municipal street-planning (rāstabandī), to action by the traders and craftsmen themselves through their guilds ( aṣnāf ) or to promptings from the landlords or rent collectors. The traditional bāzār centers are still occupied by shops which supply expensive goods, including traditional textiles, garments, calpacs, turban cloths, shoes, etc. Suppliers of modern requirements, such as electrical appliances and western-style clothes, pharmacists, and sellers of goods sought by tourists, such as traditional jewelry, antiques, leather goods, lambskin jackets, embroideries, and carpets, tend to group themselves close to the old bāzār centers, but the centers themselves are in many cases still occupied by sellers of traditional merchandise.

The handicraft businesses show a pattern of spatial distribution even more marked than that of the retail trades. Silversmiths and goldsmiths (both called zargar) have their workshops not far from the bāzār center, coppersmiths and tinsmiths farther away, blacksmiths in the outer fringe. Joiners, shoemakers, saddlers, dyers, and the like also congregate on the periphery, while tailors are to be found in central locations near the drapers. It must be added that there are great differences among the country’s cities as regards the importance of their handicrafts and numbers of their craftsmen. Craft industries are of more than average importance in the bāzārs of the big regional centers like Qandahār, Herat, and Mazār-e Šarīf and of certain production centers like Tāšqorḡān, where superior metalworking, turnery, and shoemaking have been developed (Centlivres, 1972; Charpentier, 1972); Čarīkār where fine metalwork, particularly cutlery, and textiles are produced; and Ḡaznī, whose silversmiths and makers of lambskin vests and jackets (pūstīṇča) are reputed.

In the five or six decades up to 1979, Afghanistan’s cities and bāzārs underwent profound changes. Several crafts and trades declined, with resulting falls in the numbers of coppersmiths, tinsmiths, makers of old-style shoes, and sellers of traditional clothes, while other businesses prospered or began to take root, such as pharmacy, car and truck servicing, watch repair, and sale of plastic utensils, rubber-soled canvas shoes, and imported secondhand clothes. Furthermore, from the 1930s onward, state-directed urban reconstruction schemes wholly or partly changed the character of many bāzārs, as at Mazār-e Šarīf, Qondūz, Ḵānābād, Maymana, and Jalālābād, where the old roofed streets of small adobe buildings were demolished and replaced with large, sometimes multi-story concrete structures. In other towns, such as Ḡaznī, Āqča, Andḵūy, and Ṭālaqān, the old bāzārs were abandoned and entirely new ones built. Only in a small number of bāzārs do the old buildings and traditional features remain intact, e.g., at Tāšqorḡān (Ḵolm), Fayżābād, Rūstāq, and Čahārbāḡ near Jalālābād.

As regards opening times, Afghan bāzārs fall into two distinct categories: very large bāzārs open for business on all days of the week and others open on one or two days only. The market day tradition is particularly strong in northern Afghanistan, where the general practice is still to hold markets twice a week, usually on Mondays and Thursdays. In southern and eastern Afghanistan this practice is less widespread and, insofar as it is maintained, less important.

The above data relate to the period before the Soviet military intervention in 1979.

BAZAR v. Temporary Bazars in Iran and Afghanistan

Periodic bāzārs. Periodic markets, and especially weekly markets, are generally presented as an intermediate stage between a subsistence economy and networks of permanent trading centers, and are an almost universal feature of “peasant societies” in less-developed countries (Berry, p. 93). But the Iranian world, like the whole Middle East (Wirth), is characterized by the lack of such markets in extensive areas and by their peripheral position. Weekly markets are rather to be found in relatively thickly populated rural areas such as the Caspian lowlands of Iran, some parts of Azerbaijan, or the northern piedmont of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan (Figure 7). While they are rare or totally lacking on the arid central plateau of Iran, where a sparse rural population is scattered over discontinuous oases, and where the “primacy model of settlement” as defined by M. Bonine (pp. 182-85) after the case of Yazd prevails: The major central place or primary city dominates minor towns and concentrates the bulk of commercial and artisan activities in its bāzār (on urban bāzārs see above). The more limited regional influence of Afghan towns may account for the greater importance of weekly bāzārs in that country. The various regional networks of weekly markets in Iran and Afghanistan differ from one another in extent, antiquity, and spatiotemporal organization.

