CLASS SYSTEM i. In the Avesta

The evidence for the existence of a highly developed class structure in the community in which the Avestan texts were composed is very slight, and the available information must be culled from sources chronologically as far apart as the Avesta itself (ca. 1200-600 B.C.E.?) and the Pahlavi texts (composed in the 8th-9th centuries C.E., though incorporating material from pre-Sasanian and early Sasanian times). In addition, both the absolute and relative dating of individual Avestan texts is extremely problematic, for they contain no reference to historical events.

The prevailing theory about early Iranian social divisions was proposed in the 1930s and has been developed by such scholars as Émile Benveniste and G. E. R. Dumézil, who have interpreted parallels in Greek, Latin, Indian, Old Iranian, and other early Indo-European languages as evidence that Indo-European society and subsequently the societies of individual Indo-European peoples were originally divided into three strata (see, e.g., Benveniste, 1969, I, pp. 279-92; Dumézil; Duchesne-Guillemin, 1962, pp. 170-72). In the Avesta these strata are identified as the estates of the priests (Av. āΘrauuan-; see āΘravan-), the warriors (Av. raΘaēštar-, lit. “standing in a chariot”; see artēštār), and the cattle breeders (Av. vāstriia- fšuiiant-, lit. “cattle-breeding pastoralists”; Benveniste, 1932; Gershevitch, p. 170). For example, in Farvardīn yašt (Yt. 13.88-89) it is said that Zoroaster himself was the chief priest, warrior, and cattle breeder. In one of the inscriptions of Darius I (521-486 B.C.E.; DPd 15-20; Kent, Old Persian, pp. 135-36) the king prays that his country be protected from the (foreign) army (hainā), famine (dušiyāra), and the lie (drauga), which have been interpreted as threatening the respective estates (Benveniste, 1938; idem, 1969, I, pp. 288-89; Kellens). A Scythian legend recounted by Herodotus (Dumézil, pp. 9-10) tells of gold objects falling from heaven: a cup, an ax, and a plough and yoke, possibly referring to the three social divisions (see Duchesne-Guillemin, 1962, pp. 170-72; idem, 1964, pp. 128-30). A late survival of the threefold division is to be found in the Middle Persian Bundahišn, where the estates are connected with the Prophet Zoroaster’s three sons (Bundahišn, TD ₂, p. 235; tr. Anklesaria, chap. 35.56, pp. 300-301; Benveniste, 1932, pp. 118-19; Boyce, Zoroastrianism I, p. 281).

In another Avestan passage (Y. 19.17), however, a fourth estate, consisting of artisans (Av. huitiš; quoted in Škandgumānīg wizār 1.17, ed. Menasce, pp. 24-25), is also mentioned. This text, which is part of the Bag nask and contains a commentary on the Ahunwar prayer, is written in correct Young Avestan and must therefore be relatively old. It is this fourfold division of society that is normally mentioned in the Pahlavi texts (see iii, below); It also has parallels in India from as early as the 2nd millennium B.C.E. In Rigveda 10.90.11-12, for example, the origins of the four Indian castes are described: When the primal giant man (Puruṣa) was divided, his mouth became the brāhman (priests), his two arms the warriors (rājanyà), his two thighs the mercantile and agricultural population (vaiśya), and his two feet the lowest caste (śūdra). Similarly, in the Pahlavi Dēnkard (ed. Madan, I, p. 429, cf. Škand-gumānīg wizār 1.20-21; ed. Menasce, pp. 24-25) it is said that the body of man is in the likeness of the four estates, with priesthood at the head, warriorship in the hands, husbandry in the belly, and artisanship at the foot. Nevertheless, it remains to be established that the Indian and Pahlavi texts reflect inherited common beliefs, rather than independent developments.

The Gathas, which are among the oldest Avestan texts and were presumably composed by the Prophet himself, contain no clear references to established social divisions. The incomplete and ambiguous sources have thus been interpreted in various ways; most recently Mary Boyce (1982) has argued for a twofold division of Gathic society between warrior-herdsmen and priests.

See also AVESTAN PEOPLE.

CLASS SYSTEM ii. In the Median and Achaemenid Periods

The almost complete lack of Persian written material from the Achaemenid period makes it difficult to know how the Persians conceived of their society. There are strong grounds for supposing that, for some purposes at least, they still defined it in terms of the ancient Iranian social divisions outlined in parts of the Avesta, where individuals are classified by basic function as priests, warriors, and farmers (see i, above). Performance of the religious function by priests and of the defensive function by warriors was seen as necessary to enable farmers to till the soil. This functional division is generally described as a “system of social classes,” but “class” here should not be understood in the modern sense of the term; rather, it was a matter of categories and status, though the Avestan texts seem to depict the third category (farmers) as definitely subordinate to the first two. The following passage from one of the inscriptions of Darius I (521-486 B.C.E.; DPd 13-24; Kent, Old Persian, pp. 135-36) was interpreted by Émile Benveniste (1938, p. 543) as proof that the ancient Iranian concepts were still alive in the early part of the Achaemenid period: “May Ahuramazdā guard this country against the (hostile) army (hainā), the bad harvest (dušiyāra), the lie (drauga)!” (cf. Avestan druǰ-, dužiiāiriia-, haēnā-). Evidently a new use was found in the monarchical ideology for the Avestan concepts, as warrants of the great king’s legitimacy. Like Zoroaster (Yt. 13.88-89) the Achaemenid king was the first priest, first warrior, and first farmer. As the matchless warrior the king was best able to defend the farmlands against invasion; as mediator with the divine beings he could bring back their blessing on the lands; and, finally, he took pleasure in presenting himself as a good gardener (see Briant, 1982, pp. 435-56). It should be borne in mind that the word “lie” in this context has a political as well as a religious meaning. Among those counted as “liars” (draujana) are all opponents of the royal order, itself the earthly image of the divine order.

Such survivals, however, are clearly not the only factors to be considered in an analysis of the structure and dynamics of Persian society in the Achaemenid period, when royal omnipotence and imperial conquests were the salient features. About the Median society we know even less (Sancisi-Weerdenburg, 1988). According to Herodotus (1.125), Persian society in the reign of Cyrus the Great (559-29 B.C.E.) was made up of “numerous tribes” (génea), chief among which were the Pasargadai, the Maraphianoi, and the Maspianoi, and each tribe was divided into “clans” (phrātría), the most respected of which was the clan of the Achaemenids, who belonged to the tribe of the Pasargadai. This general outline by the Greek writer reflects the concept that the social groups to which individuals belong are the family (Av. nmāna), the clan (Av. vīs, OPers. viΘ), the tribe (Av. zantu), and the country (Av. daŋˊhu, OPers. dahyu; cf. Benveniste, 1969, II, pp. 293-319). In the royal inscriptions Persia is called the finest country; the king obtains “good men” and “good horses” from it and seeks Ahuramazdā’s protections for it through his prayers (DPd, DNa 47-55; Kent, Old Persian, pp. 137-38). Darius describes himself as a Persian, the son of a Persian, and an Achaemenid (DNa 9-15). Although the clan affiliations or tribal connections of important individuals are seldom mentioned in texts from the Achaemenid period (e.g., in Herodotus, 4.167, and in DNc: Gaubaruva Pātišuvariš “Gobryas, a Patischorian,” Kent, Old Persian, p. 140), there can be no doubt that the Persians still identified themselves by their relations to family (father’s name), clan, and tribe. In all probability the Medes had done so too, because, according to Herodotus (1.101), their nation was also made up of tribes (génēa).

Social stratification is known to have existed within the Persian nation (ethnos) and to have become more marked as a result of the imperial conquests. The texts show that the empire was administered by members of great families, comparable to European nobles, whom the Greek authors described as “well-born” or, more comprehensively, as “esteemed,” “respected,” “honored,” and sometimes also as “princes” (prôtoi; Briant, 1988). The corresponding term in Old Persian, and in the Iranian languages generally, is *āzāta, which means basically those born into a clan (de Blois, 1986; see also ĀZĀD). It is only natural that the word azētai should have been interpreted, for instance, in a gloss by the commentator Hesychius (Alexandri Lexicon 1442, s.v. azatē), as “those nearest to the king.” During the Achaemenid period nobility and authority were in fact conferred not solely by birth but also by royal favor. It was from the king that members of the great families received appointments as governors or commanders, and it was owing to the conquests and royal favor that they enjoyed manifold economic advantages, particularly land grants in conquered territories. Such awards were precarious, as the king could withdraw them at any time. These nobles came to be incorporated in the palace hierarchy established by successive rulers of the dynasty. A new nobility, which may be designated “the royal nobility,” thus took shape during the Achaemenid period; it overshadowed but did not displace the old nobility of blood. All the nobles were “devoted servants” (see BANDA i. THE TERM) of the great king, bound to him by ties of personal loyalty that had to take precedence over family or clan solidarity.

In some of the royal inscriptions, nobles (āmāta) and strong men (tunuvant) are contrasted with weak or poor people (skauΘi/škauΘi). The last of these terms (translated as muškēnu in Akkadian) apparently refers to the lowest class of the people who, although free, did not belong to the nobility (Dandamaev, pp. 643-46). The Greek authors recorded many instances of differences in status and wealth among the Persians, for instance, in their clothing, diet, ways of greeting one another, and education (which was available only for the chosen few). These “poor people,” who were called autoûrgoi by certain Greek authors, were evidently smallholders, who tilled their plots on their own account. They figure in several anecdotes related by Aelian, in which the emphasis is on their trust in the king, who used to visit them during his tours through Persia. The kings, as their declarations show, were eager to present themselves as the defenders of the land and the peasants (Briant, 1982, pp. 182-88, 362-71, 441ff.).

Also living in Persia were people who belonged to another category: those who were not of the Persian nation. In the Persepolis tablets they are called kurtaš. They were employed in the building operations at Persepolis and also in agricultural and pastoral undertakings and workshops in other centers in Persis under the Achaemenids. They were not prisoners of war who had been enslaved but workers who were recruited and paid by the state (Stolper, pp. 56-59). The diversity of their ethnic origins (Babylonian, Egyptian, Lydian, Lycian, and others) indicates that they were picked from all regions of the empire and assigned to workplaces permanently or temporarily, as required.

CLASS SYSTEM iii. In the Parthian and Sasanian Periods

Parthian period

The scant and fragmentary information available on the Parthian period does not permit a comprehensive description of social structure; in fact, the vast but decentralized empire encompassed a variety of social structures. In Mesopotamia there were city-states with substantial populations, characterized by a predominantly Greek culture (see ARSACIDS ii. THE ARSACID DYNASTY, p. 532; Lukonin, pp. 713-23); in Persia the older satrapies continued as vassal states, following their ancient traditions; and in Parthia proper, in the east and northeast, the population was predominantly tribal and nomadic, with a small sedentary component (Tolstov; ARSACIDS, ii. THE ARSACID DYNASTY, p. 532; Bivar, pp. 24-27; Ghirshman, pp. 262-66).

As the class structure of any given society closely reflects the socioeconomic realities, no single stage in the development of an eastern community can be equated exactly with a European counterpart. Western scholars who refer to Iranian “feudalism” have apparently been misled by the main feature that ancient Iranian and medieval European societies to some extent had in common: the relationship between lord and vassal. In contrast to European feudal states, however, Iranian societies had long been characterized by slavery and tribalism; Parthian society was thus divided between the aristocracy, on one hand, and peasants, tribesmen, and slaves, on the other. Despite the prevailing tolerance of the Parthian rulers toward other creeds and forms of social organization, the tenacity of Iranian social traditions connected with birthright suggests that the main social strata must have been much the same as those of the Achaemenids (Lukonin, pp. 684-89; Frye, pp. 207-8; see ii, above). One exception, in that she managed to breach the ranks of the nobility, was Thesmousa (in mss. also Thea Mousa or Thermousa), an Italian slave girl who, according to Josephus, in the year 2 C.E. was made the legitimate wife (gametḗn) of Phraates IV but later conspired with her son Phrataaces, with whom she was also reported to have had sexual relations, against the king (Josephus, 18.40-43 [18.2.4], Loeb ed. pp. 34-35; cf. Debevoise, pp. 148-49; Bivar, pp. 67-68). It may also be surmised that, in those tribal and nomadic areas where class differentiation had developed at all, the main division was between tribal chieftains (ktk-ḥwtwy, Pahl. kadag-xwadāy, NPers. kadḵodā) with their attendants (hamherzān; Draxt ī Asōrīg, p. 111), relatives, and dependents, on one hand, and the tribesmen, on the other.

A glimpse of the social structure under the Parthians has been provided by Greek historians. According to Plutarch (Crassus 21.6; cf. Frye, p. 187), a large part of the normal entourage of Surena (Sūrēn), commander of the Parthian army at the battle of Carrhae in 53 B.C.E., consisted of pelátai “clients” and doûloi “retainers.” In Justin’s epitome of the contemporary historian Pompeius Trogus’s work it was reported that their army consisted of “dependents” (servitiorum; Justin, 41.2), without the right of manumission, whom they raised as their own children, teaching them the art of riding and shooting with the bow. Nevertheless, Justin (41.2) stated that only 400 of the 50,000 cavalry confronting Mark Antony in 36 B.C.E. were “free men” (liberi; see below) and that the difference between slaves (servos) and freemen (liberos) was that the former went on foot, whereas the free men went only on horseback (Justin, 41.3; cf. Plutarch, Crassus 19.2, 27.1-2; Appian, Civil War 2.18). The interpretation of these reports is debatable (see ARSACIDS, ii. THE ARSACID DYNASTY, p. 536). Probably the “slaves” or “servants” were tribesmen, attendants, clients, retainers, and the like, and the confusion may have arisen because they were called slaves (bandag) owing to their servile submission to their masters (cf. the use of bandaka in Achaemenid times and banda in Islamic times; see BANDA i-ii; see ii, above).

Judging by conditions before and after the Parthian period, the lowest groups on the social scale comprised slaves of various kinds. Perpetual warfare must have ensured an ample supply of foreign captives (*wartak, *anaxšahrīk, Arm. anašxarhik [Perikhanian, 1973, p. 435]; see BARDA AND BARDADĀRĪ) who could be put to work in agriculture and construction. Slaves who worked the mines of the Parthian king were branded (Perikhanian, Camb. Hist. Iran, p. 635). Another type of slavery resulted from indebtedness or insolvency; a fort of indentureship similar to Sasanian bandag (see below) is attested by a loan contract from Dura Europos (parchment no. 10; Rostovtzeff and Welles, pp. 46-47), in which it was stipulated that, as interest on the loan, the debtor, a peasant, was to serve the creditor, an aristocrat, as a slave (see CONTRACTS ii; Frye, p. 187).

In view of the number of cities that flourished all over the vast Arsacid empire, the middle ranks of society must have been quite large. They included artisans, artists, non-Zoroastrian philosophers like Bardesanes of Edessa, traders, and physicians, as well as the minstrel poets (gōsān) who roamed the land entertaining both nobles and commoners; what has survived of Parthian literature, including Ayādgār ī Zarērān, Draxt ī Asōrīg, and Vīs-o Rāmīn, is owing to them (Boyce, “Middle Persian Literature,” pp. 56-57; idem, 1957). In Armenian sources dealing with the Arsacid period it is reported that commoners were generally called either *ramak “the common people” (Arm. ramik-kʿ), referring to tradespeople, artisans, and working people generally; *šēnakān “peasants” (Arm. šinakan-kʾ < šin “village” < Av. šaiiana- “dwelling, abode”; Perikhanian, 1968, p. 13; Widengren, p. 113 n. 46; see ARMENIA AND IRAN ii. THE PRE-ISLAMIC PERIOD, p. 436); or *pasānīg, probably “attendants, bodyguards” (Georgian pasanigi; Widengren, p. 38; see also Chubinov, col. 1006). These peasants and working people seem to have been free men in law, as there is no evidence of institutionalized serfdom in Iranian history, but in fact they were entirely subject to the power of overlords, a situation that persisted through great social upheavals until the beginning of the present century. Unlike slaves they could not be sold with the land, as Roman Ghirshman suggested (p. 310), but, as they were traditionally attached to their birthplaces, they nevertheless remained on the land when it was sold.

At the highest levels, among nobles and officials, there is evidence of extensive internal stratification, though the precise standings of individuals are not always clear. In the 1st century B.C.E. Pompeius Trogus reported that “commanders in war and rulers in peace” were selected from the ranks of those closest to the king (Justin, 41.2, where populorum ordo “the order of peoples” is undoubtedly corrupt). According to Seneca (Epistula 4.7), the nobles and heads of noble clans bore the title megistánes; they were probably comparable to Sasanian grandees (wuzurg; see BOZORGĀN; Lukonin, p. 700). Some of the Parthian titles that can be attributed to this group, attested mainly in the documents from Nisa (1st century B.C.E.) and the Sasanian inscriptions (3rd century C.E; e.g., of Šāpūr I [240-70] on the Kaʿba-ye Zardošt at Naqš-e Rostam [ŠKZ] and of Narseh I [293-302] at Paikuli [NPi]), are *naxwdār (Arm. naxarar “feudal chief, first in rank”; Hubschmann, Armenische Grammatik, p. 514; cf. Henning, “Mitteliranisch,” p. 42); ḥštrp “margrave, satrap” (Nina, passim; Gignoux, 1972, p. 53); BRBYTʾ (i.e., wispuhr) “prince of the blood” (inscriptions); ḥštrdr “governor, local king, dynast” (inscriptions); btḥšy “second in command, viceroy” (inscriptions; Arm. bdeašx; see BIDAXŠ); ʾrkpty “lord of *tribute” (inscriptions; see ARGBED); marzbān “margrave” (cf. Mtrssnkmrzwpn, Nisa, 1899; ed. D’yakonov and Livshits,1960, p. 114); šāpistān “eunuch” (inscriptions; Henning, “Mitteliranisch,” p. 62). Another category of aristocrats, called liberi by Pompeius Trogus (Justin, 41.2.6), probably consisted of āzād s, or knights (cf. Sāsān the asbār in Nisa N. 280 bis, ed. D’yakonov and Livshits, 1966, p. 141).

Parthian nobles were entitled to various attributes, which are frequently represented in art. The early kings wore the “satrapal” headgear (Lukonin, p. 686). The diadem, or “fillet of honor” (Arm. patīv [Faustus, 3.9; Lukonin, p. 707] < MPers. padēxw “fortunate, prosperous”; Nyberg, Manual II, p. 155), in Middle Persian “fillet of nobility” (wandag ī āzādīh; Dēnkard, ed. Madan, II, p. 570; ed. Dresden, p. 380; tr. Shaked, p. 179, erroneously emended to *bawandag āzādīhā “full praise”; cf. Shaki, forthcoming), seems to have been the common emblem of nobility. The belt and perhaps the entire costume represented on a bronze statue of a Parthian chieftain from Shami (Camb. Hist. Iran III/2, pl. 69) and on other sculptures of the period must have been prerogatives of the upper classes (Colledge, 1967; idem, 1986; see also CLOTHING ii. IN THE ARSACID PERIOD; CROWNS ii. FROM THE PARTHIAN PERIOD TO THE MONGOL INVASION).

Little is known about religious organization in the Parthian period (see ARSACIDS iv. ARSACID RELIGION). According to Strabo (11.9.3 = C 515), citing Poseidonius (ca. 135-50 B.C.E.), the council (synedrion) of the Parthians consisted of two groups: one the kinsmen (of the king; syggenoi) and the other the wise men and the Magi (sophoi and magoi). Kings were appointed from either group. This may be an indication that the higher clergy was reckoned as a nobility of the faith, equal in rank to the nobility of office. From extant ecclesiastical designations it can be surmised that lower-ranking members of the priesthood also acted as judges (dʾtbr, ŠKZ 24, 29; Back, p. 353), scribes (cf. dpyrpty “chief of the scribes,” Nisa 90; ed. D’yakonov and Livshits, 1960, p. 75), custodians of fire temples (mgwpt; inscriptions of Kardēr) or image shrines (bagnapat; Boyce. 1979, p. 98; see BAGINA, BAGINAPATI), and attendants of the sacred fires (cf. Spōsak the ʾtwršpty in Nisa N. 280, ed. D’yakonov and Livshits, 1966, pp. 148-49, 152), but their standing relative to other social groups is not clear.

Sasanian period

Social arrangements under the Sasanians are much better documented than those of the preceding period. The sources include royal inscriptions of the 3rd century C.E. and the Pahlavi literature (much of it dating from the 8th-9th centuries, though incorporating earlier material), as well as Syriac, Armenian, and later Persian and Arabic texts, some of which were based on Pahlavi writings.

The estates. The Avestan concept of four estates (see i, above) persisted in Sasanian times under the designations āsrōnīh, the estate of the priests (āsrōns); artēštārīh, the estate of the warriors (artēštār); wāstaryōšīh, the estate of the husbandmen (wāstaryōš); and hutuxšīh, the estate of the artisans (hutuxš, lit. “who strives well”; Dēnkard, ed. Madan, II, p. 595; ed. Dresden, p. 360; tr. Molé, chap. 1.22, pp. 6-7). Ohrmazd is said to have personally taught the theory and practice of the four estates to Zarathustra (ed. Madan, II, p. 599, cf. p. 623; ed. Dresden, p. 357, cf. p. 337; tr. Molé, chap. 1.41 pp. 12-13, cf. 3.48 pp. 38-39). In Mēnōg ī xrad the duties (xwēškārīh) and sins (wināh) of each estate are listed in detail (questions 30-31, 58, pp. 97-99, 108-9; tr. West, chaps. 31-32, 59, pp. 67-69, 105-6). It is significant that the duties of the artisans (hutuxšān, pēšagkārān) are described in a separate chapter (chap. 31) in rather impassive terms as those who “are to do well and carefully that which they know and are to demand fair reward.” The four estates listed in the Tansar-nāma are the clergy; the military; the scribes (dabīrān), including various administrators, as well as physicians, poets, and astronomers; and the artisans, including peasants, traders, cattle breeders, and others who earned their livings (tr. Boyce, p. 38).