Figure 7. Temporary bāzārs in Iran and Afghanistan: OverviewView full image in a new tab

The most firmly established form of periodic bāzār is certainly the one observed in the Caspian lowlands of Iran (Figure 8) and especially in the central plain of Gīlān (Thorpe, 1978 and 1979; Bazin, 1980, II, pp. 152-56), where weekly bāzārs (bāzār-e haftagī) are part of a particularly long tradition. As early as 1698 Père de la Maze (1838, p. 363) mentions the “famous Tuesday market of Kaskar” (i.e., Gaskar, the afterward ruined center of the khanate of Gaskar), which “attracted a stupendous crowd” in a hundred shops clustered around a caravansary, apart from the residence of the khan standing on the opposite bank of the river. Fraser (pp. 225-26) went through the markets of “Tooloo Bazar” (Tūlam, now Jomʿa Bāzār), “Kishmah” (Kasmā) and “Teregoram” (Ṭāher Gūrāb), which still exist today, and noticed that “Tooloo Bazar is one of these numerous places in Gheelân where markets are held on some days of the week, and gather then the peasants of the neighbouring villages. On the other days, only empty sheds can be seen there.” The inventories of markets given by Melgunof and half a century later by Rabino (pp. 64-65) show a network of bāzārs that is a little denser than today’s (Thorpe, 1979, p. 96). Between 1915 and 1973, the number of marketplaces decreased from 47 to 36. This looser locational spacing probably reflects the better transport facilities and the growing influence of the permanent trading centers of the main cities. In fact, weekly bāzārs are no longer held in the two major towns of Gīlān, Rašt and Lāhījān, but they are still present in all the other towns, and if several markets have disappeared in the southern part of the Safīdrūd delta, in Fūmanāt and along the coast of Ṭāleš, new markets have been created as well, such as Hendeḵāla, Nowḵāla, and Zīda in the late 1960s, which proves the vitality of this economic and social institution.

Figure 8. Weekly bāzārs in central GīlānView full image in a new tab

Gīlānī markets are held once a week, twice a week in the most densely populated part of the central delta. The dispersal of market days throughout the week allowed the development of market cycles with close temporal synchronization (though not so perfect as the cycles observed by B. Oettinger, pp. 19-24, in western Anatolia). Everywhere, the market square is surrounded with rows of permanent shops, but these reach their full degree of activity on market days, beside the stands of itinerant traders; these are mostly Gīlak, also Ṭāleš and Turks from Ḵalḵāl in western Gīlān (see a detailed description of the Saturday bāzār in Māsāl in ʿAbdolī, pp. 74-87 and photos 23 to 67). Beside its economic function, the Gīlānī market has very important social functions (Ḵosravī, 1976 and 1977), which play a great role in its vitality: the peasants attend those bāzārs not only to buy and sell goods but also to exchange information, to meet relatives or friends, to look for spouses, to watch mountebanks, or simply to enjoy the vivid atmosphere of the market.

Weekly markets exist in Māzandarān too (Thomson, 1976), but are more discontinuous (Figure 9). A wide gap, owing probably to the strong influence of Tehran, separates a small but coherent group of markets around Tonokābon (Šahsavār under the Pahlavis) from the dense and well-organized network of central Māzandarān, between Bābol and Sārī (Thomson, 1981, pp. 264-65). There are many fewer data available on the history of these bāzārs than in Gīlān; Rabino (1928) mentions only three weekly bāzārs, in Mīr Bāzār (south of Mašhadsar/Bābolsar), Bārforūš (now Bābol), and ʿAlīābād (i.e., Qāʾemšahr/Šāhī). More to the east, the two markets of Bandar-e Torkaman (formerly Bandar-e Šāh, Monday) and Āq Qalʿa (Pahlavī Dež under the Pahlavis, Thursday) are very important meeting points expressing the unity of the Jaʿfarbāy Turkmen. In both places, itinerant sellers gather their horse-drawn carriages (gārī) around the wooden permanent shops. The market in Bandar-e Torkaman is of peculiar importance, with specialized “streets” (rows of stalls) for the wool trade and carpet trade and a very impressive livestock market (C. Bromberger, personal communication).