It was probably in the Sasanian period that the three higher estates were first put under the patronage of the three most powerful fires of the realm, symbolizing the creation of the fires by Ohrmazd for the protection of the world (Bundahišn, TD ₂, p. 124, tr. Anklesaria, chap. 18.8, pp. 158-59), as well as the prosperity of Iranian society through the functioning of the estates. In Selections of Zādsprahm (chap. 30) the fire in the head is associated with the priests, that in the heart with the warriors, and that in the stomach with the farmers. The priests were attached to the most exalted Ādur Farrbag/Farnbāg (see ĀDUR FARNBĀG, p. 474; Kār-nāmag 1.13), the king of kings and the warriors to Ādur Gušnasp (p. 195; Kār-nāmag, 1.13), and the husbandmen to Ādur Burzēn-Mihr (Bundahišn, TD ₂, pp. 126-27, tr. Anklesaria, chap. 18.17 pp. 162-63). In the Iranian cosmogonic myth, as told in the Middle Persian Bundahišn (TD ₂, pp. 31-32, tr. Anklesaria, chap. 3.3-6, pp. 36-39), Ohrmazd donned a white garment, the garment of the wise, of the estate of priests; the good Wāy (or space) a golden dress, the garment of the estate of warriors; and Spihr (or firmament) a dark-blue dress, the garment of the estate of husbandmen (cf. Zaehner, pp. 122, 124, 333).

Although the arrangement in estates was taught as immutable, according to the Tansar-nāma (tr. Boyce, pp. 37-38), it seems not to have reflected social reality, for other social divisions had gained importance during the Parthian period. Traces of the old structure can be recognized mainly in the titles of chiefs of the second and third estates: artēštārān sālār and wāstaryōšān sālār, though only the former is found in a Pahlavi text (Kār-nāmag; see Nyberg, Manual, I, p. 16.8). Both were mentioned in ca. 302/915 by Ṭabarī (I, p. 869), who reported that each of the three sons of Mihr-Narseh, the prime minister (wuzurg-framādār or hazārbed, misread in NPers. orthography as hazār-banda “having a thousand slaves”; see Shaki, 1986, p. 258 n.16), was appointed as head of an estate by Bahrām V (420-38): Zurwāndād as hērbedān hērbed, Māh-Gušnasp as wāstaryōšān sālār, and *Kārdār (emendation by de Goeje for kārd in the manuscript) as artēštārān sālār (distorted in the ms.; Nöldeke, Geschichte der Perser, pp. 109-11; Balʿamī, ed. Bahār, p. 948; Christensen, Iran Sass., pp. 277-88). But, as membership in any of the estates was entirely hereditary, it is highly unlikely that Zurwāndād, a layman of the highest rank, could have discharged the functions of high priest. Furthermore, it was the mowbed, or perhaps the mowbedān mowbed, rather than the hērbedān hērbed, who headed the first estate in the Sasanian period (Lukonin, p. 942; Christensen, Iran Sass., p. 265; Dēnkard, ed. Madan, II, p. 711; ed. Dresden, p. 291; tr. West, p. 61). It seems, therefore, that the entire account, as Ṭabarī found it in his sources, was devised to demonstrate the exceptional merits of the family of Mihr-Narseh and that the titles mentioned probably did not designate actual administrative chiefs of the respective estates, as assumed by Christensen (Iran Sass., pp. 122-23, 131-32). There was also another high official, pēšag-sālār “chief of the estates,” whose decisions were subject to the approval of the dehbed “local dynast” (Mādayān, pt. 1, p. 3). The names of the estates were still known in later medieval times; they appear in corrupt form in the Šāh-nāma (ed. Khaleghi, pp. 42-43; Moʿīn, p. 408): ʾtwrbʾn, āturbān for *āsrōnān < Av. āΘrauuan; nysʾryʾn for *(ar)tēštārān < MPers. artēštārān; bswdy for *pasudī (cf. Av. pasu- “small cattle”) < Av. fšuiiant; and ʾhnwxšy for hutuxšīh.

Social groupings. Under the Sasanians, who were themselves descended from one of the seven great Persian aristocratic families of the Parthian period (Lukonin, pp. 703-5), the social system inherited from their predecessor was further elaborated into a specifically Sasanian social, political, and cultural superstructure (Pigulevskaya, p. 101). The power of the nobility continued to increase until the mid-5th century C.E. Administrative centralization, coupled with state sanction of religious orthodoxy and the concentration of political, social, and economic affairs in the hands of the landed nobility, created an insuperable barrier between the aristocracy and higher ecclesiastics, on one hand, and wage earners, including peasants, artisans, and traders, on the other. For example, great landholders and high officials traditionally bequeathed their dignities and estates in fee simple (pad xwēšīh ud āzādīh; Shaki, 1983, pp. 191-92); offices of state thus became hereditary prerogatives.

Traditional social relations were thus enshrined in a system of exclusive classes backed by doctrinal justification: “Everything may be changed but the good and evil substance (gōhr) (of man)” (Mēnōg ī xrad, ed. Anklesaria, 9.7; tr. West, chap. 10.7, p. 37; Dēnkard , ed. Madan, p. 547; ed. Dresden, p. 400; tr. Shaked, A6b, pp. 132-33). The severity of this prescription was tempered to a degree by exceptions for men of singular worth and moral excellence. For example, Wahrām (Bahrām) II (274-93) conferred the rank of “grandee” (wuzurg) on his chief priest, Kardēr (KKZ 8; Back, p. 408) and Bahrām V that of nobility on his musicians ([Pseudo-]Jāḥeẓ, p. 28); according to the Dēnkard, the high priest (mowbedān mowbed) offered the “fillet of nobility” (wandag ī āzādīh “diadem”) to two pious and sagacious priests (hērbeds) whom he had taken for menials but who were in fact worthy of a higher social standing (ed. Madan, II, pp. 569-72, see above; Shaki, forthcoming). Finally, in the words of the Tansar-nāma, “if outstanding worthiness is observed in the natural disposition of a person, after due examination by the high priests (mowbeds and hērbeds), he shall be promoted to a higher scale, subject to the approval of the King of kings” (tr. Boyce, pp. 38-39).

For the Sasanians class distinction and social privilege were the birthright of the landed classes, who strove to protect their prerogatives from encroachment. As in earlier periods, aristocrats were distinguished from commoners by dress, gardens, palaces, luxurious objects, and large numbers of horses, wives, and concubines (Tansar-nāma, tr. Boyce, p. 44). Aristocratic dress included tall bonnets or tiaras (kulāf; see CROWNS ii. FROM THE PARTHIAN PERIOD TO THE MONGOL INVASION), jeweled belts (kamar) like those conferred by Wahram II on Kirdēr (Back, p. 394; see also Sasanian seals in Gignoux, 1978), and earrings (see CLOTHING iii. IN THE SASANIAN PERIOD). Aristocratic women were permitted to hunt, wearing dresses of silk, high boots, trousers, and sumptuous headdresses (Tansar-nāma, ed. Dehḵodā, p. 1631 ll. 12-13). Some emblems of rank and title are known from their contemporary use in Armenia, for example, the cushion (Arm. barj) at the royal table, the “fillet of honor” (Arm. patīv “diadem”), and the throne (gāh; Faustus, 3.9, 11; Lukonin, p. 707). The nobles were active in warfare, administration, athletic games, the chase, banqueting, and the like but did no other work (see CITIZENSHIP ii. IN THE SASANIAN PERIOD).

The Sasanians probably inherited from the Parthians a four-part internal division of the nobility, including the šahrdārs, vassal kings and dynasts; wispuhrs, princes of the blood royal and members of royal families; wuzurgs, grandees; and āzāds, the gentry and the knights (for the lists in NPi, see Humbach and Skjærvø, III/2, p. 46; Lukonin, pp. 698-99; Christensen, Iran Sass., pp. 95-107). In the Paikuli inscription the āzāds were sometimes listed before and sometimes after kadag-xwadāys; according to the Kār-nāmag (par. 1), Persia had been ruled by 120 kadag-xwadāys at the time of Ardašīr’s birth. They must have been “tribal chieftains” (molūk al-ṭawāʾef the term by which Islamic historians referred to the Arsacid rulers; e.g., Ṭabarī, I, p. 706) equal in rank to the āzāds and the dehkāns “small landowners.” These internal subdivisions were further elaborated under the Sasanians. For example, lists of dignitaries from other 3rd-century inscriptions reveal a more complex hierarchy of ranks (for a comparative table, see the inscription of Narseh I, Humbach and Skjærvø, III/2, pp. 40-43; for the complete list of dignitaries in the inscription of Šāpūr I, see Maricq, pp. 318-30). The highest rank included members of the royal family and some high officials (hargbed, bidaxš, hazārbed), all probably of royal blood; second were military leaders (spāhbed) from the great families (Warāz, Sūrēn, Kārin) and, during the reign of Narseh, the mowbed Kirdēr; the third level included other military officers (spāhbed), steward or overseer of the royal demesne (framādār; cf. Livshits, p. 134; Gignoux, 1978, p.15 no. 1.1), secretaries (dibīrbed), members of the royal household (e.g., the cupbearer, mayār), lesser clergy (e.g., Kardēr, the ēhrbed under Šāpūr I), satraps (šahrab), accountants (hamārgar), judges (dādwar), masters of the hunt (naxčīrbed), and various other officials. This arrangement, reflecting a very different reality from that of the estates recognized in the scriptures, had probably resulted from the expansion of urban centers and the central administration; it remained basically unchanged throughout the Sasanian period. Lists of Sasanian ranks have also been preserved in the works of several Muslim authors, who drew their information from the Sasanian Gāh-nāmag, “notitia dignitatum, or charter of ranks,” a section of the āyēn-nāmag “code of customs” that is now lost (Christensen, Iran Sass., pp. 62-63). The earliest example seems to be that given in ca. 278/891 by Yaʿqūbī (Boldān, I, pp. 202-3), who gave the titles associated with various ranks: the king of kings (malek al-molūk), kesrā; the vizier, boḏorjfarmaḏār (< Pahl. wuzurg-framadār); the chief priest (ʿālem al-ʿolamāʾ), mūbaḏ mūbaḏān; the overseer of the fire, harbaḏ; the chief scribe, dabīrbaḏ; grandees (ʿaẓīm) like the commander in chief, esbahbaḏ (< Pahl. spāhbed), and his subordinate (“he who repels the enemy”), fādūsbān (< Pahl. pād/ygōsbān); the provincial governor, marz(o)bān; the district chief, šahrīj (< Pahl. šahrīg); military commanders, asāwera; appeals judge (ṣāḥeb almaẓālem), šāhrīšt (?); and the head of chancery, archivist (ṣāḥeb al-dīwān; d ī wānbān, Mādāyān, pt. 2, p. 26) mardmāṛʿad (?) < *mardmārḡar (or Ērān-āmārkār, Christensen, Iran. Sass., pp. 265, 524-25). According to Masʿūdī (Tanbīh, pp. 103-4), who was writing in ca. 345/956, there were five ranks of nobility: the mūbaḏs, whose chief was the (mūbaḏān) mūbaḏ; the vizier, called boḏorjfarmaḏār; the eṣbahbaḏ “commander-in-chief”; the dabīrbaḏ; and the ṯastaḵšabaḏ (emended to hūtoḵšbaḏ by J. Darmesteter; see Tanbīh, p. 104 n.) “those who work with their hands,” also called vāstarīūš. In ca. 390/1000 Bīrūnī (p. 100) gave a slightly different list: “the knights and princes,” “the monks, the fire priests, and the lawyers,” “the physicians, astronomers, and other men of science,” and “the husbandmen and artisans” (cf. Ketāb al-tāj, erroneously attributed to Jāḥeẓ [160-255/776-869], p. 25, where a similar list is attributed to Ardašīr [224-40]; cf. Dehḵodā, p. 1587.13-14). The various strata within the Sasanian aristocracy were also reflected in dress and degree of wealth. For example, the dehkāns “lower class of landowners” were divided into five subgroups, each distinguished by the color of the garments worn (Christensen, Iran Sass., p. 107). Marriage, whether legitimate (pādixšāyīhā) or substitute (stūrīh; see ČAKAR), could he concluded only among people of the same subclass; according to a note in the Tansar-nāma, “nothing needed such guarding as degree among men” (tr. Boyce, p. 45) and a strict observance of distinction between social classes (ed. Dehḵodā, p. 1630 ll. 10-11). Sasanian family law provided that an “appointed proxy” (stūr ī gumārdag; see BŪDAG, Ar. badal, plur. abdāl, should be chosen from among the deceased man’s equals in rank (ham-hāwand; Dādestān ī Dēnīg, chap. 58; Mādayān, pt. 2.14; Shaki, 1987, p. 192; Tansar-nāma, ed. Dehḵodā, pp. 1630.21; tr. Boyce, pp. 46, with erroneous translation). If a man of noble birth married a woman of lower rank, he lost his social position, forfeited his claim to inheritance and property, and was even banished from his homeland (Tansar-nāma, ed. Dehḵodā, p. 1630.12-18; tr., Boyce, pp. 44-45). According to the 6th/12thcentury Fārs-nāma by Ebn al-Balḵī (pp. 97-98), the kings of Persia could marry foreign princesses, but their own daughters were allowed to marry only members of their own families (bayt). In that way the purity of the lineage and class were maintained and the patrimony retained within the family.

Although in the 3rd century the high priest Kirdēr had a brief moment of power, it was apparently only later, in the reign of Yazdgerd II (399-420), that the higher clergy the chief priest, mowbedān mowbed (Gignoux, 1986, pp. 102-4), the hērbedān hērbed, the chief secretary (dabīrbed), and the like—were ranked with the nobility. The lesser clergy ranked a step lower in the social hierarchy, with the scribes, magistrates, physicians, astronomers (Ketāb al-tāj, p. 25), cavalrymen, and foot soldiers, all of whom earned wages under the supervision of higher-ranking officials (Christensen, Iran Sass., pp.132-36). The priests (mowbed, hērbed) were paid from the revenues of endowments and from fees (nīrmad) for services connected with marriage. Judges (dādwar) received fees for hearing lawsuits. The salaries of cavalrymen (aswār) and foot soldiers (payg) were carefully graded. At the time of Ḵosrow Anūšīravān (531-79) the maximum salary for amounted soldier was 10,000 drahms, the minimum for a foot soldier 100 drahms (Balʿamī, ed. Bahār, p. 1049), an index of their relative military importance. Warriors in general were held in high respect, and commoners were required to show deference to them (Tansar-nāma, ed. Dehḵodā, p. 1631). The majority of the lowest ranks of free men consisted of farmers (warzīgar), husbandmen, and artisans, referred to generally as ramān “herds, masses,” amaragān “populace” (lit. “innumerable ones”), pādram “commoner,” or mardom “people.” They earned their livings from manual labor and paid both land and poll taxes. A passage in the Dēnkard (ed. Madan, II, p. 742; ed. Dresden, p. 96; tr. West, p. 103) implies that the peasants worked on sharecropping contracts, in a system similar to that of the Islamic mozāraʿa (on Islamic sharecropping, see Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, p. 295).

A wage earner was entitled to only one or, in rare instances, two wives (Mādayān, pt. 2, p. 1) and to ownership of only a small plot of land. He was advised to be diligent and moderate in life and to live from his own labor (Mēnōg ī xrad, ed. Sanjana, chap. 1.42-43, ed. Nyberg, Manual I, p. 69), to save no more than 300 stērs (Pahlavi Rivayat, ed. Dhabhar, p. 123), and to give any surplus as alms for the worthy poor (driyōšān; Ardā Wirāz-nāmag 31.3; see CITIZENSHIP). He was also required to obey the higher ranks (padān) and warned not to curse them (Dēnkard, ed. Madan, II, pp. 699, 749; ed. Dresden, p. 90; tr. West, chap. 19, p. 45). The hostility and suspicion with which the lower classes were regarded by the aristocracy may be reflected in a passage of the Šāh-nāma (Moscow, VII, p. 189) in which Ardašīr-e Pādagān is supposed to have advised: “Do not seek truthfulness in the hearts of commoners; the more you seek the less you find. Should you be informed of their misdeed, pay no heed to such accounts. They are ungodly and disloyal servants, unreliable, intractable. Such is the measure (of the worth of) commonalty.” Indeed, statements in religious texts about the community (hamīh) of masters (padān) and common people (ramān; Dēnkard, ed. Madan, II, p. 749), and particularly about the just Rašn’s holding a sovereign equal to the humblest man (Mēnōg ī xrad, ed. Anklesaria, 1.122, p. 23; tr. West, p. 18), are pious frauds.

At the bottom of the Sasanian social structure were the poor and the slaves. From repeated injunctions on the well-to-do to help the worthy poor and repeated curses on recalcitrant indigents (škōh) it seems that there was a substantial pauperized urban population. The putative attitude of the škōh toward the upper classes reveals the class antagonism and social tension that culminated in the Mazdakite upheavals of the 5th-6th centuries (see Shaki, 1978). A škōh was described as a person who was dissatisfied with what he had, considered himself unfortunate, and was contemptuous of the opulent (Dēnkard, ed. Madan, II, p. 505; ed. Dresden, p. 438; tr. Shaked, pp. 58-59). Ādurbād ī Māraspandān, one of the fathers of the faith, regarded the contest between an “arrogant” škōh and a lord (xwadāy) one of the five grave evils that might befall men (Pahlavi Texts, p. 71). Another group may well have been the predecessors of the Islamic javān-mardān (< MPers. mard-juwān; Dēnkard, ed. Madan, II, pp. 723; ed. Dresden, p. 281; tr. West, p. 78; cf. ʿAYYĀR ii, pp. 162-63), described in the Pahlavi commentary to Vidēvdād 3.41 as those who believed that robbing the rich to give to the poor was a meritorious act (tr. Darmesteter, II, p. 47 n. 81). The style, phraseology, and vocabulary of Samak-e ʿayyār by Farāmarz b. Kodādād Arrajānī, written ca. 585/1189, attest its pre-Islamic origins and confirm the Sasanian origin of this group. Although the conduct of such men was not censured (but also not approved of) by the author of the Pahlavi Vidēvdād (loc. cit.), in the Ardā Wirāz-nāmag they were declared worthy of severe corporal punishment (chap. 45). It is quite conceivable that they allied themselves with the Mazdakites (drīstdēn) against the nobility (Shaki, 1978, p. 305 n. 142.).

The institution of slavery (see BARDA AND BARDADĀRĪ) seems to have been more highly developed in the Sasanian period than previously, as is confinned by the quantity of legislation relating to it in Middle Persian literature. By that time slaves had apparently become the chief producers in society. They were bought or captured by the hundreds (Ammianus Marcellinus, 23.6.76) and were classed as property, with an average price of 500 stirs, comparable to that of a woman (Mādayān, pt. 1, pp. 12, 33; Pahl. Vd. 4.2). Masters (xwadāyān) were allowed to treat them as draft animals (Dēnkard, ed. Madan, II, p. 737; ed. Dresden, p. 269; tr. West, p. 98). Nevertheless, they did have certain civil rights; the law not only protected their lives (Pahlavi Rivayat, ed. Dhabhar, p. 108) but also provided them with recourse in defense of their rights (see CITIZENSHIP). Each category of slaves had a specific social status: bandag “servant” (lit. “bound”), anšahrīg (lit. “outlander”), wardag (lit. “captive”), tan (lit. “body”). The bandag was normally engaged in household (mānišn) and other types of services, as at a fire temple (Mādayān, pt. 1, pp. 1, 103). The anšahrīg, originally a non-Zoroastrian foreign slave, was usually attached permanently to a farm, regardless of any transfer of ownership; such a slave rarely worked in a household (Mādayān, pt. 2, p. 36). The wardag, like the anšahrīg, worked on the land, in construction, or at some other kind of manual labor, according to his abilities. The Roman captives whom Šāpūr I put to work on his royal demesne are an example (ŠKZ, Parth. line 16; Back, pp. 325-26). A slave delivered as security for a bond was called tan (Mādayān, pt. 1, p. 89). Female slaves served in households as bandag paristār “slave maidservants” (Dādestān ī dēnīg, chap. 56, p. 203; Dēnkard, ed. Madan, II, p. 737) and perhaps on farms as zan ī anšahrīg “female anšahrīg.” A slave could be partially manumitted, in which instance he was paid wages proportional to his degree of freedom (Mādayān, pt. 1, p. 1; Yišōʿboxt, p. 179). Slavery was hereditary (Mādayān, pt. 1, pp. 1, 96), and, according to the jurist Syāwaxš, against Rād-Hormizd, no Persian subject (bandag ī šāhānšāh) could be enslaved (Mādayān, pt. 1, p. 20). If a Christian slave embraced Zoroastrianism and took to the people of the good religion (hu-dēnān) it was incumbent upon them to buy him out of slaver; but if he did not take to the Zoroastrians, he could procure his own manumission (Mādayān, pt. 1, p. 1). The sale of slaves to non-Zoroastrians was strictly prohibited, a crime punishable by branding (drōš) of both contracting parties (Mādāyan, 1, p. 1).

CLASS SYSTEM iv. Classes In Medieval Islamic Persia

Little evidence survives to show how a new social order replaced the old Sasanian class system during the early Islamic era. A new social stratification and conception of inequality seems to have gradually emerged under the influence of: (1) Islamic ideals of equality and merit; (2) pre-Islamic Persian and Arabian ideals and practices of social inequality; and above all (3) rivalries among social groups over wealth, prestige, and power. Furthermore, Greek philosophical theories of hierarchy and inequality influenced Muslim ideas about social stratification. In this article the theories and Structure of inequality of Persian society in the medieval Islamic period will be treated.

Theories of inequality in medieval Islamic Persia

There were two opposing attitudes toward inequality in Islam: egalitarian and meritocratic views favoring an open stratification system and nonegalitarian views of hierarchy as natural in bout society and the universe.

Egalitarian and meritocratic ideas in Islam

The egalitarian and meritocratic ideal in Islam was an open society in which any memberof the Muslim community (omma)—regardless of social status at birth (ważīʿ wa šarīf; base and noble), race (black and white), ethnicity (Arab and non-Arab [ʿajam]), or inherited wealth (faqīr wa gānī; poor and rich)—could, owing to his personal qualities or merit (esteḥqāq), rise to the highest social status: virtue and piety, wisdom and knowledge, or acquired wealth and political office. Such views are to be found in several Koranic verses and in traditions of the Prophet and early Muslims, notably ʿOmar and ʿAlī. Koran 49:13, “O mankind, we have created you from male and female, and set you up as peoples (šoʿūb) and tribes (qabāʾel) so you may recognize one another; the noblest (akram) among you with God is the most pious (atqā) of you,” was often invoked by underprivileged ethnic groups and social strata, including Kharijites, early militant Shiʿites (ḡolāt), and the Šoʿūbīs of Persian nobility. Other such verses were 49:10, “Believers merely form a brotherhood,” and 30:22, “Among His signs [is] … the diversity in your tongues and colors … .” A number of egalitarian traditions attributed to the Prophet forbade boasting about ancestry: “There are no genealogies in Islam,” “the sole title to nobility in Islam is piety and fear of God” (Ebn Ḥanbal, I, p. 301; II, p. 366; III, pp. 456, 460; IV, p. 134; Ṭūsī, 1339 Š./1960, pp. 83-96, 176-87, 303-305). Egalitarian views and practices were also attributed to ʿOmar (Aḡānī XIV, p. 4; Ebn Ṭeqṭaqā, 1860, pp. 33, 89; 1947, pp. 25, 70). ʿAlī, among others, defined nobility as resulting from knowledge and piety, not lineage and wealth: “Nobility (šaraf) is derived only from knowledge (ʿelm) and culture (adab), not from inherited merit (ḥasab) and lineage (nasab)”; and “a man’s value consists in what he knows” (Rašīd-al-Dīn Waṭwāṭ, pp. 68-69, 122, 188-89; Wāʿeẓ-e Kāšefī, 1344, p. 186). Abu’l-Fażl Bayhaqī (d. 470/1077) thought that mere noble birth was not “worth a penny” (pp. 524-26). Saʿdī (d. 695/1295; p. 155), who believed in the role of both nature and nurture in the making of human character, tells of stupid sons of viziers who became beggars and gifted sons of peasants who came to court and became viziers. Ḥāfeẓ (d. 792/1389; p. 321) said, “Demanding the royal crown, you should demonstrate your innate noble substance (gowhar-e ḏātī), even though you may be from the stock of Jamšīd and Farīdūn.” Moḥammad b. Qāżī Malaṭīyawī (7th/13th century; pp. 73, 269-72) advised the prince to overlook noble birth (šaraf-e obowwa) in selecting officials. Knowledge was often viewed as superior to wealth, as well (Ormavī, pp. 13-23; Ṭūsī, 1339 Š./1960, pp. 54-64; Qūnavī, pp. 130-38; Rosenthal, pp. 322-33; Muhammad Ali, pp. 31-39).

It was philosophers and social thinkers like ʿĀmerī (d. 381/992), Bīrūnī (d. 440/1048), Ebn Fātek (5th/11th century) and, above all, the eminent sociologist and philosopher of history, Ebn Ḵaldūn (d. 809/1406), who attempted to explain the nature and causes of social differentiation. ʿĀmerī, presenting his meritocratic theory of social differentiation in Islamic society (1387/1967, pp. 159-60, 174-76), blamed the biohereditary notion of the nobility of the Sasanian kings and Zoroastrian teachings for the rigid division between the noble and the base in Sasanian society, a division that blocked upward mobility for many free people with good qualities. Bīrūnī saw coercion and the use of physical force by the rulers and the dominant classes as the main cause of the Indo-Persian caste system: He considered the rigid caste boundaries and strict barriers to social mobility in pre-Islamic Persia and India unnecessary and improper (pp. 75-79). Abu’l-Wafā Mobaššer Ebn Fātek (pp. 150-51), in a discussion of Plato’s social thought, anticipated the elitist ideas of Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923; I, chaps. 12-13) and Gaetano Mosca (1858-1941; pp. 430-64) and advocated the “circulation of elites” as a means of strengthening political leadership and society in general.

Ebn Ḵaldūn, anticipating the external-conflict theories of modern social thought, influenced the ideas of such political sociologists as Ludwig Gumplowicz (1838-1909), who devoted a chapter of his 1899 work to him (Barnes and Baker, II, p. 267), and Franz Oppenheimer (1864-1943; pp. 8-31). Ebn Ḵaldūn traced the origins of the division of society into sovereign and subject classes to the formation of the state by the subjugation of one social group with a weak ʿaṣabīya (esprit de corps) by another group with a strong ʿaṣabīya (I, pp. 278-301, 313-17). Also anticipating Karl Marx’s (1818-83) theory of “surplus value” (I, pp. 177-78, 508-18), Ebn Ḵaldūn argued that, once established, the sovereign class requires compulsory acquiescence of the subject class to its economic needs in terms of extraction of surplus value of their labor; The acquired capital, profits, and gains, “in their entirety or for the most part, are values realized from human labour” (II, p. 314). Economic power is a function of political domination: “A person of rank receives much (free) labor which makes him rich in a very short time” (II, p. 327). Furthermore, the ruling class superimposes its customs and ways of life upon the masses. Ebn Ḵaldūn rejected the idea that noble birth justifies inequality: “Man is the child of customs, not the child of his ancestors.” Nobility and prestige are an “accident that affects human beings” (II, p. 318).

Egalitarian and meritocratic ideas became, during the first centuries of Islam, the ideology of protest movements among underprivileged groups contending for political power, especially the aristocratic Persian Šoʿūbīya, the democratic Kharijites, and the radical Shiʿite (ḡolāt) movements. Later, however, egalitarian ideas lost much of their revolutionary potential and were incorporated gradually into the ethics of the established order, according to which egalitarianism, asceticism, and consideration for the poor were admired at the same time that hierarchy and inequality were endorsed in society.

Proponents of inequality in medieval Islam Advocates of inequality viewed social differentiation as inevitable or even desirable because they considered it necessary for the survival of society as a whole (functional model), because of the unequal distribution of inherited intelligence (biohereditary perspective), or because of inherited or acquired wealth.

The biohereditary perspective. The most common explanation of social inequality in medieval Islam was that nobility was inherited. In pre-Islamic Persia, members of dominant strata, no matter what social functions they performed, were considered men of rank with noble status; they boasted about the value of their hereditary rank and lineage and were forbidden to associate with commoners (Nāma-ye Tansar, pp. 57-59, 64-65, 69-70). Among the Arabs “knowledge of the common descent of certain groups [and] the glory of a tribe,” as Ignaz Goldziher noted (I, P. 45), stood “at the center of Arab social consciousness.” The term ḥasab connoted the accumulation of the famous deeds of one’s ancestors, the ancestors themselves, and one’s own contributions. These ideas and practices were common during the Islamic era, despite the fact that they contradicted the egalitarian ethos of Islam. Aristotle’s theory of the hierarchical order of the universe and social inequality (pp. 9-18, 297-306) supported such ideas of the natural causes of human inequality. Ebn Moqaffaʿ (d. 142/759), who was one of the first translators of Aristotle’s works into Arabic, cited the philosopher’s advice to Alexander in the introduction to Nāma-ye Tansar (tr., p. 27): “[B]e assured that there is no wickedness or calamity, no unrest or plague in the world which corrupts so much as the ascending of the base to the station of the noble” (cf. Ebn Moqaffaʿ, 1331/1913, pp. 120-131; 1339 Š./1960, pp. 501, 504, 523). Meskawayh (d. 421/1030), influenced by Aristotle’s ideas, enumerated five main factors that cause differences among people: “natural dispositions; habits; their ranks and their shares of science, knowledge, and understanding; their aspirations; and their desires and concerns” (1966, p. 87; tr. p. 78). Rāḡeb Eṣfahānī (d. 502/1108; pp. 111-20) devoted two chapters to the nature and causes of inequality. He began with a number of Koranic verses and prophetic traditions to demonstrate the utility and necessity of inequality, including two oft-quoted verses: “God is the One Who had raised some of you higher than others in rank” (6:165) and “Watch how We have permitted some of them to get ahead of others” (17:21). Rāḡeb believed as well as in the social utility of inequality and that a man’s place in the social hierarchy was predestined. To support his argument he cited a saying of the Prophet: “Men will not desist to prosper as long as they diverge; if they are equal, they will perish.” He attributed human inequality to seven factors: temperament, character of the parents, sperm and blood, suckling, socialization, influence of significant others, and finally personal effort. Ḡazālī (1387/1967, I, p. 121), who followed Rāḡeb’s ethics, attributed differences of human intellect to natural ability and assiduity.

Most mirrors for princes include advice to rulers to support and maintain the nobility. In the Naṣīḥat al-molūk, attributed to Ḡazālī, statements ascribed to Aristotle on the virtues of noble stocks are cited (pp. 127, 231) and it is stated that “five features in man are derived from inheritance: a beautiful face, good character traits, high aspirations, vanity, and baseness” (p. 225). Neẓām-al-Molk (d. 485/1092; pp. 143-44) advised kings to provide allotments for the noble and learned men and warned them of the vices of revolution, because “men of noble birth will be crushed … the least of men will be an amir, the basest of persons will become a governor.” The Ziyarid prince Kay Kāvūs b. Eskandar (d. 462/1069), in Qābūsnāma (pp. 4-5), advised his son to value his distinctive lineage. Anīs al-nās, written by a certain Šojāʿ in 830/1426 (pp. 21-25, 115-16, 230-31), closely followed Qābūs-nāma but further advocated the idea of maintaining the boundaries of hierarchical order (honor and nobility) by forbidding the children of tradesmen (bāzārīs) to be educated and to learn the skills of the nobility. Ẓahīrī Samarqandī (p. 169) mentioned the Aristotelian idea, which had been attributed to a Sasanian king, that “the degrading of 1,000 men of noble birth is preferred to the elevation of one man of mean origins to higher ranks which would lead toward chaos and disaster.” ʿAwfī (d. 630/1232), in a chapter “On different natural characters of men” (pp. 22-29), presented anecdotes to illustrate how inheritance shapes human character traits.

Functional theories. Functional perspectives in the medieval period originated in Sasanian theory and practice of social stratification, as well as in Plato’s political philosophy. Plato’s ideal state (pp. 111-38) is an organic entity, a rigid aristocracy of power, intellect, and breeding, derived from his conception of the soul and of the whole universe. Thus justice, that is, harmony and coordination of different functions or the maintenance of each class in its proper place, is necessary for the well-being and survival of society. Plato’s functional theory is blended with meritocratic ideas of hierarchy; for him the unity of society and enforcement of social justice must be maintained by “preserving the principle of promotion by merit; there must be no purely hereditary governing class” (p. 111). This theory was introduced into Islamic social thought mainly by Fārābī (d. 339/950; see also Dāvarī, pp. 46, 120-21, 174-76; ʿĀmerī, 1336 Š./1957, p. 209; and Avicenna, II, p. 447). Naṣīr-al-Dīn Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274), in his influential book of ethics and practical philosophy Aḵlāq-e nāṣerī (p. 305), mentioned the functional theory of stratification. For Ṭūsī, society was divided into four classes that should be maintained in their proper place by the ruler: men of the pen, including scholars, jurisprudents (foqahāʾ), religious judges (qożāt), scribes (kottāb), mathematicians, geometricians, astronomers, physicians, and poets; men of the sword; men of affairs, like merchants, craftsmen, artisans, and tax collectors; and farmers. Jalāl-al-Dīn Davānī (d. 908/1502), in Aḵlāq-e jalālī (pp. 138-39; tr. pp. 388-90), followed Ṭūsī closely in dividing society into four functional strata and, like him, emphasized that “in order to preserve this political equipoise, there is a correspondence to be maintained between the various classes.” Wāʿeẓ-e Kāšefī (d. 910/1504), a popular preacher and author, in his Aḵlāq-e moḥsenī (p. 48), also divided people into four classes and advised the ruler to keep them in their proper places.

The Sasanian quadripartite theory of social stratification was introduced into the Islamic world by historians and authors of mirrors for princes and books of ethics. Ebn Moqaffaʿ (in his introduction to Nāma-ye Tansar, pp. 45-49; tr. pp. 26-30) and Jāḥeẓ (1332/1914, pp. 23-26; tr. pp. 32-33) were among the first medieval authors to mention the Sasanian model of stratification. According to Ṭabarī (d. 310/923; I, pp. 179-80), the mythical king Jamšīd established the classes of warriors, men of religious learning, men of the pen, and husbandmen and craftsmen. Following Ṭabarī, Ṯaʿālebī (Ḡorar, pp. 11-12), Ferdowsī (d. 416/1025; Šāh-nāma, ed. Ḵāleqī, I, pp. 42-43), Ebn Balḵī (pp. 30-31), Gardīzī ( ed. Ḥabībī, p. 2), and Ebn al-Aṯīr (I, p. 46), among others, referred to the Sasanian quadripartite strata. The influence of both Islamic egalitarian ideas and Plato’s meritocratic functional theory modified the functionalism that emerged in Islamic culture, so that it was only a faint image of the original, pre-Islamic model (for a study of functionalism in Persia, see Marlow, pp. 10-68, 173-232; Mojtabāʾī, passim).

Wealth as a vehicle of social mobility With the growth of commerce and the rise of a merchant class in the 3rd/9th century (Rodinson, pp. 12-117), wealth emerged as an important criterion of social status and upward mobility, in competition with both noble birth and knowledge. Although the acceptance of Islam resulted in alteration in the contemptuous Zoroastrian attitude toward trade (Nāma-ye Tansar, pp. 64-65, tr. pp. 38-39); the Islamic attitude toward accumulation of wealth was ambivalent, leading to the emergence of two different attitudes in the medieval period. In one view, more consistent with the Islamic tradition, trade was a worldly, transient means of living (maʿāš), and the accumulation of wealth for its own sake was thus condemned (Ḡazālī, 1387/1967, I, p. 23; III, pp. 250-66, 287-302; idem, 1319 Š./1940, pp. 255-88; see also Rāzī, pp. 286-302; Ṭūsī, 1339 Š./1960, pp. 176-87). Advocates of another view, which was influenced by Greek ideas, “praised wealth for its own sake” (Ritter, pp. 3-4). Thus, in the course of the development of a merchant class in the medieval period, a number of traditions were presented in support of accumulation of wealth. In a handbook of commerce prepared by a merchant, Abu’l-Fażl Demašqī (pp. 26-27, 100), making money was treated as a noble calling. Jāḥeẓ (1389/1969, pp. 53-54) compared the independence and security of the merchant to the precarious life of a courtier. A number of traditions in praise of wealth indicating that wealth was an inherited merit were ascribed to the Prophet (Ebn Ḥanbal, V, p. 10). An ambivalent attitude toward the accumulation of wealth led some compilers of anthologies of verses and traditions to devote one section to the praise of wealth and another to its condemnation (see, e.g., Ebn Qotayba, , pp. 239-45 and 246-49; for references to a variety of views on wealth, see Wensinck, pp. 249-50).

Although it also led to inequality, the recognition of wealth as a factor in social status undermined the biohereditary system and opened the gates of upward mobility to newcomers from below.

The theodicies of inequality Conceptions of equality and inequality are based ultimately on ideas about the world as a whole. In pre-Islamic Persia the dualistic conception of the world along with the idea of the tripartite functional hierarchy of the universe influenced the establishment of distinct fire temples and angels for three social classes, each of which was assigned a specific function to perform (see, e.g., Kār-nāma-ye Ardašīr-e Bābakān, pp. 7-9; Moʿīn, pp. 308-48; see also i, ii, iii, above). The pre-Islamic Arab bedouins’ polytheism, based on a pantheon of tribal idols, shaped their ideas of tribal and clan hierarchy and of tribal aristocracy (Goldziher, I, pp. 11-97). In contrast, the notion of a single almighty God in Islam was conducive to the idea that all men were equally His creatures but also evoked the question how such a God could have created an imperfect world of hierarchy and inequality. Thus Islamic teachers in the medieval period and after had to work out theodicies, ways of vindicating God’s justice in spite of the evils of inequality and suffering in this world. A solution that particularly appealed to Persians was provided by the promises of justice and equality in messianic eschatologies—a future revolution of the Mahdī and the redemption of the masses in this world (see, e.g., Madelung, 1985, pp. 1230-38). This mode of theodicy expressed both the material and nonmaterial interests of the masses and became the driving force in radical (ḡolāt) Shiʿite groups in numerous rebellions during the medieval period. In contrast, the Sunni and conservative Shiʿite establishments usually attempted to rationalize inequality. One way was to justify inequality in accordance with the original Islamic monotheism, that is, in terms of God’s will and the predestination of man. For example, Wāʿeẓ-e Kāšefī in his interpretation of the Koranic verse 75:4, said “We are capable of creating all fingertips equal, but We do not; We create one fingertip long, another medium-sized, another short, one small, another strong, and still another weak.” For Wāʿeẓ-e Kāšefī, in this verse God is pointing to “the unequal creation of social classes; one is created to be king, the other to be marshal, one affluent, the other poor” (1344 Š./1965, p. 343). Ḡazālī believed that God wills poverty, misery, and suffering for some people, just as He wills wealth, happiness, and prosperity for others. God relegates a person to a base occupation such as tanning because of its utility for the relative perfection of the world. Thus people should have “gratitude toward God” for creating social differentiation and inequality. They should respect the dignity conferred upon each rank by God (ḥormat-e daraja; 1387/1967, I, p. 76; II, pp. 77-82, 107-8; IV, p. 111; 1319 Š./1340, p. 328). Another way of justifying inequality was to put forth the idea that equality can exist only in the next world or that it existed only in the remote golden age of Islam under the Prophet and ʿAlī. Wāʿeẓ-e Kāšefī, for example, declared that “the grave is a bizarre abode in which pauper and king, general and captive look alike” (1344 Š./1965, p. 343). “Once the trumpet (of resurrection) is blown, no ties of genealogy (ansāb) will exist between them (the noble and the base) on that day, nor may they question one another (about their ranks and status)” (Koran 23:101, 23:103). Still another mode of theodicy was to condemn both rank and wealth (jāh wa māl), holding instead that this world is merely a means to an other-worldly end, donyā mazraʿa-ye āḵerat ast (Ḡazālī, 1387/1967, I, p. 23). Thus poverty is superior to wealth in this world; the poor and the weak will be redeemed and the prosperous and powerful damned in the next world (Ḡazālī, 1387/1967, I, p. 81; III, pp. 250-66, 287-302; idem, 1319 Š./1940, pp. 255-58, 539-66; Ṭūsī, 1339 Š./1960, pp. 143-75, 176-87, 200-10; Rāzī, pp. 286-302; Wāʿeẓ-e Kāšefī, 1344 Š./1965, p. 344).

A mixed image of hierarchy As in other civilizations, equality in Islam very seldom meant treating everyone alike. An order of inequality based on birth was replaced or blended with another based on capacity. Thus there emerged in medieval Islam hierarchical theories of man and society in which the remnants of pre-Islamic conceptions of cosmic hierarchy and social inequality were blended with Plato’s conception of the functional hierarchy of the universe and Aristotle’s conception of a qualitatively differentiated universe of earth and heavens. The result was a mixed emphasis on honor, capacity, and function, along with generally ambivalent attitudes toward social hierarchy. Fażl Barmakī set the following criteria for promotion to high positions: merit (esteḥqāq) for rulers, wisdom and astuteness for viziers, riches for wealthy merchants, and education for the people of middle status (Ebn Faqīh, V, p. 1). Abū Jaʿfar Moḥammad Ṭūsī (d. 459/1067), in his interpretation of Koran 49:13, “the best of you in the sight of God is the most pious,” quoted with approval a scholar who had said: “[I]f two men should be equal in religiosity and one of them has ties of kinship with the Messenger of God … it would be necessary to give precedence to the one related to the Messenger of God … . Similarly, if one of two people has ancestors known for virtue, good character, noble deeds, dignity, bravery, cultivation (adab), and learning (ʿelm), it would be according to man’s nature to give him precedence over the other. If it is said: It is according to human nature to give precedence to men of wealth, in which case wealth and riches would have to be considered nobility (šaraf), we would answer: Just so; we do not deny or reject this … though the poorer man who spends his money appropriately is better than the man who does not spend his money … . Similarly, a pious man in whom those characteristics [of piety] are evident, would be better than a man who has ḥasab and nobility through his ancestors, yet is himself immoral, foolish, and vulgar” (cited in Mottahedeh, 1980, pp. 155-56).

Social stratification in medieval Persia Social historians have portrayed the medieval Persian social order in different ways. For some observers it consisted, like the Sasanian quadripartite order, of men of the sword, pen, religion, and affairs (Lambton, 1980, chap. VII; idem, 1988, pp. 221-346; Marlow, pp. 10-68, 195-232). Others have seen a binary division between “feudal lords,” including tribal and local warriors, bureaucrats, and the religious caste, on one hand and those they exploited, the masses of peasants, herdsmen, and urban workers, on the other (Petrushevski, 1968, p. 514). Another approach (Mottahedeh, 1980, pp. 154-55) is focused on “fine divisions” within the fabric of medieval Persian society, which was conceived in terms of multifarious human relations within numerous groups: the primordial family and racial groups, urban neighborhoods, rural and tribal communities, fraternal associations (e.g., Sufi brotherhoods, chivalric youth groups, and gangs of bandits), bāzār guilds, and religious and sectarian groups (Lapidus, pp. 49-60). Both approaches can contribute to understanding the modes of distribution of resources within the social hierarchy as a whole.

Social divisions following the Arab conquest In the early period of Arab domination, Persian society was arranged along four lines of division: Arab and Persian (ʿajam), Muslim and non-Muslim, emerging nobility and commoners, and free men and slaves. The new aristocracy consisted of the descendants of the Prophet (ašrāf ), of his fellow emigrants (mohājerūn) from Mecca, and of his helpers (anṣār) in Medina, as well as of other governing notables (Balāḏorī, Ansāb, passim; van Arendonk, pp. 324-29). The relations among these groups were regulated by a combination of religious ideas, ethnic and tribal ties, and legal status (Zaydan, pp. 28-56; Levy, pp. 53-90; Beg, p. 1098). Ironically, the caliph ʿOmar (13-23/634-44), a leading advocate of egalitarianism in Islam, endorsed these divisions by insisting that the caliph be selected from among the clan of Qorayš, by granting a greater share of the booty and stipends (ʿaṭāyā) to the new aristocracy according to their ranks, and by insisting on the distinction between Arab and ʿajam. ʿOmar’s idea of the new society was an Islamic state with a ruling class of Arab warriors and a subject population of native on Arabs and non-Muslims (on the hierarchical distribution of ʿaṭāyā, see, e.g., Abū Yūsof, p. 24; Ebn Ṭeqṭaqā, tr., pp.80-81; Naḵjavānī, 1344 Š./1965, p. 31; Zaydan, pp. 28-36; Modarressi Tabataba’i, pp. 122-36, 209-13). The new social boundaries and the destruction of the institutions of pre-Islamic Persia transformed the class structure of Persian society. Under these circumstances Persians of all ranks, even if they became Muslims, were reduced to second-class citizens. Members of the dominant classes became subservient to the conquerors and were subject to taxes, just as commoners were. Those who did not accept the new religion became subject to both land taxes and poll taxes (jezya). The Persian royal household and many of the old aristocratic families declined and lost most of their privileges in the new society. Men of religious teaming, who had served as ideological guardians of the class boundaries, were discredited and lost their status (Zarrinkub, Camb. Hist. Iran, pp. 29-33; idem, 1336 Š./1957, pp. 76-83, 89-90; Zaydan, pp. 161-63; Spuler, 1960, I, pp. 20-29; Levy, pp. 58-60; Moroney, pp. 300-305).