Figure 9. Weekly bāzārs in central eastern MāzandarānView full image in a new tab

In spite of the proximity of Tabrīz, two cycles of weekly bāzārs are still active in the subcenters surrounding the plain of lower Ājīčāy, in the western part of Azerbaijan (Figure 10), while other markets more to the east toward Bostānābad have declined since the improvement of the Tabrīz-Tehran road strengthened the commercial attraction of the capital of Azerbaijan (A. Nazarian, personal communication).

Figure 10. Weekly bāzārs in AzerbaijanView full image in a new tab

Elsewhere in Iran, weekly bāzārs are very rare, and rather specialized. In towns having a permanent bāzār, a livestock market may be held on appointed days of the week, for instance on Sunday in Salmās (formerly Šāhpūr) and on Saturday in Kermān (Thorpe, 1979, p. 83). Likewise, some big villages east of Ardabīl have a biweekly livestock market (Bazin, 1980, II, p. 159). Fishing in the straits of Hormoz and fruit and vegetable gardening in the coastal oases support an active Thursday market in the small town of Mīnāb (B. Raḥmānī, personal communication).

In Afghanistan (Grötzbach, 1976 and 1979), there is a sharp contrast between the northern and southern halves of the country (Figure 11). The higher density of weekly bāzārs in northern Afghanistan is connected with their greater antiquity. A. Burnes (III, p. 8) noticed that holding weekly markets was a rule in Afghan Turkestan and in the adjacent emirates of Khiva and Bukhara, whereas the market day was an unknown thing in Kabul as well as in India. Toward 1900, more than twenty weekly markets were held, mostly twice a week, in northern Afghanistan, and only one more to the south, the Friday market of Sabzavār (now Šendand; Grötzbach, 1979, pp. 20-21 and map 32).

Figure 11. Periodic markets in AfghanistanView full image in a new tab

Nowadays weekly bāzārs in northern Afghanistan can be divided into three groups. From the center to the east nearly all the markets are held on the same two days, Monday and Thursday, following the rhythm of Tašqorḡān, the former major trading center (Centlivres), and other big towns such as Qondūz and Mazār-e Šarīf. This synchronism forbids the rotation of traders between several markets and expresses the fragmentation of this rather densely populated region in small units focusing on relatively autonomous urban centers. The main exception to this rule results from the adaptation of Friday markets to the rest day of the factories in the two industrial towns of Pol-e Ḵomrī and Baḡlān(-e) Ṣaṇʿatī. A similar pattern can be observed in northwestern Afghanistan: All markets, held on Sunday and Wednesday, follow the rhythm of the cereals and livestock markets in Herat, the regional metropolis. Between these two areas, the region around Maymana has developed a system of bāzārs with various market days, bound to one another in organized rotations.

Another cyclic system of weekly markets has recently formed in the Kabul-Panjšēr basin north of Kabul, but the network of weekly bāzārs remains quite elementary in all other parts of eastern and southern Afghanistan. The few markets existing there are all Friday markets, either isolated or clustered in small groups around Jalālābād and to the west of Qandahār.

Bāzārs with an annual periodicity exist too in Iran and Afghanistan, but available data are too scarce to allow an overview. These annual markets, e.g., the Ḥasan Reżā Bāzār at the end of summer in Jūybār near Qāʾemšahr/Šāhī, the “moon feast bāzār ” of Šīrgāh in Māzandarān toward the end of July (ʿAbdolī, p. 64), or the Nowrūz bāzārs in Mazār-e Šarīf and Ḥażrat-e Emām Ṣāḥeb, which could last up to two months in the 13th/19th century (Grötzbach, 1976, p. 15), are generally bound to religious or popular feasts, and their social significance exceeds their economic importance.