The lower nobility of dehqāns and dabīrs fared better because they and the Arab conquerors shared mutual interests: The Arabs needed their skills and knowledge while they needed the patronage of their Arab masters to retain their dominance in their local communities. To safeguard their social and economic positions, this portion of the Persian nobility converted to Islam, and its members placed themselves as clients (mawālī) under the patronage of either a group or a leading personage of the victorious Arab tribes (Jahšīārī, pp. 16-17; Ebn al-Aṯīr, IV, p. 116, Balāḏorī, Ansāb, IV B, pp. 11, 15-16, 21, 109, 123; Ebn Ṭeqṭaqā, tr., pp. 80-81; Goldziher, I, pp. 98-136; Cahen, 1975, pp. 305-28; Moroney, pp. 199-211). The dominant class in Persian society during the first two centuries of Islam thus consisted of the Arab nobility at the top and the Persian nobility just below, divided as if into two castes. It took more than two centuries for the Persian nobles to liberate themselves from the burden of second-class citizenship; a series of protest movements known as Šoʿūbīya eventually elevated them to a level equal to their Arab counterparts (Goldziher, I, pp. 137-98; Gibbs, pp. 62-73; Mottahedeh, 1976, pp. 161-82). As the Arab and Persian aristocracies gradually became one, a Persianized Islamic geographical notion emerged: The lands of Persia and Arabia were selected by God as the center of the seven regions (kešvars) of the earth and were inhabited by the noblest people. Thus genealogies of both Persian and Arab nobility were honored in the newly defined territory (Gardīzī, ed. Ḥabībī, p. 255; ʿĀmerī, 1387/1967, pp. 171-72; Nozhat al-qolūb, pp. 18-20).

Formation of the new social hierarchy The founding of the ʿAbbasid empire by an army from Khorasan under Abū Moslem in 132/750 eventually led to replacement of the old Arab clans with a new, mixed aristocracy of Persians and Arabs and also, in the latter half of the 2nd/8th and 3rd/9th centuries, to the mass conversion of the Persian gentry to Islam and its integration into the new society (Frye, 1947, p. 31; Bulliet, 1979, chap, 5). This process continued as Persian noblemen like the Barmakids reached high bureaucratic ranks, including the post of vizier. Eventually such local Persian dynasties such as the Taherids, Saffarids, and Samanids were founded, a sign of the revival of the power of the old Persian aristocracy in the 3rd/9th century. Furthermore, the formation of an Islamic empire with great economic resources led to the growth of trade and industry, the expansion of regional and international markets, and the flowering of urban centers (Spuler, 1960, I, pp. 50-55; Ashtor, pp. 71-114). These economic changes greatly influenced the fabric of society: “[t]he Arab warrior caste was deposed and replaced by a ruling class of landowners and bureaucrats, professional soldiers and literati, merchants and men of learning” (Lewis, 1960, I, pp. 19-20).

The new Islamic society in Persia was characterized by a binary division between the dominant classes (ḵāṣṣa, pl. ḵawāṣṣ) at the top and the masses of commoners (ʿāmma, pl. ʿawāmm) at the bottom of the social pyramid. There was also an intermediary class of notables (aʿyān) of local communities that served as a link between the two main classes. Ebn Ṭeqṭaqā (tr., p. 37) advised rulers to handle each class appropriately: “The upper classes are administered by nobility of character and gently guiding aright.*** The middle classes are administered by a combination of interest and fear, while the common people are administered by fear and by being constrained to the straight path and forced to the obviously right.” This distinction between upper and lower classes somewhat resembled the caste-like class structure of Sasanian Persia, where theorists sought “a visible and general distinction between men of noble birth and common people with regard to horses and clothes, houses and gardens, women and servants” (Nāma-ye Tansar, 1968, p. 44). Although in both instances the division was combined with a functional division of estates (warriors, priests, clerks, men of affairs), each with internal hierarchies, neither the binary division nor the quadripartite functional differentiation was reflected in Muslim law, whereas in pre-Islamic Persia they had rested on Mazdean law. Furthermore, acceptance of personal qualifications as criteria of notability in Islamic society expanded tire structure of opportunities for social mobility (see Ašraf, 1360 Š./1981, pp. 69-86; ʿĀmerī, 1387/1967, pp. 159-61, 165, 174-76; Bīrūnī, pp. 75-79). In the course of these transitions this “binary-functional” arrangement of society became more complex, owing to further differentiation between men of the sword and the rest of the population, Turk or Mongol and Tajik (Persian), nomadic tribes and the settled population, and free men and slaves.

The dominant strata The renewed dominance of the Persian aristocracy was brought to an end with the rise to power of the Turkic slave soldiers and, subsequently, the Turkmens and Mongols in the 4th-7th/10th-13th centuries. As a result, the military, administrative, and landowning classes of the previous period were gradually replaced by a new Turkic military aristocracy, with Persians serving as bureaucrats (viziers, dabīrs, and mostawfīs) and as the religious elite (ʿolamāʾ; for a description of various ranks and forms of address and titles of the dominant classes, see Naḵjavānī, 1964-76, passim; Qalqašandī, V-VI, passim; Taḏkerat al-molūk, pp. 1-84; see also ALQĀB WA ʿANĀWĪN).

The warrior class. The military aristocracy that replaced the Arab soldiers consisted mainly of Turkish slaves and later of Turkman and Mongol tribal soldiers. The latter groups (omarāʾ, sg. amīr) constituted the military and power base of all Persian dynasties in the post-Saljuq period. Their style of life and behavior showed distinctly nomadic features: horse riding, hunting, fighting, and favoring life in the tribal camps (for an account on the norms of conduct of men of the sword, see Faḵr-e Modabber, passim; Kay Kāvūs, pp. 223-26). The political authority of the Turkish military aristocracy was also based on the legitimation they received first from Sunni theologians and later from the Sufi shaikhs and ašrāf (see below).

The bureaucrats. The bureaucrats (dabīrān) consisted of viziers at the top of the pyramid, accountants of revenues and expenditures (mostawfīān), secretaries, record keepers, and scribes (monšīān). They maintained continuity in bureaucratic techniques (e.g., styles of handwriting and composition and knowledge of social ranks and protocol), life style (e.g., manners, appearance, clothing), personnel, and the institution of the wezārat (Mottahedeh, 1981, pp. 25-36; Klausner, pp. 37-81; see also works on letter writing, tarassol, and collections of letters, monšaʾāt; Neẓāmī ʿArūżī, pp. 19-48; see DĪVĀN, DABĪR). Well-known Persian families of viziers in the medieval period included the Barmakids during the early ʿAbbasid caliphate, the Jayhānīs under the Samanids, the ʿAmīdīs under the Buyids, the Neẓāmīs is under the Saljuqs, and the Jovaynīs and Rašīdīs under the Il-Khanids (see, e.g., Jahšīārī, pp. 89-95, 177-261; Naḵjavānī, 1344 Š./1965, p. 13; Klausner, pp. 105-10).

The religious hierarchy. The ʿolamāʾ emerged as the religious elite in the 3rd/9th century and rose to prominence as members of the social and political elites in the 5th/11th century. Leading ʿolamāʾ and ašrāf families belonged to the urban patriciates and maintained close ties with local landowners, merchants, and bureaucrats. They played a mediating role between the ḵāṣṣa and ʿāmma and a central role in the maintenance of social order and inequality. At the peak of the religious hierarchy were such prominent theologians and jurists as Abū Jaʿfar Moḥammad Ṭūsī (d. 459/1067), Emām-al-Ḥaramayn Jovaynī (d. 478/1085), Abū Ḥamed Ḡazālī (d. 505/1111), and Ebn Jawzī (d. 597/1200) in the medieval period and Nūr-al-Dīn ʿAlī b. ʿAbd-al-ʿAlī Karakī (d. 940/1534), Shaikh Bahāʾ-al-Dīn ʿĀmelī (d. 1030/1621), and Moḥammad-Bāqer Majlesī (d. 1110/1698) in the Safavid period. Such leading ʿolamāʾ families often maintained positions of prominence for many generations. Next came the influential judges (qāżīs), reciters of sermons during the Friday prayer (ḵaṭībs), scholars and teachers in seminaries (modarres), supervisors and censors of the morals and good conduct of the bāzārīs and urban inhabitants (moḥtasebs), popular preachers like Qotb-al-Dīn ʿAbbādī Marvazī (d. 547/1152) and Ḥosayn Wāʿeẓ-e Kāšefī, leaders of prayer in the mosques, and the religious functionaries of the villages, who often worked in the fields (see, e.g., Bulliet, 1972, pp. 20-27; Aubin, 323-32; Lambton, 1988, pp. 309-27; for the “job discription” of members of the religious hierarchy see, e.g., Rūzbehān Eṣfahānī, pp. 57-192).

The ašrāf (descendants of the Prophet) and mašāyeḵ (saints and leaders of Sufi orders) were two other constituents of the religious classes. The ašrāf constituted a corporate nobility and were headed by a naqīb al-ašrāf (later naqīb al-sādāt), who kept the genealogical records of the ašrāf and presided as judge over their special court. They were exempted from taxes and were entitled to a tithe of the net profits of members of the Shiʿite community. They were often among the powerful and wealthy landowners and notables of the cities (Rawżātī, I, pp. 30-65; Najm-al-Dīn al-ʿOmrā, pp. 1-92; Qomī, pp. 191-239; Ḥosaynī Qomī, pp. 84-150). Medieval Persia also witnessed the rise of Sufi orders and their associated saints, whose teachings had an appeal for the Turkman and Mongol tribal aristocracy. By the Mongol period (7th-8th/13th-14th centuries) Sufism, characterized by organized brotherhoods (ṭarīqas), had become the popular religious expression of the urban and rural masses. Thus, for a large segment of the people, Sufi shaikhs replaced the ʿolamāʾ as interpreters of Islam, and the shrines of Sufi saints (qoṭbs) partially replaced mosques as centers of religious life (see, e.g., Schimmel, 1975; Zarrīnkūb,1970, pp.136-220).

The great merchants. The merchant class developed gradually during the 2nd/8th century, emerged as a recognized social stratum in the 3rd/9th century, and rose to prominence during the 4th/10th century (Spuler, 1970, pp. 11-20; Goitein, p. 218; Lambton, 1980, chap. XII; Rodinson, pp. 12-75). Further development of the merchant class and of trade and industry was, however, thwarted, first, by the rise of a new military aristocracy of slave soldiers in Islamic society and, later, by the process of tribalization in Persia (Ashraf, 1970, pp. 308-32; Issawi, 1970, pp. 245-66).

Relations among the components of the dominant class. The relative importance of the main component groups of the dominant class varied through time. After the consolidation of central authority and the demise of the Arab tribal military aristocracy in the mid-2nd/8th century the bureaucrats rose to prominence under the powerful institution of wezārat in the latter half of the 2nd/8th and 3rd/9th centuries (see, e.g., Mez, pp. 89-106; Lambton,1988, pp. 28-68). The same period also saw the rise of a merchant class. In the 3rd/9th century the religious class (ʿolamāʾ ) emerged, achieving prominence by the 5th/11th century; its members were later joined by a group of powerful Sufi shaikhs and the prominent ašrāf. The military stratum lost its supremacy in the 2nd/8th century but regained it in the 4th/10th century through the rise of Turkish slave soldiers and Daylamites. The military retained this supremacy through the ascendancy of the tribal aristocracy of Turkish, Mongol, and Turkman chieftains in the 5th-7th/11th-13 centuries and until the 13th/19th century (see, e.g., Ashtor, pp. 168-248). The dominant classes were not homogeneous, nor did they always cooperate. Soldiers and bureaucrats—“men of the sword” and “men of the pen”—struggled for both resources and relative status. Thus writers, who came mainly from the ranks of the men of the pen, often placed the sword below the pen or considered the two to have equal significance in the state (for arguments favoring one or the other group, see, e.g., Abū Sāʿed Yaʿqūbī, pp. 27-54; see also Māwardī, p. 10, who believed in the superiority of the pen over the sword).

The dominant class controlled the agricultural land on behalf of the state through assignments of land (eqṭāʿ, toyūl) that resembled the medieval European institution of benefice. Both eqṭāʿ in the medieval era and toyūl in the later period were nonhereditary remuneration for military, administrative, and religious services and were basically assignments of the right to extract taxes from an area (Lambton, 1980, chap. X; Fragner, pp. 499-524; Cahen, 1971, pp. 1088-91). The similar institution of soyūrḡāl, granted to the great Mongol and Turkman warriors, more closely resembled the European fief, in that it was hereditary and accompanied by judicial, administrative, and fiscal immunity. In the Safavid era the institution of eqṭāʿ, or toyūl, once again became an important way of remunerating viziers, bureaucrats, and warriors. It may have represented an attempt by the Safavids to integrate the Turkic warriors into the bureaucratic network of the state, which was predominantly Persian (Fragner, p. 514).

After the Saljuq conquest there was a tendency for men of the sword, the landowning classes, and the custodians of awqāf lands to move from their estates to the major cities, in order to retain their connections with the state functionaries and maintain their privileges. One result was that the dominant classes became exposed to the commercial life of the cities and invested a part of their capital in mercantile enterprises (Bertel’s, pp. 48-49; Petrushevski, 1968, pp. 509-12).

Local histories show how families of the military aristocracy, landowners, bureaucrats, ʿolamāʾ, and great merchants dominated the everyday life of local communities for many generations, how they managed to survive waves of tribal invasion, how they rose to prominence and perished, and how they became interrelated through common interests, joint ventures, and marriage. The local notables of Qazvīn, as presented by Mostawfī (d. 750/1349) in Tārīḵ-e Gozīda (pp. 798-814), provide a typical example. Thirty of thirty-three families on this roster had established themselves in Qazvīn before the Mongol invasion,(though eighteen of them perished after a few generations), and three families came to the town under the Il-khanids. Twenty-one families were of Arab origin, ten Persian, and two Mongol. These families were among the prominent ʿolamāʾ and judges (fifteen families); governors, city officials, tax collectors, and bureaucrats (sixteen families); and large landowners (two families). Many members of these families were men of great wealth and landed property. In Sabzavār, twenty-four of forty ruling families were of Arab origin, and sixteen were of Persian stock; three families had been pre-Islamic dehqāns, nine had been Samanid administrators, and one was a merchant family (Bertel’s, p. 48; for other examples, see Bulliet, 1972, pp. 20-27, 61-75; Mottahedeh, 1973, pp. 33-45; Mofīd, passim).

The middle strata. The middle classes comprised a variety of people who enjoyed wealth, esteem, and power as local notables in their own communities. However, they were often looked down upon as prosperous commoners by the upper elements of the ḵāṣṣa. Moḥammad Mofīd (p. 471) locates the ṭabaqa-ye awsāṭ below the higher classes of amirs, viziers, and mostawfīs and the second class of men of religion. They included middle landowners, merchants, and skilled men of arts and crafts (mohandesān-e honarvar). They also included the local headmen (kadḵodās, roʾasāʾ; kalāntars) and the lower notables who supervised one or more groups of the primary social units (tribal groups, villages, bāzār craft guilds, and city wards). Together they constituted the local aʿyān and played the dual role of trustees of the communities and representatives of the governing class. In this capacity they served as the link between the central authority and the local groups, thus playing a significant part in societal integration and maintenance of social order.

The commoners (ʿāmma) The people who were referred to by such words as “commoners” (ʿāmma, ʿawāmm al-nās) and “subjects” (raʿāyā) included peasants, herdsmen, and bāzārīs (craftsmen, shopkeepers, and their apprentices). Raʿāyā, a term that originally referred to those who “tended livestock,” was used to describe the subjects of the ruler (often nonmilitary and/or nongovernmental subjects); although it could include wealthy people as well, it generally denoted the masses of the people, especially the peasants vis-až-vis landowners (arbāb). The term ʿāmma was often used pejoratively, and ʿawāmm al-nās were characterized by such terms as sefla “rabble,” awbāš “ruffians,” and ḡawḡā “the mob” in the literature of the dominant classes. Fażl Barmakī described the commoner as “filthy rubbish, a torrent of scum, mean, contemptible, and doomed to nothing but his food and sleep” (Ebn Faqīh, V, p. 1). Masʿūdī (d. 346/957; III, pp. 43-45) portrayed the ʿāmma with many vile traits and attributed to Moḥammad and the ʿAlī sayings to the effect that the ʿāmma are the corrupt about whom even God does not care. According to Masʿūdī, there was a consensus that the ʿāmma were the source of chaos (ḡawḡā). The author of Tārīḵ-e Sīstān (pp. 161, 179, 182) also characterized the ʿāmma as ḡawḡā. Abū Bakr Qūnavī (d. 690/1291) went even farther and characterized the illiterate ʿāmma as the “satan of mankind” (p. 134). Ḡazālī placed the ʿawāmm al-nās of Turks, Kurds, and Arabs, ajlāf-e ḵalq, in the lowest rank, close to the animals (1387/1967, I, pp. 23, 115).

The main subgroups of ʿawāmm al-nās were rural, tribal, and urban people, who lived and worked in four primary communities: tribal camps, villages, vaulted bāzārs, and urban wards, each under a headman. These groups were the basic units for the extraction of rents, taxes, and forced labor. They were treated as collective units by the rulers, governors, tribal leaders, and landlords. Social relations within these groups were based on intimate personal ties. Physical proximity, mutual interest, and collective dealings with the governing notables shaped their identity and loyalty to the group, but there was no similar loyalty to other craftsmen or to peasantry or tribal communities in other locations or at the national level. Peasants were divided into a number of strata, including petty landowners who also worked in the fields, peasant proprietors, sharecroppers, laborers, and slave workers. Peasants were primarily free men-Islamic law never included the social category of serfs-but they were subject to the excesses of tax collectors and possessors of eqṭāʿ (Neẓām-al-Molk, pp. 33, 132). Later, however, the decline of rural areas and the exodus of peasants from the land as a result of the excesses of the Mongol tribal leaders led the state to impose certain constraints upon the movement of peasants (for an account of serfdom in the Mongol era, see Petrushevski, 1345 Š./1966, II, pp. 154-90, and, for numerous obligations of peasants, pp. 245-305; idem, 1968, pp. 522-29; Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, pp. 10-128).

The bāzār was led by the large merchants (tojjār) and the headmen (kadḵodās), who were often elderly leaders (rīš-safīds) of the more than 100 categories of crafts and trades. Master artisans, skilled craftsmen, and shopkeepers occupied the middle level, and the masses of apprentices and servants were at the bottom, along with some marginal elements like poor peddlers, dervishes, and beggars (see BĀZĀR, iii. POLITICAL ROLE OF THE BĀZĀR). Craftsmen and shopkeepers were divided into numerous trades, which were arranged hierarchically, each with a specific place in the order of occupational prestige (see, e.g., Ḡazālī, 1387/1967, II, pp. 106-8). The bāzārī craftsmen and shopkeepers formed a network of face-to-face relations that could be exploited by external forces, for example, by secret religious societies (see, e.g., Massignon, 1934, pp. 436-37; idem, 1968, pp. 214-16; Lewis, 1937, pp. 20-37). The ʿāmma in urban centers were also organized in a number of other groups, like ʿayyārān, aḥdāṯ, and fotowwa groups, primarily associations of athletic youths with chivalric ideals, and the later ḥaydarī and neʿmatī factions (see, e.g., Tārīḵ-e Sīstān, pp. 192-99, 301-11, 349-51, 362-64; Wāʿeẓ-e Kāšefī, 1350 Š./1971, passim; Mirjafari and Perry, pp. 135-62). The masses of ʿāmma also included the so-called “déclassé people,” consisting of poor dervishes, beggars, and gangs of bandits (see, e.g., ʿAwfī, pp. 102-60; Ṣafī, pp. 359-80). Another important category of ʿāmma in medieval Persia was slaves, used in agricultural fields, domestic services, and at times manufacturing (see BARDA).

The commoners and rebellious movements. While the Persian nobility of the early Islamic era expressed its yearning for equality with its Arab counterpart in the Šoʿūbīya movements, the ʿāmma of peasants and urban poor often supported democratic Kharijite, radical Shiʿite, and neo-Mazdkite movements (see, e.g., Sadighi, 1938, passim; Yarshater, pp. 1001-24; Tārīḵ-e Sīstān, pp. 27, 110-12, 118, 156-203, 212; Neẓām-al-Molk, pp. 193-245). Rebellious movements among the masses gathered momentum once again in the 7th/13th century, culminating in the Sarbedārān revolts of the 8th/14th century (Petrushevski, 1345 Š./1966, II, pp. 306-431).

The continuation of the medieval synthesis The new conception of man’s worth and status (qadr wa qīmat) in medieval Persian society involved a combination of honor (ḥasab wa nasab), capacity (merit, piety, knowledge, wealth, office, etc.), and social function in the larger context of a loose binary division between base and noble (ważīʿ and šarīf), commoner and elite (ʿāmma and ḵāṣṣa), powerless and mighty (ża ʿīf and qawī), poor and affluent (faqīr and ḡanī). These images are indicative of a new eclectic notion that signifies an important change in class arrangements in medieval Persian society, compared to both the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods, and a widening of the paths of upward mobility. By the 4th/10th century personal merit and achievement in terms of wealth, political office, and knowledge had been added to hereditary privilege as possible bases for joining the ranks of the aristocracy. In the aftermath of the Saljuq conquest hereditary distinctions once again became predominant. Yet the lack of a coherent conception of the social hierarchy led to the blurring of the functions of the various strata within the dominant class as, for example, in the frequent engagement of military aristocrats, landlords, bureaucrats, and ʿolamāʾ in mercantile activities and tax farming or the involvement of large merchants in landownership, tax farming, and the bureaucracy. Ann Lambton, for example, has noted that “Under the later Saljuqs there are cases of men from outside the bureaucracy rising to the office of vizier,” and that “there was a good deal of social mobility between men of affairs and men of the pen” (1988, pp. 47, 328-46). Horizontal mobility, that is, movement across the different strata of the dominant class was relatively limited. For example, although leading members of the ʿolamāʾ came from the families of local notables, entry into higher echelons of the ʿolamāʾ from the upper ranks of the army or the central bureaucracy was relatively rare. Nor was it common for men of the pen and the ʿolamāʾ to move into the ranks of the military aristocracy. However, a limited degree of upward mobility from the lower classes to the lower ranks of the military was fairly frequent (Lambton, 1988, pp. 223-24, 328-29; Mottahedeh, 1980, pp. 125-37). Both the mixed conception of man’s worth in society and the actual arrangements of social classes and status groups that developed in medieval Persia continued, with some modifications, through the Safavid and Qajar periods (see v, below).

CLASS SYSTEM v. Classes in the Qajar Period

In Persia under the Qajars (1210-1344/1796-1925) there continued to be a fundamental division between a narrow stratum of courtiers, state officials, tribal leaders, religious notables, landlords and great merchants at the top and the vast majority of peasants, tribespeople, and laborers in agriculture, traditional industries, and services at the bottom. In Qajar sources the distinction is often made between the nobles and notables (aʿyān wa ašrāf), on the one hand, and the commoners or the masses (ʿawāmm al-nās or ʿāmma-ye raʿīyat), on the other. Paired terms like ḵawāṣṣ and ʿawāmm (the elite and the commoners), aḡnīāʾ and foqarāʾ (the rich and the poor), and aqwīāʾ and żoʾafāʾ (the powerful and the weak) show an implicit awareness of the three dimensions of inequality: social status, material resources, and power. Between those with privilege and power at the top and the masses there were several ”middling strata” (awsāṭ al-nās), including local notables, headmen of urban neighborhoods and villages, local men of religion, small landowners and merchants, master artisans and shopkeepers, and the like (see, e.g., Ašraf, 1360 Š./1981, pp. 71-98; Lambton, 1987, pp. 87-107; Šamīm, pp. 285-97). Despite these class distinctions, the everyday life of the people in Qajar Persia involved a variety of face-to-face relations within the relatively small, self-contained, and close-knit rural and tribal communities and urban neighborhoods, which tended to reduce the gap—at least at the subjective level—between the privileged and the deprived social strata.

Although no reliable population statistics are available for the Qajar period, it is estimated that of the country’s total population of 5-6 million at the beginning of the 13th/19th century nomadic tribes constituted as much as two-fifths, villagers another two-fifths, and city dwellers the remaining one-fifth. By the mid-1300s Š./1920s, of a population of approximately 12 million, the relative proportion of the tribes had declined to about one-quarter, that of the urban sector remained unchanged at about one-fifth, and the proportion of the villages had increased to well over one-half the total (Issawi, p. 20; Bharier, 1968, p. 275; Gilbar, 1976, pp. 125-56). The long-standing trichotomy of tribal-rural-urban, therefore, continued as a predominant structural characteristic of Persian society under the Qajars, with significant differences among the three segments of the population in the nature of their economic activities, sociopolitical organization, class relations, life-style, and cultural orientations.

The dominant strata The privileged strata in Qajar Persia included princes and tribal chieftains, governors and military commanders, upper-level bureaucrats, and the ʿolamāʾ. These groups were often interrelated through common interests, joint ventures, and marriage (Fasāʾī, II, pp. 35-39, 43-44, 59, 73-79). They were also divided into rival groups and political factions within their local communities (Abrahamian, 1982, pp. 26-36). Not surprisingly, the internal conflicts among urban notables often involved the middle strata and commoners as well (Waqāyeʿ-e ettefāqīya, pp. 28-30, 156-61, 466-67, 523-32, 608-68).

Members of the privileged strata paid no taxes and were often granted benefices (toyūls), salaries, pensions, and subsidies. By the early 14th/late 19th century such payments were a major component of state expenditures. Of the total government budget of 39.6 million qerāns in 1306/1888-89, for example, 26.8 percent was allotted to pensions and subsidies for the shah’s court and harem, princes, Qajar tribes, and nobles; 45.7 percent to the armed forces; and 27.5 percent to salaries (7.3 percent) and pensions (20.2 percent) of officials and the ʿolamāʾ (Curzon, Persian Question II, pp. 482-83). Budgets for other years show that the pensions of the ʿolamāʾ and sādāt (descendants of the Prophet) accounted for about 6percent of the total annual expenditure (see, e.g., U.K., Parliament, Accounts and Papers, 1867-68, 19, pp. 255-58).

Prominent Qajar princes and powerful tribal chiefs formed the backbone of the governing and military elite and often ranked among the country’s largest landowners. With them should be included the new professional military commanders and bureaucrats.

The Qajar princes. The thousands of Qajar princes descended from the 700 surviving children and grandchildren of Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah (1212-50/1797-1834; ʿAżodal-Dawla, pp. 167-68, 301-25; Hedāyat, 1363 Š./1984, pp. 53-56; Curzon, Persian Question I, pp. 410-11), of whom the most powerful were the twenty-six sons and twenty-two daughters of the crown prince, ʿAbbās Mīrzā (d. 1249/1833; ʿAżod-al-Dawla, p. 277) and their descendants. Following Safavid custom the suffix mīrzā was added to the first name of each Qajar prince, and prominent princes were addressed by the title nawwāb-e wālā.

The early Qajar rulers, following tribal customs, maintained a sharp distinction between the sword and the pen, prohibiting the “men of the sword” from using the pen and being reluctant to grant the “men of the pen” the privilege of governorship (ʿAżod-al-Dawla, pp. 5, 11). Fatḥ-ʿAlī Shah, for example, declined to appoint his son Kayūmarṯ Mīrzā Abu’l-Molūk to the governorship of Qom when he learned that the prince had acquired some bureaucratic skills, declaring that “"a prince who has learned how to prepare tax lists (fard-nevīsī) is no longer qualified to be a governor” (ʿAżod-al-Dawla, p. 115). The same monarch appointed his eight brothers and forty of his sons to governorships of provinces and districts (see Moʿtamad, p. 31). In the first forty years of Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah’s reign (1264-1313/1848-96), of the 325 governorships (wālīs and ḥākems), 182, usually in major provinces, were granted to Qajar princes and khans; the remaining 143 were granted to other tribal chieftains and ruling notables and were usually in less important areas (Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, 1307 Š./1889-90, pp. 29-36).

The status of a Qajar prince depended on the nature of his relationship to the shah, his father’s position, his mother’s family background, and his own achievements. These princes ranged from the most powerful, who ranked next to the shah himself, for example, Masʿūd Mīrzā Ẓellal-Solṭān, Moẓaffar-al-Dīn Mīrzā Walī-Ahd, and Kāmrān Mīrzā Nāyeb-al-Salṭana during the reign of Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah; to the prince-governors of provinces and districts; to the middle-rank princes who held no official position and lived off their more affluent relatives or acquaintances; to those who occupied humble jobs as clerks at the telegraph office, scribes, entertainers, and the like; to those who reaped no material benefits from their princely status and lived on the edge of poverty (Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, pp. 861, 1000; Mostawfī, I, p. 156). “I know of more than one [prince],” remarked a contemporary observer, “who begged a member of the mission to give them two or three sovereigns to relieve them from actual want” (Sheil, p. 115). Similar misfortunes could befall the princesses: “[T]hey have been forced by destitution to marry persons of very inferior condition; and one lady in particular had taken for her husband a man who had been a cobbler” (Sheil, pp. 115-16). It was in response to such precarious conditions that the Qajar princes made a collective attempt to establish a philanthropic association (anjoman-e ḵayrīya) to help needy members of their clan during the Constitutional Revolution (Ṣobḥ-e Ṣādeq, 1325/1907, 1/12, pp. 1-2, 1/15, pp. 1-4, 1/40, pp. 1-3).

Most prominent princes sided with the anti-constitutionalists during the Constitutional Revolution of 1323-29/1905-11. When they refused to elect their representatives to the Majles, as they were entitled to do under the new election law, Moẓaffar-al-Dīn Shah (1313-24/1896-1907) summoned them to the court instructed them to do so (Majles-e šūrā-ye mellī, pp. 7-8). Many privileged princes refused to join the political associations of other classes and formed their own anjoman (see, e.g., Ṣobḥ-e ṣādeq 1/50, 1325/1907, pp. 2-3). On the other side, many middle-ranking princes who were among the emerging intelligentsia participated in proconstitutionalist anjomans and actively supported the revolution (see, e.g., Ḥabl almatīn 2/39, 1326/1908, p. 1).

Tribal chiefs. In power and social prestige the chiefs of major tribes-the Afšār, Arab, Baḵtīārī, Baluch (q.v.), Kurd, Lor, Qarāgozlū, Qašqāʾī, and Turkman—were second only to prominent Qajar princes. They constituted Persia’s traditional military aristocracy. With the decline of the central power in the late- and post-Safavid era in the 12th/18th century, many tribal chiefs extended their domains to areas surrounding their traditional power bases and gradually increased their autonomy, especially those at the frontiers, who were assigned the task of protecting the borders. The Qajar shahs attempted to subordinate the tribal chiefs to their own appointed governors, but in the majority of cases this subordination was merely nominal. By paying tribute to officials or dignitaries under whose tutelage they had been placed as sepordas, the subordinate chieftains would continue to administer the affairs of their own tribes. Furthermore, the more powerful chiefs often served as district governors (ḥokkām-e walāyāt) and dominated major cities close to their tribal areas. The great khans of such powerful tribes as the Baḵtīārī and Qašqāʾī, the ilḵānīs and īlbegīs, who were hereditary leaders of their tribes, were nominally appointed to their positions by the shah and ruled their tribal areas. Another strategy for controlling tribal leaders was to foster intra- and intertribal hostility and conflict, “making tribal feuds an instrument of state policy” (Lambton, 1987, p. 96; idem, 1977, pp. 108-29; see also AŠĀYER; Beck, pp. 41-128; Garthwaite, pp. 62-144; Mostawfī, I, pp. 437-39; Oberling, pp. 21-147; Wezārat-e dāḵela, pp. 12-27; Ẓell-al-Solṭān, II, pp. 575-80, 602-3, 614-15, 656-59, 679-80). Most tribal chiefs either remained indifferent to or opposed the Constitutional Revolution during its first phase (1323-26/1905-8). In the second phase (1327-29/1909-11), some tribal leaders, most notably the Baḵtīārī khans, joined the constitutionalists in their struggle against Moḥammad ʿAlī Shah (1324-27/1907-9) and rose to prominence in national politics (Beck, pp. 104-28; Garthwaite, pp. 112-38).

Military commanders. At the beginning of the Qajar era, there was little or no distinction between the tribal chiefs and military commanders. The traditional military forces of the Qajars consisted of a loose amalgam of large bands of irregular cavalry led primarily by tribal chiefs, irregular provincial cavalry and infantry mainly of the musket-bearing volunteer militia (čerīks), and a small standing army. The semiregular army of musket-bearing soldiers, which had been founded by ʿAbbās Mīrzā with European officers in the 1230s/1820s (Donbolī, pp. 131-37), was expanded further by Mīrzā Taqī Khan Amīr(-e) Kabīr in the mid 13th/19th century, with the establishment of rural levies based on a quota system (bonīča) in each village, tribe, and district (see Qāʾemmaqāmī, 1346 Š./1967, pp. 64-92; Mostawfī, I, pp. 69-70; Curzon, Persian Question I, pp. 576-612). By the end of the century these forces, consisting of more than a hundred small semiregular regiments, formed the bulk of the defensive power of the central government (Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, 1307/1889-90, pp. 6-26; Herbert to Nicolson, FO 881/5281, 11 August 1886, pp. 1-10). The establishment of the Cossack brigade under the direction of Russian officers in 1297/1879 gave the country its first modern standing armed force of significance (Kazemzadeh, 1956, pp. 351-63; Curzon, Persian Question I, p. 571; Kosogovskii, p. 31-32).

With the gradual extension of state authority and military power into the provinces during the 13th/19th century, the urban bureaucratic and military elites gained political and economic privileges at the expense of the tribal leaders. A significant factor in changing this balance of power was the newly formed infantry divisions under the authority of the central government; they were equipped with muskets, which were cheaper and easier to use than horses (Christensen, p. 10; Inalcik, pp. 195-217). It was not until the first decade of Pahlavi rule, in the 1300s Š./1920s, however, that the regular army was able effectively to supplant the tribally based military aristocracy and cavalry (see vi, below).

The upper bureaucratic strata. The administration of the Qajar state was viewed as an extension of the shah’s household, leading to the designation of the bureaucratic strata, including the military (neẓāmī) and administrative (qalamī) branches, as ṭabaqa-ye nowkar (the shah’s servants; Mostawfī, I, p. 124). The core of the state bureaucracy comprised the mostawfīs (accountants) and monšīs (clerks), both with traditional education, and simple scribes (moḥarrers); they functioned under viziers (ministers) in the capital and provincial towns. Following the practice of the Safavids, the Qajars established the offices of mostawfī al-mamālek (minister of finance) and, later, ṣadr-e aʿẓam (grand vizier). The Qajar bureaucracy was gradually expanded in the later 13th/19th century. Thus, at the end of the Qajar period, the key bureaucratic positions were those of the prime minister; four major ministers of finance, the interior, foreign affairs, and war, other, less important cabinet ministers; provincial governors, wozarā-ye eyālāt (provincial ministers), heads of bureaus in the court and the ministries; and bāšīān (heads) of the royal boyūtāt (Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, 1307 Š./1889-90, pp. 16-29; Moṣaddeq, pp. 27-51; Mostawfī, I, pp. 380-420; see also ADMINISTRATION vi. THE SAFAVID, ZAND, AND QAJAR PERIODS). There was a strong tendency for the offices of the mostawfīs, who formed a powerful interest group, especially in the last decades of Qajar rule, to be passed down from father to son (see, e.g., Durand, p. 18). The mostawfīs were recruited for the most part from the Arāk region (the districts of Āštīān, Farāhān, and Garakān) and Māzandarān province (the districts of Nūr and ʿAlīābād). Some mostawfī families achieved even greater prominence in the upper ranks of the bureaucracy by marrying into similarly privileged families. A good example is a clan that had originated in the Tafreš-Farāhān region and included such prominent officeholders as Mostawfī-al-Mamālek, Qawām-al-Dawla, and Mīrzā Hedāyat-Allāh Wazīr-e Daftar (Mostawfī, I, pp. 150-51). The descendants of Mostawfī-al-Mamālek occupied the office of minister of finance for three generations, and the last two (Mīrzā Yūsof Khan and Mīrzā Ḥasan Khan) served as prime ministers as well. Other prominent members of this clan, Ḥasan Woṯūq (Woṯūq-al-Dawla), Aḥmad Qawām (Qawām-al-Salṭana), Moḥammad Moṣaddeq (Moṣaddeq-al-Salṭana), and Aḥmad Matīn Daftarī, served as both ministers and prime ministers in the first half of the 14th/20th century (Bāmdād, Rejāl I, pp. 94, 317-21; II, pp. 384-52; IV, pp. 422-27). The gradual institutionalization of bureaucratic positions in the course of the 13th/19th century helped to raise the relative status of “men of the pen” (Polak, I, p. 37). Thus, for example, major mostawfīs and lašgar-nevīses (muster-masters) were given honorific titles equivalent to those of high-ranking military officers (“Taškīṣ wa tarqīm-e alqāb,” pp. 50-61). Another indication of the bureaucrats’ ascendance in the later 13th/19th century was their frequent promotion to governorships of provinces and districts (e.g., Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, 1307/1889-90, pp. 29-36; Ṣobḥ-e ṣādeq 1/2, 1325/1907, p. 2).

The dominant strata and landed property. Political power or social status gave members of the dominant classes the requisite means to acquire and control large landed properties. A man of rank who was also a the holder of a benefice (toyūldār) could acquire substantial amounts of landed property in the area of his toyūl or during his term of office in the provinces. For example, Masʿūd Mīrzā Ẓell-al-Solṭān and his sister, Bānū-ye ʿOżmā, managed, during the former’s tenure as governor of Isfahan, to accumulate ninety-two large and prosperous villages, with a combined population of 150,000 (Nīkītīn, p. 44). ʿAbd-Allāh Khan Amīr-e Neẓām (Sardār-e Akram, d. 1335/1916), a general (amīr-e tūmān) from the Qarāgozlū tribe, gradually acquired a vast agricultural estate. From this estate the inherited share of his younger son, Ḥosayn-qolī Sardār-e-Akram, alone was ninety-six villages, with an area of 500 m², each with a population of 150-2,000 and producing an estimated annual income of $150,000 (Forbes-Leith, pp. 37, 54). Malek Manṣūr Mīrzā Šoʿāʿ-al-Salṭana (Moẓaffar-al-Dīn Shah’s son) is said to have usurped numerous state-owned (ḵāleṣa) villages and private estates in Fārs during his term of office (Majd-al-Eslām, I, pt. 1, pp. 96-97). Eqbāl-al-Salṭana, the powerful and wealthy khan of Mākū, owned 150 villages and confiscated 250 more in the early Constitutional period (Taqīzāda, pp. 160-63; Mostawfī, III, pp. 576-81). Shaikh Ḵaẓʿal, the khan of the Arab tribes, extended his estates in Ḵūzestān to more than 100 mil in the early 14th/20th century and enjoyed considerable autonomy in his control of the region (Taqīzāda, pp. 344-45; Mostawfī, III, pp. 633-38). Mīr ʿAlam Khan Šawkat-al-Molk owned large estates in southern Khorasan and Sīstān and was the semi-independent ruler of the region (Ḥājj Sayyāḥ, pp. 143-45; Churchill, p. 104). For examples of prominent ʿolamāʾ who used their religious offices and political influence to achieve similar ends, see below.

The sale of state lands and the properties of governing notables to large merchants in the latter half of the 13th/19th century added a new group of merchant landowners to the propertied classes. They included Ḥājj Moḥammad Ḥasan Amīn-al-Żarb, Ḥājj Abu’l-Qāsem Raʾīs-al-Tojjār, Ḥājj Moʿīn-al-Tojjār Būšehrī, Ḥājj Kāẓem Malek-al-Tojjār, Arbāb Jamšīd Bahman, and the Tūmānīāntz brothers (Picot, 1897, pp. 62-68).

In general, the larger his domain, the greater was the power of the landlord, the longer his absences from his property, and the more thorough the exploitation of the peasants by his overseers (mobāšers). By living in the cities, large landowners were able to maintain their ties to those in power and thus better to protect their properties. Some kept their own private armies. For example, Sardār-e Akram Qarāgozlū could mobilize a regiment of 800 cavalry from ninety-six of his villages in twenty-four hours, whereas a smaller landowner in the same region could raise a contingent of 100 men (Forbes-Leith, pp. 62-63).

The landowners continued to enjoy a relatively privileged position even after the Constitutional Revolution as is apparent, for example, from their control of the first five sessions of the Majles until the end of Qajar rule. The proportion of landowning deputies rose from 21 percent in the first session of the Majles (1324-26/1906-8), to 30 percent in the second session (1327-29/1909-11), to 49 percent in the fifth session (1302-4 Š./1924-26; see Šajīʿī, p. 180).

The religious hierarchy

In Qajar Persia the Shiʿite clerical establishment, the “men of the turban” (arbāb-e ʿamāʾem), comprised a broad spectrum of positions, ranging from the highest to nearly the lowest levels of the social hierarchy. The nature of their social functions and their presence within every stratum of society enabled the clerics to play a mediating role between the dominant strata and the popular classes, hence a significant part in the maintenance of the social order.

At the apex of the religious hierarchy were the jurists (mojtaheds), including the most learned (mojtahed-e aʿlam). Equal in status to the mojtaheds, but lacking their political independence and popular base, were clerics appointed by the shah to such positions as leaders of the Friday prayers (emām jomʿas) in the congregational mosques. Often these positions were hereditary; for example, the emām jomʿas of Tehran and the emām jomʿas and šayḵ-al-Eslāms of Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tabrīz had held their offices since late Safavid times (Moʿallem Ḥabībābādī, III, pp. 820-27; IV, pp. 1324-25, 1341-43, 1378-79; V, pp. 1453-54, 1650-51, 1703; Fasāʾī, II, pp. 27-29, 61-64; Nāder Mīrzā, pp. 243-49). At the middle levels of the clerical establishment were teachers (modarresīn) in the religious seminaries (madrasas), a much larger number of mullahs who served as prayer leaders (pīšnemāz, emām-e jamāʿat) at mosques in urban neighborhoods, and learned or popular preachers (woʿʿāẓ).

Finally, at the very bottom of the clerical hierarchy were the lower “men of the pulpit” (ahl-e menbar), including reciters of the passion of the Imam Ḥosayn (rawża ḵᵛāns).

By the end of the Qajar era in the early 1300s Š./1920s, the religious hierarchy of Tehran consisted of 108 mojtaheds and other prominent ʿolamāʾ, 103 pīšnemāzes, 18 modarreses, 90 woʿʿāẓ, 210 ṭollāb (students), 391 rawża ḵ ᵛāns, 107 maddāḥs (eulogists), 85 nawḥa ḵ ᵛāns (mourners), 92 qārīs (readers of the Koran at funerals), 180 motawallīs and ḵadamas (custodians and servants) of holy places, and 55 others (see Šahrī, I, p. 86; for a detailed description of various ranks of the men of turban, see V, pp. 681-770, VI, pp. 1-11; Taḥwīldār, pp. 66-71, 80).