Seasonal bāzārs. The great importance of pastoral life (nomadism and semi-nomadism, as well as pastoral migrations of villagers) in the Iranian world should have favored the development of temporary markets on winter and summer grazing lands of the herders. But, contrary to neighboring Anatolia where such seasonal bāzārs remain quite active in the whole Pontic range, they can be seen only in a few regions such as western Alborz, Baḵtīārī land, or central Afghan mountains. Their scarcity reflects once again the heavy weight of cities in the commercial network: In most pastoral areas, there are no intermediate forms of trade between the urban bāzārs and itinerant peddlers (dowragard) and livestock buyers (čūbdār), who often come from towns themselves. For instance, the Šāhsevan nomads attend the bāzārs of Sarāb, Meškīnšahr, and Ardabīl when they are summering on Mount Sabalān, whereas urban cheese makers come and stay on their winter pastures in Moḡān to process milk on the spot (Schweizer, pp. 98-100, 129). Likewise, the bāzār of Hamadān serves the Turkoševand and Yārīmtoḡlū when they are in their summer camps on the Alvandkūh (Ehlers), and that of Shiraz the Qašqāʾī and other nomads of the Fārs.

The most spectacular of these seasonal bāzārs are the “nomadic bāzārs” of central Afghanistan studied by K. Ferdinand (1962 and 1978; see also Jentsch, pp. 169). In the province of Ḡōr, the three bāzārs of Gomāb (locally pronounced Gomao), Abul (visited by Prince Peter of Greece and Denmark, 1954), and Čarās respectively gathered more than 300, nearly 150, and about 60 tents in June-July, 1960; all had livestock markets where thousands of sheep changed hands and numerous retail “tent-shops” selling all kinds of goods. They serve the local population, i.e., Fīrōzkōhī and Tājīk in Gomāb and Čarās and Taymanī in Abul, and western Dorrānī or “Durranized” Afghan nomads who have set up their summer camps in this Āymāq area. But nearly all the traders are East Afghan trading nomads, chiefly Aḥmadzay from the Gardēz-Ḵōst area. They come thence in caravans through Hazarajāt where they hold short-term bāzārs. These nomadic bāzārs result from the conjunction of pastoral expansion of Pashtun into the central mountains of Afghanistan and commercial expansion of eastern Pashtun from east to west. These trading nomads had at first created a single tent bāzār in Kermān in Hazarajāt, under the authority of a leader called mīr. Kermān fell into decay about 1929-30 while the present-day bāzārs began to grow more in the west, in the remotest mountains whence they will probably disappear in their turn with the gradual extinction of caravan traffic.

In another isolated mountain district, the northwestern end of Alborz, the summer bāzārs of Ṭāleš (Bazin, 1977) are more ancient, being bound to a deep-rooted indigenous pastoral life. They differ from one another in their location and structure (Figure 12). In central Ṭāleš the bāzārīs are integrated in villages or summer camps, whereas those in the south are small detached trading centers, together with the little town of Māsūla (Bazin, 1980, II, pp. 162-67), which serves in summer part of the adjacent districts of Ṭārom-e ʿOlyā and Ḵalḵāl. In all these summer bāzārs, a great proportion of the traders are Turks from the villages of Ardabīl and Ḵalḵāl.

Figure 12. Mountain bāzārs in ṬālešView full image in a new tab

In other regions, trading centers with marked seasonal variation in activity (just like Māsūla) can be found instead of actual seasonal bāzārs. For instance the small bāzārs of Āsīābar, Deylamān, Kelīšom, or ʿOmām in southeastern Gīlān reach their full activity only in summer when the surrounding grazing lands are crowded (Bazin and Bromberger, p. 94 and map 42). In central Zagros, several bāzārs, have been created in the 1340s Š./1960s in order to serve the Baḵtīārī nomads, in Lālī and Īḏa when they are wintering in garmsīr or in Ardal and Čelgerd when they are encamped in their summer quarters (yeylāq). The population of this last village thus increases from 40 families in winter to 520 in summer, including many dokāndār (shopkeepers) coming from Čahār Maḥāl(l), Isfahan, or Ḵūzestān (Ehmann, pp. 116-18; Digard, pp. 20-21). Further information about seasonal commercial activities is still missing for a great part of Iranian tribal areas.