In terms of their socioeconomic position and political affiliations, the leading ʿolamāʾ could be divided into three fairly distinct groups: those affiliated with the royal court, those closely associated with the provincial landowning classes and who themselves often possessed landed propery, and those who relied on the urban middle and lower middle classes for their livelihood (see Zaryāb-e Ḵoʾī , pp. 161-62; Dawlatābādī, I, pp. 50-56). The prime examples of those in the first group are Ḥājj Mīrzā Ẓayn-al-ʿĀbedīn Ẓahīr-al-Eslām (d. 1321/1903) and his son, Ḥājj Mīrzā Abu’l-Qāsem (d. 1346/1927), from the hereditary line of the leaders of Friday prayers (emām jomʿas) of Tehran, who married daughters of Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah and Moẓaffar-al-Dīn Shah respectively. Many members of this clan became wealthy landowners and leading figures in national politics, enjoying a lavish lifestyle that included, among other things, private carriages. Not surprisingly, they supported the shah during both the Tobacco Rebellion of 1308-9/1890-91 and the Constitutional Revolution of 1323-30/1905-1911 (Bāmdād, Rejāl I, pp. 55-57, II, pp. 48-50; Moʿallem Ḥabībābādī, V, pp. 1650-51; Tārīḵ-e bīdārī, II, pp. 319, 349, 543).

The second group included many high-ranking clerics, particularly in the provinces, who used their religious and juridical authority to accumulate wealth and political influence. As religious judges and leaders of Friday prayers, they forged close relationships with the governing notables and other powerful elements in their areas of jurisdiction. They participated eagerly in state ceremonies; paid visits to the shah, the viziers, and the governors; and were in turn visited by them (Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, pp. 225, 319, 875-76, 906-907, 947, 1058; Dawlatābādī, I, pp. 50-52; Lesān-al-Molk, III, pp. 238, 281-82, 290; Sayyāḥ, p. 129; Waqāyeʿ-e ettefāqīya, p. 538). They also involved themselves in the day-to-day politics of the cities, and their ability to foment riots, especially against religious minorities, placed them in a powerful position in relation to the governing notables. Some became involved in usury (with interest rates as high as 40-50 percent), hoarded grain, and speculated in real estate. Hojjat-al-Eslām Moḥammad-Bāqer Šaftī (d. 1260/1844) amassed a vast network of properties that included 400 caravansaries, 2,000 shops, and numerous villages in Isfahan, Borūjerd, Yazd, and Shiraz. His residence consisted of several large units that housed his seven sons and their families and an entourage of 100 people (Tonokābonī, p. 141; Moʿallem Ḥabībābādī, V, pp. 161-4-20; Bāmdād, Rejāl III, pp. 304-7). Āqā Shaikh Moḥammad-Taqī Najafī (d. 1332/1913), the ḥākem-e šaṛʿ (religious judge) in Isfahan, was reportedly the richest man in the city after the prince-governor, Ẓell-al-Solṭān and was prominent in city politics (Moʿallem Ḥabībābādī, V, 1662-66; Churchill, p. 61; Dawlatābādī, I, pp. 87-88; Bāmdād, Rejāl III, pp. 326-27; Majd-al-Eslām, I, pt., 2, p. 335). Ḥājj Āqā Moḥsen Mojtahed Solṭānābādī (d. 1327/1909), another notorious cleric, had annual income from ninety-nine prosperous villages amounting to 60,000-70,000 tomans. Reportedly he was “a semiking in his estate,” had 110 armed men, and exerted considerable influence with the court in the appointment and dismissal of governors in the area of his influence (Wakīlī Ṭabāṭabāʾī Tabrīzī, pp. 449, 453-55; Kosokovskii, pp. 241-44; Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, p. 817; Dehgān, p. 142). Other examples of wealthy and powerful ʿolamāʾ include Ḥājj Mollā Rafīʿ Šarīʿatmadār (d. 1292/1875) of Rašt, Ḥājj Mollā ʿAlī Kanī (d. 1306/1888) of Tehran, and Ḥājj Mīrzā Javād Mojtahed (d. 1313/1895), and Āqā Mīrzā Ḥasan Mojtahed (d. 1338/1919) of Tabrīz. Most members of this group stood on the side of Moḥammad ʿAlī Shah in his struggle against the constitutionalists (Moʿallem Ḥabībābādī, II, p. 402, III, pp. 696-99; Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, p. 138, 151; Bāmdād, Rejāl I, pp. 295-300, II, pp. 42-43; Kasrawī, Mašrūta ³, pp. 360, 481-82, 489, 557; Rabino, pp. 6, 92, 100-104; Tārīḵ-e bīdārī II, pp. 99, 112, 169, 234).

The third group of the ʿolamāʾ consisted mostly of pious mojtaheds and middle-ranking clerics in major cities, who depended on the urban bāzārs and middle-level landowners for social and financial support. Āqā Shaikh Hādī Najmābādī (d. 1320/1902) and Sayyed Moḥammad Ṭabāṭabāʾī (d. 1338/1920) of Tehran, Ḥājj Fāżel Mojtahed Ḵorāsānī (d. 1342/1923) of Mašhad, Mīrzā Moḥammad Taqī Hojjat-al-Eslām (d. 1312/1894) of Tabrīz, and Āqā Sayyed Moḥammad-Bāqer Doṛčaʾī of Isfahan, widely respected for their knowledge, piety, and asceticism, were examples of this group (Bāmdād, Rejāl III, pp. 279-80, IV, pp. 218-19, 408-10; Dawlatābādī, I, pp. 50-51; Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, pp. 148-49, 949; Moʿallem Ḥabībābādī, IV, pp. 1376-77; Qūčānī, pp. 162-64). Many members of this group joined the emerging intelligentsia and actively participated in the Constitutional movement (Dawlatābādī, I, pp. 5-52; Kasrawī, Mašrūṭa ³, pp. 247-48, 406-8; Tārīḵ-e bīdārī II, pp. 35-36, 71-72, 80-81, 345-49, 437; Zaryāb-e Ḵoʾī, pp. 161-62).

In addition to the groups already mentioned, the “men of the turban” (arbāb-e ʿamāʾem) in every city included a large “crowd of mullahs, who live by their wits, and have little of a priest but the name. They practice astrology, write letters and contracts for those who are ignorant of penmanship, and contrive by these means to prolong a miserable existence. Nothing can be lower than the character of these people; their hypocrisy, profligacy, and want of principle, are the subject of stories, epigrams, and proverbs without end” (Fraser, p. 352). Finally, according to many accounts, the majority of the students (ṭollāb) at the religious centers were semiliterate and unscrupulous men who lived off the income from religious endowments (awqāf) and charitable contributions from the community (see, e.g., Qūčānī, pp. 61-62, 367-70; Dawlatābādī, I, pp. 345-47; Sayyāḥ, pp. 45-46, 54-55, 86-87, 164-65).

The prominent sādāt and the mašāyeḵ of the Sufi orders may also be considered part of the religious establishment, though not of the clerical hierarchy. In many cities the sādāt constituted a corporate body headed by a prominent elder, who sometimes held the old title of naqīb al-sādāt or naqīb al-ašrāf. The prominent sādāt were exempted from taxes and the corvée and were often granted stipends or benefices (toyūls). The ever-increasing number of claimants to this title in the latter part of the 13th/19th century, including many whose claims were based on forged genealogies, along with the destitution into which some of them had sunk, brought about an irreversible decline in what had once been regarded as the noblest status in Islamic Persia (Dawlatābādī, I, pp. 261-76; Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, pp. 116-17; Ḡanī, I, pp. 1-19; Rawżātī, I, pp. 30-65).

The middle classes

The middle classes included the merchants, the middle-level ʿolamāʾ, the small landowners, the local aʿyān (notables), and, at a somewhat lower level, master artisans and shopkeepers.

Middle classes in the bāzār. At the top of the social hierarchy in the bāzār were the wholesale merchants (tojjār), who, along with the guildsmen and the ʿolamāʾ, maintained traditional urban life-styles and values more fully than any other group in society. Despite their high status and considerable influence within the bāzār itself, merchants rarely attained the type of recognition in the eyes of governing notables that was accorded to high-ranking ʿolamāʾ or the upper echelons of the bureaucracy.

Below the merchants in social and economic status were the heads (kadḵodās) and elders (rīš-safīds) of the various crafts and trades. Craftsmen and shopkeepers were organized into groups, which were arranged hierarchically according to a complex set of criteria, including the nature of their activities, the types and levels of their skills, the types of material used in their crafts, the relative importance of their output for society, and the relative worth of their trade measured by prevailing moral values. Members of each craft and trade usually worked within the same space in the vaulted bāzārs. They were represented by their elders and were often treated collectively by the authorities for purposes of tax collection and corvée. Mīrzā Ḥosayn Tahwīldār (pp. 93-122) described 168 groups (jamāʿats) of craftsmen, traders, and those who were active in various services in Isfahan in the 1290s/1870s (see AṢNĀF).

The middle-class bāzārīs played a major role in both the Tobacco Rebellion of 1308-9/1890-91 and the Constitutional Revolution of 1323-29/1905-11. The political significance of their contribution to the latter movement was recognized in the electoral law (Neẓām-nāma-ye enteḵābāt) of 1324/1906, in which merchants and master artisans were specifically designated as two of six groups to be granted the right to elect their own representatives to the first session of the Majles. Of the 161 deputies elected, twenty-eight were merchants and twenty-nine master artisans and shopkeepers (Ašraf, 1359 Š./1980, p. 119). The bāzārī deputies participated actively in Majles debates and decisions, particularly on issues like the accountability of cabinet members to the Majles, state finances, and the establishment of a new national bank (see, e.g., Majles-e šūrā-ye mellī, pp. 11, 20, 44, 48, 51).

Small landowners. The petty landowners were those who possessed either single small villages or shares in several villages. Many small landowners (zorrāʿ), like the peasant-proprietors, cultivated their own land, with the help of a few laborers. Lacking in political connections, they were vulnerable to the excessive demands of the governing notables, which, if not heeded, could lead to confiscation of their properties (see, e.g., Fasāʾī, II, p. 45; Lambton, 1987, pp. 140-63; Waqāyeʿ-e ettefāqīya, pp. 214-15). At times, in return for the protection of their property, petty landowners and farmers were forced to transfer a portion of it to a powerful patron, as in a village in Arāk, where 200 or so petty landowners were asked to provide fifty to ninety-four soldiers as their quota of conscripts (bonīča); finding it impossible to meet such a large levy during the famine of 1288/1871, they were left with no choice but to abandon their village. When, as a last resort, they called on Ḥājj Āqā Moḥsen Mojtahed for protection, he granted it but only in return for their relinquishing ownership of the properties in question to him (Dehgān, II, p. 142). As one observer noted, a petty tribal landowner would find it prudent to enter government service as a footman (farrāš), in order to be able to protect his small landed property (Majd-al-Eslām, I, pt. 1, pp. 190-91).

The commoners

The commoners (ʿāmma-ye raʿīyat) included peasants, tribespeople, and lower-level workers in construction and urban and rural workshops and services, as well as such déclassé groups as poor dervishes, beggars, and bandits.

Peasants and tribesmen. The overwhelming majority of commoners were peasants and ordinary tribespeople (for the social structure of tribal communities, see Beck, pp. 163-250; Garthwaite, pp. 34-46). They were the principal producers of the material wealth of the country and bore the main burden of taxation and conscription. In settled villages there were two types of cultivators: a majority of sharecroppers and tenant farmers and a minority of wage laborers (ḵošnešīns). Both sharecropping (możāraʿa) and tenancy (ejāra) were sanctioned by Islamic canon law (šarīʿa). In principle the sharecropper received a share of the crop (from two-fifths to three-fifths) based on the elements of production (land, water, labor, seed, and oxen) that he contributed. The tenant farmer paid a fixed rent either in cash or in kind. Both had usufructuary or cultivation rights, known as “root rights” (ḥaqq-e rīša, ḥaqq-e nasaq) over the plots of land that they cultivated. Those who operated in arid and semiarid areas were often organized by the landowners into small work teams known as bona, ṣaḥrā, ṭāq, and so on, an arrangement that made it convenient for the landowners to collect their share of the crops and assisted the farmers with irrigation and cultivation. Although peasants were not, in principle, under the bondage of serfdom, their rights were often violated by landowners, particularly when the latter were absentee owners of high rank and power. Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, writing in 1307/1889, noted that “in previous times the peasants did not dare to emigrate to other places, because, when they were captured, the landlords punished them. Even though this dependence of the peasants was not as complete as the bondage of the Russian muzhiks, it led to the domination of the landlords over the peasants” (p. 108). Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah issued a decree that, at least in theory, granted the peasants complete freedom of movement.

The emergence of modern classes

The incorporation of Persia into the emerging world economy in the early decades of the 14th/closing decades of the 19th century caused important changes in the social structure of the country. The economy moved from a premercantile and highly fragmented exchange system, in which most production was for subsistence, to a market economy that encompassed a modest amount of foreign trade. The commercialization of agriculture (Nowshirvani, pp. 547-91), improved transportation and communications, and new small-scale industries helped to raise national income, state revenues, and urban living standards. These economic changes led to the rise of new classes alongside the traditional classes. Of particular importance were a small bureaucratic and professional intelligentsia within the state apparatus, a new group of great merchants and entrepreneurs, and a nascent industrial working class.

The emerging intelligentsia. In premodern Persia the intelligentsia, or “men of the pen,” had encompassed two distinct groups, religious scholars and laymen (see iv, above). The lay intelligentsia were mostly bureaucrats, but they also included writers, historians, geographers, genealogists, astrologers, physicians, and poets whose livelihood depended on maintaining close relations with officialdom at various levels. Both religious and lay intelligentsia were educated in Persian and Arabic literature, traditional sciences and humanities, and Islamic theology and jurisprudence. The introduction of Western ideas in the late 13th/19th century initiated a cleavage between the religious and the lay intelligentsia. The return of students from Europe, the establishment of modern schools in Persia, international travel, and the presence of Europeans in major cities helped to introduce many Persians to European values and ideas. Graduates of foreign educational institutions and the Dār al-fonūn (Tehran polytechnic institute), founded by Amīr(-e) Kabīr in 1268/1851, and later the Madrasa-ye ʿolūm-e sīāsī (School of political science, founded in 1319/1901) formed the nucleus of a modernizing class of professional men and bureaucrats in Persia (Maḥbūbī, Moʾassasāt I, pp. 122-95, 253-420; Mīnovī, passim; Nāṭeq, pp. 103-29). They played an important part in modernizing the state bureaucracy and the armed forces in the latter half of the 13th/19th century and were the ideologists of the Constitutional Revolution of 1323-29/1905-11; see, e.g., Ādamīyat, 1341 Š./1962, passim; idem, 2535 = 1355 Š./1976, passim).

The great merchants (tojjār-e bozorg). A group of “great merchants” exploited the new commercial opportunities of the late 13th/19th century to accumulate considerable merchant and finance capital through international trade. Some learned foreign languages, traveled widely, established agents abroad, and began to adopt such tools of modern commerce as the joint-stock company. Some engaged in mining, road construction, transportation, communications, and, to a limited extent, manufacturing. The most notable example of this new group of merchants was Ḥājj Moḥammad-Ḥasan Amīn-al-Żarb. He was active in foreign and domestic trade, banking, industry, and mining, accumulating an impressive fortune of approximately 25 million tomans (Ashraf, 1359 Š./1980, pp. 73-88).

The state’s chronic need for cash and its weakness after the Tobacco Rebellion of 1308-9/1891-92 led to an increase in the political influence of the merchants. They began to resist excessive taxes and customs duties, protested arbitrary decisions by officials, complained about dangerous roads, and demanded greater autonomy in managing their own affairs (Ashraf and Hekmat, pp. 739-43). For example, as a protest against the encroachments of the British Imperial Bank, a group of merchants and money changers founded a bank in Shiraz. Most of the Shirazi merchants immediately opened accounts there and stopped dealing with the Imperial Bank. This move alarmed the British, who forced the governor, Šoʿāʿ-al-Salṭana (the son of Moẓaffar-al-Dīn Shah, 1313-24/1896-1907), to issue, on 3 Rabīʿ I 1319/20 June 1901, an order replacing the notes of the local bank with those issued by the Imperial Bank (Waqāyeʿ-e ettefāqīya, pp. 367, 381, 643). The merchants also became directly involved in politics. During the Tobacco Rebellion, for example, the merchants of Tehran, Tabrīz, Shiraz, and Mašhad helped the ʿolamāʾ to organize protest movements (Waqāyeʿ-e ettefāqīya, pp. 374-76, 378-79, 390-99; Tārīḵ-e bīdārī, ed. Saʿīdī Sīrjānī, I, pp. 19-60). A decade and a half later they played an even more significant role in the Constitutional Revolution (see BĀZĀR iii. SOCIOECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ROLE OF THE BĀZĀR; Gilbar, 1977; Ashraf, 1359 Š./1980, pp. 106-25).

The nascent industrial working class. Until the latter half of the 13th/19th century most wage laborers in Persia were employed in agriculture, in traditional handicrafts and services, and as unskilled labor. It was only in the last decades of the 13th/19th and early 14th/20th centuries that a modern industrial working class began to take form. These workers were drawn from among impoverished peasants, members of the settled and semisettled nomadic tribes, the urban poor, and skilled craftsmen who were losing their markets to mass-produced foreign products. The growth in foreign trade and the infusion of foreign capital had differing consequences for different segments of the traditional work force. For example, while the production of most textiles declined because of foreign competition and the importing of machine-made materials, the carpet industry underwent a phenomenal expansion owing to the opening of new foreign markets by European businessmen (see CARPETS i, xi, xii). Moreover, those crafts that had local markets and did not compete with foreign products did not experience a decline but in fact enjoyed modest growth (Taḥwīldār, pp. 100-102; Ashraf, 1359 Š./1980, pp. 55-56, 91-93).

Consular reports, travel accounts, and other sources indicate that, of some 126,000 workers in urban areas in the first decade of the present century, only 9,000 (7.2 percent) were employed in the newly emerging industrial sector: 7,000-8,000 in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company and fewer than 2,000 in various manufacturing industries. Of the remainder 60,000-70,000 were employed in rug-weaving establishments, 20,000 in textile workshops (wool, cotton, and silk), 10,000 in assorted traditional crafts (shoemaking, hat making, soap making, etc.), 4,200 in the Caspian fisheries, 4,000 in the Persian Gulf pearl fisheries, 5,000 in home-based workshops (mostly rug weaving and textiles), 4,000 as boat operators and dockworkers, 3,000 as porters, 3,000 in construction of railways, 2,000 in metal workshops (blacksmithing, coppersmithing, sword making, etc.), and 2,100 in mining, tanneries, printshops, lumbering, railways, and the like. Foreign workers included more than 5,000 from Russia: 3,000 who worked on construction of the Jolfā-Tabrīz railroad, 300 in road construction, 1,200 in the Lianozov fisheries on the Caspian, and the remainder in such enterprises as the “Khoshtari and Oleĭnikov forestry and lumber company,” the Nobel Brothers oil firm, the Ramazanov oil company, and similar firms. Arabs and Indians, as well as a few skilled workers from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Canada, were also employed by the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (for all figures given here, see Abdullaev, pp. 210-12; see also Ivanov, 1966, pp. 59-72).

Around the turn of the century deteriorating economic conditions in Persia and better job opportunities in the southern Russian provinces of the Caucasus and Turkistan induced tens of thousands of Persian workers to migrate to those regions, in order to work in agriculture, crafts, construction, the railroads, and the oil fields. In 1901 the Russian consulate in Tabrīz alone granted 26,855 visas to enter Russia and in 1903 32,866. In 1904 the number of visas granted to unskilled Persian workers in Tabrīz and Urmia was 54,846 (Abdullaev, p. 189). “In the first fourteen years of the present century, an annual average of 126,000 Persians went to Russia against the 101,000 who departed for Persia … . [A] total of 353,743 Persians seem to have remained in Russia during this period” (Hakimian, p. 446). Persian workers also emigrated to India (Karachi), Turkey, Herat, Muscat, and even Zanzibar (Abdullaev, p. 188).

Women and children formed a substantial part of the paid labor force in Persia, working for wages significantly lower than those of adult males, not only in the traditional industries, like rug weaving and textiles, in which they were a majority, but also in such modern enterprises as the silk factory belonging to Amīn-al-Żarb in Rašt (employing 150 workers, nearly all women), the Lianozov fisheries, the Mohammadov rug factory in Tabrīz (employing 500 children between the ages of six and fourteen years), and textile mills in Tabrīz, Lāhījān, and Kermān. Similarly, of the 4,500 workers employed at shawl (šāl) looms in mid-13th/19th century Kermān, the majority were children. A government ordinance, issued under pressure from the ʿolamāʾ in 1322/1904, prohibited employment of women and children under the age of twelve years in foreign(Christian)-owned enterprises, but it was routinely circumvented by most foreign concerns through bribery (Abdullaev, p. 215; Amanat, p. 84).

The Persian working class began to organize itself into small labor unions, particularly the printers, tram drivers, and telegraph workers in Tehran and the shawl weavers in Kermān. These unions staged strikes of the printing shops and tramways in Tehran, construction sites along the Tehran-Khorasan road, and telegraph offices in Tehran and other cities (Ṣūr-e Esrāfīl 1/1, 1325/1907, p. 3; Ṣobḥ-e ṣādeq 1/51, 1325/1907, pp. 2-3, 1/54, pp. 3-4, 1/83, p. 4; Ivanov, 1977, pp. 18-19).

The changing life-style of the elite. ʿA.-R. Kalāntar Żarrābī (pp. 246-51) provided a graphic description of the living standards and consumption patterns of the affluent (aḡnīāʾ), the middle classes (motawasseṭīn), and the poor (foqarāʾ) in Kāšān in the last decades of the 13th/19th century, particularly the diet, clothing, and housing. It is clear from his account that inequality was not extreme in that period, and the similarities in the life-styles of the different social classes are vividly illustrated. This situation began to change in the early decades of the 14th/late 19th and early 20th centuries, when conspicuous consumption became widespread among the privileged classes. This change in turn marked the earliest emergence of a dualism in urban life, encompassing, on one hand, the traditional lifestyle, preserved in the alliance between bāzār and mosque, and, on the other, the modern life-style of the elite, the intelligentsia, and the new middle classes (see, e.g., Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana, 1307/1889, p. 113; Mostawfī, Šarḥ-e zendagānī II, pp. 494-98).

Patterns of association and social mobility

At least until the last decades of the 13th/19th century a number of factors helped to mitigate profound inequalities in the distribution of wealth, power, and status in Persia. First, the general standard of living was low, and truly opulent life-styles were relatively rare, not only in the countryside, where most people were poor and social differences fairly small, but also in the cities (Ḡanī, I, p. 15; Kalāntar Żarrābī, pp. 246-51; Moṣaddeq, pp. 46-51; Mostawfī, Šarḥ-e zendagānī I, pp. 496-98). Second, people lived in self-contained communities and neighborhoods, where face-to-face contact among different social strata and status groups was frequent. It was not unusual for the prosperous and the poor to live in the same quarter of a city. For example, in both Tabrīz and Shiraz, two cities for which sociodemographic information at the level of city quarters is available for the late 13th/19th century, although some quarters were certainly more affluent than others, all contained some representation of the different socioeconomic strata, including notable local families (Nāder Mīrzā, pp. 61-69; Fasāʾī, II, pp. 23-131; see also Ashraf, 1360 Š./1981, pp. 83-86; for Tehran see Āmār-e dār al-ḵelāfa-ye Tehrān, passim). The only exceptions were neighborhoods in which all, or nearly all, the residents were members of religious minorities-for example, the Jewish neighborhoods in Hamadān, Shiraz, Isfahan, Mašhad, and Tehran or the Armenian quarters in Isfahan and Tabrīz (Āmār-e dār al-ḵelāfa-ye Tehrān, pp. 632-33, 641-42; Loeb, pp. 35-51; Šafaqī, pp. 397-424).

Third, because most people shared the same religion and were quite devout, all social strata participated in religious festivals, mourning rituals, religious recitations on Thursday evenings, fasting in Ramażān, and especially processions commemorating the martyrdom of Imam Ḥosayn in the first ten days of the month of Moḥarram. The memoirs of the royal harem by Dūst-ʿAlī Khan Moʿayyer-al-Mamālek (q.v.; pp. 97-114), a grandson of Nāṣer-al-Dīn Shah, show that there were striking similarities in the observance of such rituals in the royal household and among the common people. The shah, the women of his harem, and other members of the court regularly attended the passion plays (taʿzīas) at Takīya-ye Dawlat, along with people from other social strata. During Ramażān “the mosques were filled, and people from all walks of life would say their noon and evening prayers together” (Mostawfī, Šarḥ-e zendagānī I, pp. 293-302, 327-34. Kalāntar Żarrābī (p. 242) reported similar intercourse among the middle and upper classes of Kāšān on New Year’s Day (Nowrūz): “On the first day of the New Year, following their morning prayers … officials (ʿommāl), merchants (tojjār), and guildsmen (aṣnāf) pay homage to two or three of the most prominent ʿolamāʾ and then are received by the governor (ḥākem) in audience, after which they continue to visit the rest of the ʿolamāʾ until dark. On the second day visits are paid to officials, on the third to merchants, and the fourth to the heads of guilds and farmers (zorrāʿ).” Many neighborhoods had their own takīyas or ḥosaynīyas, which served as places of congregation for all residents during public ceremonies. It was also customary for more affluent families to receive all the residents of their quarters during religious ceremonies or functions: “The gathering of illiterate commoner (ʿāmmī), the man of knowledge (ʿāref), the nobles and notables (aʿyān wa ašrāf ), the middle classes (motawasseṭīn), and the poor (foqarāʾ) at the same place, under the same tent, and for the same purpose raised the consciousness of the affluent class about the conditions of the poor, prompted them to charitable deeds, and allowed the lower classes in turn to share in their culture and etiquette (farhang wa adab-e ejtemāʿī)” (Mostawfī, Šarḥ-e zendagānī I, p. 315).

Neither religious nor cultural norms created insurmountable obstacles to social mobility in Qajar Persia. As one observer put it: “Caste does not exist in Persia. Men can readily change their social status. A ballet dancer was the favorite wife of Fath Ali Shah. The son of a fellah may be vizier tomorrow. Hajji Baba, the water-carrier, in Morier’s inimitable story, became minister to England. Lowly birth is not a bar to the highest position” (Wilson, p. 181). The Qajars came to power following nearly a century of social and political upheavals in the country, events that had a considerable leveling effect on the structures of privilege that had evolved under the Safavids (see CITIES iii. ADMINISTRATION AND SOCIAL ORGANIZATION). Furthermore, the despotic nature of Qajar rule and the constant encroachments by the royal court and powerful state officials on the property of others made it extremely difficult for those without protection to accumulate private wealth (Abrahamian, 1974, pp. 3-31; Ashraf, 1970, pp. 321-27). Despite the precariousness of the social order, however, many did manage to amass enormous private fortunes (mostly in the form of landed property) and to pass them on to their children. Furthermore, although exceptional individuals did rise from humble backgrounds to the highest echelons of the bureaucracy (for example, several became prime minister: Moḥammad-Ḥosayn Khan Neẓām-al-Dawla [known as Ṣadr-e Eṣfahānī; Bāmdād, Rejāl III, pp. 379-81], Mīrzā Taqī Khan Amīr(-e) Kabīr, and ʿAlī-Aṣḡar Khan Amīn-al-Solṭān [Atābak-e Aʿẓam]), the vast majority of those in the dominant strata, as well as in other status or occupational categories, inherited, rather than acquiring, their positions. For example, among notable families in Shiraz in the 1310s/1880s all the princes and tribal chiefs, as well as 81 percent of the administrative elite, 89 percent of the ʿolamāʾ; 42 percent of landowners, and 87 percent of prominent merchants, occupied the same statuses as their fathers (see Banuazizi and Ashraf).

In the last decade of Qajar rule, the gradual incorporation of Persia into the world economy, the commercialization of agriculture, the introduction of capitalist relations of production, and increasing contacts with the West generated significant changes in the social structure of the country and set the stage for the emergence of modern social classes. But the new classes—the bureaucratic intelligentsia, the modern bourgeoisie, and the nascent industrial working class were too small to challenge effectively the existing structures of power and privilege. Their attempts, often in concert with the traditional middle classes, to reform the rapidly disintegrating apparatus of the state within the framework of the new Persian constitution met with very limited success and were soon overwhelmed by external intervention and forces of domestic reaction.

CLASS SYSTEM vi. Classes in the Pahlavi Period

Under Pahlavi rule (1304-58 Š./1925-79) Persia became a powerful centralized state with a sprawling public sector that by 1355 Š./1976 employed one-third of the urban work force. In that period the economy, particularly the service sector, grew steadily and was absorbed into the world economy. The population tripled (from 11.5 million in 1300 Š./1921 to 33.7 million in 1355 Š./1976), and the growth was accompanied by rapid urbanization (from 21 percent in 1300 Š./1921 to 47 percent in 1355 Š./1976; Bharier, 1971, p. 26; Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1981, pp. 1-2, 68). As a result of an intense, ideologically inspired campaign, initiated and directed from above, the country’s social, educational, and cultural institutions were Westernized. These and other changes brought about a significant transformation in the Persian class system.

The major social classes on the eve of the revolution of 1358 Š./1979 were the dominant strata, composed of Western-oriented professionals and bureaucrats and the growing modern bourgeoisie; the modern middle and lower-middle urban strata, employed in white-collar occupations in the public and private sectors; the traditional middle and lower-middle classes, consisting of the majority of the ʿolamāʾ, small-scale merchants, shopkeepers, and master artisans and their apprentices; the extremely heterogeneous working classes, including skilled and semiskilled industrial workers, unskilled laborers, seasonal workers, and others in marginal occupations; and the agrarian classes, comprising petty landowners, peasants, and landless agricultural workers.

The dominant strata

The dominant strata in the early Pahlavi period, like those of the late Qajar period, consisted of members of the royal household, high-level bureaucrats, great landowners, tribal khans, powerful ʿolamāʾ, and prosperous merchants. By the end of the Pahlavi period major changes in both the size and composition of these strata had occurred. They included displacement of the old-guard politicians, most of whom had come from the ranks of traditional landowners and tribal chieftains, by a new professional and bureaucratic elite; the gradual displacement of prosperous merchants by new industrial entrepreneurs and traders, contractors, consulting engineers, financiers, and bankers; and erosion in the power and status of the ʿolamāʾ and traditional landowners.

The great landowners. The tradition of agrarian landlord-tenant (arbāb-raʿyatī) relations continued, though with some changes, during the period from the 1300s Š./1920s through the 1330s Š./1950s. Private landownership (arbābī) was, in fact, expanded and consolidated. It was provided with a new legal foundation in the land-registration law of Esfand 1310 Š./March 1932. The ranks of the old landowners—tribal chieftains, high state officials, and the prominent ʿolamāʾ—were expanded to include new bureaucratic, military, and mercantile elements (Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, pp. 182-89, 259-62). After an initial setback in their social status during the early phases of Reżā Shah’s consolidation of state power, the great landowners played an increasingly active role in national and local politics until the late 1330s Š./1950s (Upton, pp. 105-10). Because they held the majority of the seats in the Majles throughout this period (Šajīʿī, 1965, pp. 179, 249), they possessed even more political power at the local level, where they could influence provincial governors, district heads, the rural police (žāndārmerī), and other local officials (Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, pp. 268-74; Arsanjānī, pp. 150-77; Jahānšāhlū Afšār, pp. 191-92; Good).

At the time when the land-reform program was announced on 19 Dey 1340 Š./9 January 1962 members of the royal household, some 1001arge landowning clans and tribal chieftains, and a few hundred other families owned almost two-thirds of the agricultural land in Persia; charitable endowments (awqāf) and the state domains (ḵāleṣa) accounted for another 18 percent; and about 750,000 small landowners and peasants owned less than 20 percent of the total (Edāra-ye āmār-e ʿomūmī, 1962, table 101; Khamsi, p. 4; McLachlan, pp. 686-87). Land reform virtually eliminated the old landowning class and with it the traditional patron-client relationship in the countryside. The program also put an end to the mediating role that the landowners had often played between the government, on one hand, and the bāzārīs and the ʿolamāʾ; on the other.

The rise of the new bureaucratic elite. Occupying key positions within the burgeoning modern state apparatus was a new professional bureaucratic elite (“state bourgeoisie”), which played a pivotal role in the economic and social development of Persia under the Pahlavis. Writing barely a decade after the coup d’etat of 1300 Š./1921, a Western observer commented that this class ”… though numerically small, is today predominant in every walk of life. Its members form an oligarchy which controls elections, manages all public affairs, and in the last resort, by constitutional or other methods, exercises a decisive influence in national policy” (Wilson, p. 45). Between 1320 Š./1941 and 1357 Š./1978 members of the new bureaucratic elite came to dominate the Majles, the cabinet, and the key positions in the government-sponsored political parties and state-owned industries.

The shift of power from the old landed gentry to the rising bureaucratic and professional elements is clear from the changing composition of the political elite between the mid-1300s ŠŠ./1920s and the late 1350s Š./ 1970s. Thus, for example, in 1304-40 Š./1925-61, 70-80 percent of deputies in the Majles came from landowning (30-40 percent), bureaucratic (30 percent), or professional (9-13 percent) backgrounds. By comparison, in the last sessions of the Majles under the Pahlavis (1354-58 Š./1975-79; see Table 48), approximately three-quarters of the deputies came from the new bureaucratic, professional, and entrepreneurial groups. Similarly, a survey of the social origins (as defined by father’s occupation) of 328 members of the political elite, conducted in the mid-1340s Š./1960s, showed that 40 percent were sons of government servants, 26 percent of landowners, 12 percent of merchants, 8 percent of religious leaders, 8 percent of professionals, and 6 percent of workers and others (Zonis, p. 161). The level of education among the new political elite, according to surveys conducted in the 1340s Š./1960s and 1350s Š./1970s, was also quite high; about 90 percent of the directors of government agencies, more than 70 percent of the Majles deputies, and nearly all cabinet members had received at least the bachelor’s degree (Bill, 1975, pp. 27-29; Šajīʿī, 1965, p. 229; idem, 1976, pp. 184-442; Zonis, pp. 168-71).

Table 48. DISTRIBUTION OF OCCUPATIONAL BACKGROUNDS OF MAJLES DEPUTIES, 1324-99 = 1358 Š./1906-79 (in percentages)View full image in a new tab

The modern bourgeoisie. By the end of the Pahlavi period the modern bourgeoisie had developed from the small group of factory owners and international traders of the mid-1300s Š./1920s into a significant socioeconomic group, comprising hundreds of great industrialists, bankers and financiers, importers and exporters, contractors, and consulting engineers (for a roster of about 2,000 members of the Persian bourgeoisie and their major activities in the late 1350s Š./1970s, see Bricault).

The new industrial bourgeoisie came mainly from the old merchant class, often continuing earlier commercial activities. The first major efforts toward industrialization in Persia began in the 1310s Š./1930s, when 175 modern factories were established; 111 of them, with almost 25,000 workers, were in private hands (Būletan-e Bānk-e mellī-e Īrān, various issues from 1312 Š./1933 to 1319 Š./1940; Wezārat-e kār, 1326 Š./1947, passim). In the meantime the commercial bourgeoisie had become more differentiated as the country began to import various types of machinery and consumer goods in addition to such commodities as textiles and sugar. Involvement in foreign trade encouraged modernization among the great merchants of this period, nearly all of whom came from traditional bāzār backgrounds. Having supported Reżā Khan’s campaign to become monarch in 1304 Š./1925 many wealthy merchants and entrepreneurs continued to play an active role during his reign and to influence various economic policies and decisions. Members of this group formed the chamber of commerce in 1305 Š./1926.

During World War II many members of the new bourgeoisie significantly increased their capital, but, because a surge of imports reduced the profitability of domestic manufacturing, this increase did not lead to industrial investment, even after the end of the war. The state, in the meantime, tried to retain some of its previous economic power by controlling imports and foreign exchange. These policies helped to improve the financial position of the bureaucratic elite and their partners among the bourgeoisie (for specific instances, see Key Ostovān, I, pp. 143-44, 250-55, II, pp. 189-203).

The Persian bourgeoisie experienced a sustained period of growth beginning in the late 1330s Š./1950s, when the government extended low-interest loans totaling 350 million rials ($100 million) to a small number of mercantile and industrial leaders. Later, in the 1340s Š./1960s and 1350s Š./1970s, dramatic increases in oil income led to further accumulation of capital in the private sector in at least two ways: First, the state provided credit to business magnates at favorable rates (see Salehi-Isfahani, pp. 359-79), and, second, inflation and increases in real income created windfall profits from land speculation and real-estate development. Furthermore, state incentives to substitute domestic products for imports led many importers of industrial goods to establish factories inside the country. All these factors led to an increase in the contribution of the private sector to capital formation in machinery and construction from $750 million in 1338 Š./1959 to $6.7 billion in 1356 Š./1977. The number of factories employing ten or more workers rose from 1,400 units, with nearly 100,000 workers, in 1339 Š./1960 to 5,400 units—96 percent of which were in private hands—with nearly 400,000 workers, in 1355 Š./1976 (Bānk-e markazī-e Īrān, pp. 408-9; Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1976, p. 131; Sāl-nāma-ye āmārī-e 1360, pp. 433-36).

Huge state construction projects, an expansion of internal markets, rapid population growth, and overurbanization allowed hundreds of merchants, industrialists, import traders, contractors, consulting engineers, and others to make fortunes. After the land reform of 1341 Š./1962 hundreds of commercial farmers who had recently moved into mechanized agriculture and livestock and poultry farming moved into the modern Persian bourgeoisie (Ajami; Ashraf, 1991, pp. 286-87; Okazaki; Qahramān).

The Pahlavi state and the politics of the dominant class. Both Reżā Shah and Moḥammad Reżā Shah were able to control the dominant strata, providing opportunities for advancement and material gain for individuals but preventing them from organizing and engaging in independent political action. It was only at an informal level that members of the political elite were able to form such loose associations as dawra s (Bill, 1973) or the secret lodges of Freemasons (see Rāʾīn, III, pp. 29-38, 640-80). Moreover, both monarchs habitually replaced powerful, independent-minded politicians with more accommodating and submissive aides, a strategy that cost them dearly at times of international or domestic crisis (Daštī, pp. 176-79; Homāyūn, p. 80). Thus, for example, Reżā Shah eliminated or dismissed from office such leading architects of his own modern state as ʿAlī-Akbar Dāvar, ʿAbd-al-Ḥosayn Teymūrtāš, Noṣrat-al-Dawla Fīrūz, and General Ḥabīb-Allāh Khan Šaybānī.

In the relatively free political atmosphere of the period 1320-32 Š./1941-53 an oligarchy of old-guard politicians, landowners, great merchants, entrepreneurs, and influential religious leaders was able to dominate the Majles, the cabinet, and local governments. However, these privileged strata were challenged continually, on one hand, by intellectuals and workers who had been mobilized by the communist Tudeh party (see COMMUNISM ii) since 1320 Š./1941 (Abrahamian, 1982, pp. 326-70), and, on the other, by the National front (Jabha-ye mellī), a broad coalition of the new middle class and the old bāzārī middle and lower-middle classes under the leadership of Moḥammad Moṣaddeq (Young, passim). Throughout this period the old-guard political elite rallied behind the court and fought against both the nationalist middleclass movement and the leftist labor movement (Elwell-Sutton, passim). All these conservative elements supported the coup d’etat of 1332 Š./1953, in which the exiled shah returned to power (see Upton, pp. 107-8).

In 1332-40 Š./1953-61 the dominant strata were generally protected from the political challenges of both the middle and the working classes; nonetheless, its members felt increasingly threatened by the tightening of the shah’s control over the bureaucratic elite and the entrepreneurial class. The landowners still controlled both houses of parliament and retained their influence in the central and local governments. The old Tehran chamber of commerce, which had been suspended by Moṣaddeq, was revived, and a number of its members were elected to the Majles and the Senate. However, the political aspirations of the modern bourgeoisie remained unfulfilled, for its members were never allowed to establish autonomous associations. The Chamber of commerce, industries, and mines, for example, was reorganized in 1349 Š./1970 by the minister of the economy, and a former minister of industries and mines was appointed to direct it. Subordinatation of this association to the Ministry of economy prevented it from exerting any significant influence as an independent interest group. Moreover, the modern bourgeoisie had no mass constituency, and thus it was never accorded the political privileges enjoyed by the landowning class. For example, an election campaign by several leading industrialists in the mid-1350s Š./1970s irritated the shah and prompted him to sound the following warning: “The affluent candidates who have managed to get elected to the Majles and the Senate are by no means allowed to misuse their political office in order to protect the interests of capitalists and plunder the people” (Rastāḵīz, 2 Tīr 1354 Š./23 June 1975, pp. 1-2).

Industrial entrepreneurs also had to cope with seemingly arbitrary state policies like the compulsory sale of stock in their companies to employees or on the open market, the formation of capital markets through joint ventures, and state-imposed profit-sharing schemes to benefit workers. In almost every instance these policies were promulgated without the prior consent or even knowledge of the industrialists themselves. The government’s highly publicized campaign against price gouging in the mid-1350s Š./1970s was an especially humiliating blow to the bāzār merchants and the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie (see BĀZĀR iii. SOCIOECONOMIC AND POLITICAL ROLE OF THE BĀZĀR). Their sense of powerlessness and uncertainty led to a flight from responsibility and a desire to realize maximum profits in the shortest possible time. Many great entrepreneurs and traders relied increasingly on import trade and land speculation, while others transferred major portions of their assets to Western countries.

Of all the dominant social groups it was the bureaucratic elite that was most directly subject to the shah’s increasingly autocratic rule. Independent-minded ministers, officials, and managers were replaced by weaker and more obliging men. The new officials, usually inexperienced and unable to exercise independent judgment, lacked political bases of their own within the population and were generally much less familiar with the political culture of the popular classes. The monarch’s slighting of the political aspirations of the bureaucratic elite and the entrepreneurial class therefore weakened the ideological commitment of these groups to the regime and limited their ability to mobilize support for it at times of political crisis (see Herz, passim; Homāyūn, pp. 13-32, 46-85; Zonis, pp. 80-117, 299-329).

The new middle class

The growth of the bureaucracy, increasing demand for technicians and managers at all levels in both the public and private sectors, and the rapid expansion of Western-style education contributed to the rise of a nonentrepreneurial middle class, comprising independent professionals, civil servants, military personnel, white-collar employees and technicians in private enterprises, and the intelligentsia. Members of this class were the principal agents of state building and modernization in the Pahlavi period. Yet lack of opportunities for meaningful political participation, particularly in the last two decades of that period, generated ambivalence, discontent, and eventually active opposition toward the regime among many members of this class (see, e.g., Ashraf and Banuazizi, 1985, pp. 25-29; Bill, 1972, pp. 73-102; Herz, pp. 4-12).

The new middle class began to emerge in Persia with Reżā Shah’s efforts to develop a modern army and an efficient centralized bureaucracy. The leadership of the new army, composed initially of elements from the Russian-trained Cossack brigade and the Swedish-trained gendarmerie, gradually evolved into an indigenous officer corps. Each year scores of young Persians were sent to European military academies for training. The rapid growth of the army, its victories over rebellious tribes in the early 1300s Š./1920s, and its function as the power base of the new regime raised its prestige well beyond that of its counterpart in the Qajar period. Owing to this new social status and increased pay, officers were a privileged segment of the new middle class under Reżā Shah (Banani, pp. 54-58; Cottrell, pp. 390-94).

An even more dramatic expansion took place in the size of the civil bureaucracy and the technical competence of its middle and upper echelons. In Tehran, for example, in 1307 Š./1928 there were 24,000 government employees, half of whom could be considered as having middle-class status (Baladīya-ye Tehrān, p. 84). By 1355 Š./1976 there were as many as 240,000 government managerial, technical, and clerical workers in the city (Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1980, p. 245). Similarly, whereas in 1335 Š./1956 there were 200,000 professional, technical, and clerical workers in Persia, by 1355 Š./1976 there were nearly a million, two-thirds of whom worked for the state (Edāra-ye āmār-e ʿomūmī, I, 1961, p. 283; Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1981, pp. 61, 64, 67).

To meet the manpower needs of the new bureaucratic structures and state-owned industrial and commercial enterprises, new schools were established at all levels, existing schools were expanded, and the curricula were modernized. Between 1300 Š./1921 and 1320 Š./1941 the number of primary schools rose from 432 to 2,407, that of secondary schools from 33 to 299. In 1314 Š./1935 the University of Tehran was founded with the merging of five separate colleges having a combined enrollment of 886 students. By the time of Reżā Shah’s abdication in 1320 Š./1941 there were approximately 5,000 college graduates in Persia, one-fifth of whom had received their education in the West; more than 10,000 students had completed senior high school, 25,000 junior high school, and more than 65,000 elementary school (Wezārat-e kār, 1343 Š./1964, pp. 2010-43). Between 1339 Š./1960 and 1355 Š./1976 the number of students enrolled in senior high schools rose from 250,000 to more than 900,000, while the number of students in higher education increased from about 20,000 to more than 150,000. The number of Persians studying abroad (mostly in Europe and the United States) increased from 15,000 in 1339 Š./1960 to more than 70,000 in 1355 Š./1976 (Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1976, pp. 40-41, 51; Sāl-nāma-ye āmārī-e 1347, p. 75).

Whereas earlier generations of the new middle class had retained connections with the traditional culture of Persia, the generations that came of age after the reign of Reżā Shah became increasingly Westernized and isolated from the indigenous popular culture and, in particular, from Islamic values and modes of behavior. For example, while nationalism and Marxism flourished among the intelligentsia after World War II, Islam as a political ideology was represented only by tiny groups like the Association of Islamic engineers (Anjoman-e eslāmī-e mohandesīn) and the “Islamic socialists” (Sosīālīsthā-ye ḵodāparast), which had little impact on national politics (Jāmā, pp. 5-33). It was only in the mid-1340s Š./1960s that large numbers of intellectuals, particularly those from lower middleclass and rural backgrounds, began adopting militant Islamic ideologies. This trend was especially evident among university students, about one-third of whom came from bāzār and rural backgrounds by the mid-1350s S./1970s (see Naṣafat, p. 91).

The state and the politics of the new middle class. On the whole, the modern middle class occupied a favored position under both Pahlavi monarchs. Its Westernized life-style, norms, and values were consistent with those of the ruling elite, especially during the reign of Reżā Shah, when most members of this class considered their own material interests and aspirations tied to the monarch’s program of modernization and secularization. Politically, however, the modern middle class was offered few opportunities for meaningful participation. With the shah’s departure in 1320 Š./1941 there was a sudden efflorescence of political activity among members of the new middle class, especially the intelligentsia, including formation of the Tudeh party and the National front, creation of numerous political and trade organizations, and publication of scores of newspapers and magazines. The principal target of most of these activists was the royal court, which was supported for the most part by old-guard politicians and representatives of the propertied classes (Abrahamian, 1982, pp. 326-70; Elwell-Sutton; Young; Nīkbīn, pp. 89-204, 239-56; Key Ostovān, I, pp. 31-84, 256-404).

After the coup d’etat of 1332 Š./1953 the Pahlavi state continued to experience difficulty in rallying the support of the new middle class. Most intellectuals, again barred from independent political activity, remained sympathetic toward the remnants of the National front or the non-Tudeh left. Many writers and poets, teachers, lawyers, physicians, engineers, and students were opposed to or were ambivalent about the regime (see, e.g., Bill, 1972, pp. 73-102). The rapid growth in the number of college and university students, both at home and abroad, coincided with a worldwide trend toward radicalization of youth. Following the abortive liberalization of the early 1340s Š./1960s, many Persian students adopted leftist and revolutionary ideas and formed a number of political, revolutionary, or guerrilla organizations (see COMMUNISM iii). Outside Persia the Confederation of Iranian Students, with thousands of members and sympathizers in the United States and Europe, became the most vociferous organ of opposition to the shah’s regime during the 1340s-50s Š./1960s-70s.

The traditional middle strata

The old religious strata (moʿammamīn “turban wearers”) and the bāzārīs, including merchants (tojjār), master artisans (pīšavarān), and shopkeepers (kasaba), showed remarkable economic and cultural resilience in the Pahlavi period. The bāzār remained the financial and political power base of the Shiʿite clerical establishment and the bastion of popular political-protest movements, including the antirepublican movement of 1301 Š./1925, the drive to nationalize oil in 1329-32 Š./1950-53, the urban riots of 1342 Š./1963, and the Revolution of Bahman 1357 Š./February 1979.

The traditional petite bourgeoisie. Master artisans and shopkeepers constituted the core of the traditional petite bourgeoisie in Persia. Their shops were located in the vaulted urban bāzārs and along the streets of the new urban quarters. Operating with limited capital, they did manual work, sold at retail, and typically employed one or more apprentices and footboys. Shopkeepers, master artisans, and their apprentices were considered to be a single status group, the kasaba, and, together with the religious hierarchy, they served as the principal carriers of traditional urban life-styles and values.

With rapid urbanization came a proliferation of retail stores and workshops both inside and outside the bāzār. In Tehran, for example, the number of persons in such occupations increased from 12,000 in 1307 Š./1928 to 250,000 in 1355 Š./1976 (Baladīya-ye Tehrān, pp. 72-83; Iran Almanac 1976, p. 361). By the late 1350s Š./1970s the traditional petit bourgeois and their employees constituted more than a quarter of the urban work force (Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1981, p. 245; Banūʿazīzī and Ašraf, 1359 Š./1980, p. 43).

Master artisans and shopkeepers of each craft or trade were linked in informal groups known as aṣnāf , headed by elders (rīš-safīds, lit. “graybeards”), who rose gradually to positions of leadership through informal processes and the consensus of their peers. A particularly significant mechanism of social cohesion and collective action was the informal religious gathering (hayʾat-e maḏhabī), at which members of the same occupation, residents of the same neighborhood, or recent migrants from the same village or town met periodically face to face, thus reinforcing common religious, interpersonal, cooperative, and political ties (see Thaiss, p. 202).

The religious hierarchy. Under the Pahlavis the Shiʿite clerical establishment lost many of its traditional functions in society, though it was successful in maintaining relative independence from the state. The relationship between these groups and the state was in fact often strained and at times antagonistic. The hostility of the Pahlavi regime toward the religious hierarchy began shortly after Reżā Shah’s accession to the throne in 1305 Š./1926 and included a forceful campaign to change the dress (ʿabāʾ wa ʿamāma) of the ʿolamāʾ, to end the exemption of religious students from military conscription, and to require young clerics to take external examinations for the purpose of determining their academic status. Reżā Shah’s transfer of the judicial and educational functions of the ʿolamāʾ to the secular institutions of the modern state severely weakened their political and economic position (Ḵomeynī, 1323 Š./1944, pp. 271-74, 302-3; idem, 1981, pp. 333-34; idem, 1361 Š./1983, I, pp. 46, 168, 247, 269, V, pp. 153-54; Rāzī, I, pp. 46-51). The decline in their social status and the gradual shrinking of opportunities for gainful employment in their traditional roles forced many ʿolamāʾ and religious students to change their attire and to seek employment in such modern institutions as secular public schools, the Ministry of justice, and offices for the registration of titles and personal status (Rāzī, I, pp. 46, 51-53). The number of students in religious schools (madrasas) dropped from 6,000 in 1304 Š./1925 to as few as 800 in 1320 Š./1941 (Akhavi, p. 187).

After 1320 Š./1941 members of the religious hierarchy regained some of their old privileges. Contributions from their followers increased steadily. Many ʿolamāʾ returned to their traditional attire, and more students were attracted to religious schools, nearly 7,500 in 1347 Š./1968 (Akhavi, p. 187). Furthermore, authorities at Qom, the theological center of the country, adopted a more receptive attitude toward modern education. They began to admit graduates of modern schools for the first time and, starting in the 1340s Š./1960s, allowed their own advanced students to pursue further studies at secular universities in Persia (see, e.g., Ḥojjatī Kermānī, in Iran Times, 13 January 1988, p. 8).

By the late 1350s Š./1970s Qom had emerged as a significant center of power. The best-known religious leaders in the city at that time were three grand ayatollahs (Sayyed Moḥammad-Kāẓem Šarīʿatmadārī, Moḥammad-Reżā Golpāyagānī, and Sayyed Šehāb-al-Dīn Najafī Maṛʿašī), who, together with some ten other prominent ayatollahs (ʿolamāʾ-ye aʿlām), constituted the leading group within the hierarchy (ʿolamāʾ-ye ṭerāz-e awwal). There were also about fifty professors (modarresīn) of advanced (dars-e ḵārej) and upper-middle (soṭūḥ-e ʿālīya) courses, who occupied the second rank within the hierarchy (ʿolamāʾ-ye ṭerāz-e dovvom). Combined with some twenty leading provincial clerics (ʿolamāʾ-ye belād) and senior instructors at other religious centers in Mašhad, Isfahan, Hamadān, Tabrīz, Ahvāz, Shiraz, and Tehran, these individuals were the core of the ʿolamāʾ in the more specific connotation of the term, that is, clerics of great learning in the fields of Islamic jurisprudence and sciences. Other members of the ʿolamāʾ included about a thousand “men of knowledge” (fożalāʾ), “respected elders” (moḥtaramīn wa moʿammarīn), sons of grand ayatollahs with clerical attire (ayatallāhzāda, āqāzāda), preachers (woʿʿāẓ), about 3,000 prayer leaders in principal mosques (pīšnamāz, emām-e jamāʿat) in major cities, and about 8,400 students (ṭollāb; Rāzī, II, passim; Fischer, pp. 79-83; Akhavi, pp. 187-208). In addition, there were more than 10,000 “men of the turban,” often from semiliterate lower-class backgrounds, who served as reciters of verses about the martyrdom of Imam Ḥosayn and his family in Karbalāʾ (rawżaḵᵛāns), reciters of prayers (zīārat-nāmaḵᵛāns) during pilgrimages (zīārat) to the holy shrines, and rural clerics (āḵūnd-e deh). According to the 1355 Š./1976 census, the total number of clerics was 23,476, which appears to have been too low a figure (see Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1981, p. 95). In 1354 Š./1975 the total enrollment at the Qom madrasas was 6,414 students, of whom about 70 percent had begun their religious education at modern elementary schools (Fischer, pp. 79-80; for the style and the contents of the curricula of religious schools, see Mottahedeh, pp. 69-109; Fischer, pp. 61-103). Of 282 students at one of the schools in Qom (Madresa-ye ḥaqqānī), for instance, about 45 percent came from peasant families, 20 percent from urban clerical families, 17 percent from urban artisan and shopkeeper backgrounds, and 7 percent from urban working-class backgrounds (10 percent came from unknown or other backgrounds; Fischer, p. 80). Other religious centers, including those at Mašhad, Isfahan, Hamadān, Tabrīz, Ahvāz, and Shiraz, enrolled about 2,000 students, many of whom received more advanced training for a period of six months a year at Qom. Students received from the grand ayatollahs small monthly stipends, which in the mid-1350s Š./1970s ranged from 1,500 rials ($22) to 4,700 rials ($69), depending on their academic level (moqaddamāt, saṭḥ, and ḵārej) and marital status (Fischer, p. 81). The ṭollāb were regularly dispatched to various parts of the country to perform religious services, which significantly expanded the influence and capacity for mobilization of the religious hierarchy at Qom.

The state and the politics of the ʿolamāʾ. In its relationship with the Pahlavi regime the religious establishment remained either collaborationist or accommodationist during much of the 1300s Š./1920s and 1310s Š./1930s. In this respect they followed the example of Ayatollah ʿAbd-al-Karīm Ḥāʾerī, who founded the center at Qom and led it during the period 1301-14 Š./1922-35; his successors maintained this stance until 1340 Š./1961 (Rāzī, I, pp. 22-51; Rūḥānī, I, pp. 890-96, II, pp. 549-89; Akhavi, pp. 117-58). In the face of a new challenge from the Westernized Marxist and liberal-nationalist intelligentsia in the 1320s Š./1940s and early 1330s Š./1950s, the majority of the ʿolamāʾ sided with the royal court and the propertied classes. Although some of them supported the movement to nationalize oil during the first phase (1329-31 Š./1950-52), most sided with the monarchists during the coup in Mordād 1332 Š./August 1953 (see CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY).

In the years after the death in 1340 Š./1961 of the grand ayatollah Sayyed Ḥosayn Borūjerdī, the powerful, conservative, and accommodationist leader of the Persian Shiʿite community, the clerical establishment became more open to new ideas and leadership and became divided into three main factions. The largest, which included most of the high-ranking ʿolamāʾ; maintained the accommodationist stance of Ḥāʾerī and Borūjerdī. A second faction actively collaborated with the Pahlavi regime. Some members of this group were appointed by the shah to lead Friday prayers in Tehran and other major cities; others were attached to the state-controlled organization of religious endowments (awqāf); and still others served as advisers and officials of the Religious corps organization (Sepāh-e dīn), which had been established as part of Moḥammad Reżā Shah’s White Revolution in the 1340s-50s Š./1960s-70s (Akhavi, pp. 129-43). These clerics were often denounced by Ayatollah Khomeini and his circle as “clerics of the palace” (āḵūnd-e darbārī; Komeyni, 1357 Š./1978, pp. 199-204; for the collaborationist ʿolamāʾ in Mašhad, see Ḵāmenaʾī, pp. 45-47).

Beginning in the early 1340s Š./1960s, a small group of militant clerics formed a third group within the religious establishment at Qom. Capitalizing on resentment engendered by land reform, women’s suffrage, the extension of diplomatic immunity to American military advisers in Persia in the early 1340s Š./1960s, and similar issues, this group rallied around the charismatic Ayatollah Khomeini, who soon emerged as a figure to be emulated (marjaʿ-e taqlīd), with the title “grand ayatollah” (āyat-Allāh al-ʿoẓmā). His young, politically active disciples had often been critical of the apolitical stance of the religious leaders at Qom and Najaf and were designated āḵūnd-e sīāsī (“political clerics”) by the more conservative ʿolamāʾ (Hāšemī Rafsanjānī, p. 19; Rūḥānī, I, pp. 623-24; see also Ashraf, 1990, pp. 113-21).

The most remarkable feature of the religious establishment in Persia under the Pahlavis was its resilience in the face of modernization, secularization, and state intervention. Following a period of retreat (1300s-10s Š./1920s-30s), the hierarchy made the necessary doctrinal and organizational adaptations to the new economic, political, and cultural environment in the country. Using modern means of communication, as well as informal networks, the leaders at Qom improved their capacity for collecting and distributing religious taxes and used their resources for educational, charitable, and political purposes. They attracted hundreds of new students from many parts of the country on a full-time or seasonal basis, thus guaranteeing the spread of their influence throughout the country. And, finally, in an even more active attempt to counter the encroachment of Western culture and secularism, a small segment of the ʿolamāʾ began in the 1350s Š./1970s to address the social and political concerns of the urban middle classes, especially the young intelligentsia, in a new, Islamic language of protest (see Ashraf, 1990, pp. 120-21).

The working classes

In the 1300s Š./1920s almost all Persian workers were still employed in handicrafts and other traditional small-scale industries. For example, in Tehran, where, 5,000 master artisans and 7,000 apprentices were engaged in the various crafts in 1306 Š./1927-28 (Baladīya-ye Tehrān, pp. 72-83), only a few hundred were employed in such small, modern factories as the arsenals, textile factories, printshops, and power plants (Kayhān, Joḡrāfīā III, pp. 301-2). In the 1310s Š./1930s the size and technical competence of the industrial labor force increased. By the end of the decade there were more than 260,000 workers in the various branches of industry and mining, construction, transportation, and the crafts, more than twice as many as before World War I.

As shown in Table 49, the 75,000 workers in the traditional crafts accounted for less than one-third of the wage earners in the country—a substantial drop from their 80 percent share twenty-five years earlier. The establishment of several large factories, including the state arsenal (2,300 workers), the state tobacco plant (3,300 workers), and several major textile mills (500-1,000 workers each) in Isfahan and Tabrīz, raised the proportion of workers in large industrial enterprises (Persia, pp. 457-64; Wezārat-e kār, 1947; Būletan-e Bānk-e mellī-e Īrān, 1312-20 Š./1933-41, various issues). By the early 1320s Š./1940s, 29,930 workers, nearly one-third of the industrial labor force, were working in plants with more than 500 workers (Abdullaev, p. 86). In the same period the proportion of seasonal workers in the total industrial labor force decreased from 15 percent to 6.5 percent (Abdullaev, p. 90). These changes were not accompanied, however, by any large wage increases in the modern industrial sector during the 1300s Š./1920s and 1310s Š./1930s. Thus, for example, in such industries as cotton cleaning, textiles, and railroad construction the average daily wage was still about 3 qerāns for unskilled and 7-8 qerāns for skilled workers, only a modest increase over the prevailing wage two or three decades earlier. Women in unskilled positions, even when they performed work similar to that of men, were paid an average of 1.5 qerāns a day, while children received even less, about 1 qerān a day (Abdullaev, pp. 102-5; for labor conditions in this period, see Floor, pp. 99-118).

Table 49. DISTRIBUTION OF THE PERSIAN WORKING CLASS IN VARIOUS INDUSTRIES IN THE LATE 1310s Š./1930sView full image in a new tab

The industrial working class continued to expand during the 1320s Š./1940s and 1330s Š./1950s. In the period 1320-35 Š./1941-56 the number of workers in large industrial establishments (employing ten workers or more) rose from about 40,000 to 70,000 (see Table 50). In the next twenty years there was a major acceleration in the pace of industrialization, and the number of industrial workers employed in large establishments increased dramatically, from 70,000 to 400,000. By 1355 Š./1976 there were approximately 1.25 million wage earners in production and related activities, including 750,000 in industries, mines, and related occupations and 500,000 in construction (Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1981, pp. 68, 85; these figures do not include workers in the service sector and self-employed artisans and shopkeepers).

Table 50. NUMBER OF INDUSTRIAL UNITS AND WORKERS IN LARGE ESTABLISHMENTS,* 1320-55 Š./1941-1976View full image in a new tab

At the top of the labor pyramid, in terms of social status, job security, and wages, were workers in more than 800 large-scale (employing 100 or more workers) modern industrial establishments in the oil industry, petrochemicals, steel, machine tools, manufacturing to replace various imports, and transportation. Members of this “labor aristocracy,” who constituted as much as one-third of the labor force by 1355 Š./1976, received wages that were five times the average for the majority of industrial workers (Halliday, pp. 189-90). “By 1976 real wages were double their 1969 level, and by 1978 workers’ purchasing power in the larger manufacturing establishments was 50 per cent higher than in 1974” (Hakimian, p. 13). The remaining two-thirds of the work force consisted of semiskilled and unskilled workers in construction, mining, small-scale industries, and services in urban areas. “Taken in money terms [construction workers’] wages had gone up tenfold in these two decades [1338-57 Š./1959-78]; but even allowing for stagnation up to 1976, their real wages in 1978 were three times better than in 1959” (Hakimian, p. 13). In the lower echelons of the labor force must be included more than a half-million impoverished self-employed workers in the so-called “informal sector” and those in low-paid services, many of whom lived in slum areas and on the margins of cities along with poor rural migrants (see, e.g., Kazemi, pp. 46-67).

The industrial working class and collective action. Despite its relatively small size, the working class in the 1300s Š./1920s was involved in intense and even radical political and union-building activities. For the most part this activity was stimulated by the organizing efforts of the Persian Communist party with indirect help from the Soviet Union (Kayhān, pp. 8-13; Floor, pp. 12-53; see COMMUNISM i). In the last decade of Reżā Shah’s reign there was a policy of repression of organized labor, including imprisonment of labor-union leaders and their supporters among the radical intelligentsia (Floor, pp. 57-58; Kayhān, pp. 11-15; ʿAlawī, passim).

From 1320 Š./1941 to 1332 Š./1953 trade-union activity reached an all-time peak, under the leadership of the Tudeh party, which formed the United central council of trade unions of workers and toilers of Iran (Šūrā-ye mottaḥeda-ye markazī-e etteḥādīyahā-ye kārgarān wa zaḥmatkašān-e Īrān) under the leadership of the veteran communist politician and labor organizer Reżā Rūstā (Floor, pp. 15-28; Ladjevardi, pp. 28-69). At the height of its influence in 1325 Š./1946 the council claimed the loyalty of some 300,000 workers (World Trade Union Movement, December 1949, pp. 30-31; Abrahamian, 1981, p. 186). It was particularly active in Tehran, Isfahan, and Ābādān, where it helped to organize a number of strikes in the mid-1320s Š./1940s. In the period 1325-30 Š./1946-51 the trade unions were suppressed, and government-sponsored unions were organized. However, labor unions resurfaced during the Moṣaddeq era (1330-32 Š./1951-53: Abrahamian, pp. 187-93; Ladjevardi, pp. 70-94).

From the coup of 1332 Š./1953 until the Revolution of 1358 Š./1979 workers were again prevented from organizing independent labor unions. The period from the coup until 1341 Š./1962 was perhaps the nadir of labor assertiveness, with only thirty inactive syndicates officially registered. After a decision by the government in 1342 Š./1963 to allow the formation of labor unions under the control of the Ministry of labor, the number rose from sixteen in 1343 Š./1964 to 519 in 1352 Š./1972. In order to control these syndicates, the government established an umbrella organization, the Workers’ organization of Iran (Sāzmān-e kārgarān-e Īrān) in 1346 Š./1967 (see Wezārat-e kār, 1352 Š./1972, pp. 116-18, 124). In the meantime leftist groups continued to be active, though under severe restrictions, among industrial workers; the pace and scale of their activities intensified in the 1350s Š./1970s (Kayhān, pp. 28-32). Of 140 strikes in the period 1349-56 Š./1970-77, 83 percent took place in industrial establishments with 100 or more workers. Seventy percent of these strikes were peaceful, and in more than half of them the workers’ demands were met (survey by the present authors).

The agrarian classes

During the Pahlavi period the proportion of peasants and tribespeople in the population decreased from about 80 percent in the early 1300s Š./1920s to about 50 percent in the late 1350s Š./1970s. The migrating tribespeople, in particular, lost their demographic significance under the Pahlavis, declining from approximately 25 percent of the population to less than 5 percent (for the social structure of the tribes and references, see ʿAŠĀYER; ANTHROPOLOGY; see also Amān-Allāhī, passim; Beck, passim).

In the 1310s-30s Š./1930s-50s traditional relations between landlords and peasants (arbāb-raʿīyatī) achieved recognition in modern law. Although the commercialization of agriculture, population growth, rural-urban migration, and improvements in communications and transportation slowly altered rural communities over these decades, the overall condition of the peasants, in both absolute and relative terms, remained poor. The peasant continued to be “constantly in need of money for capital requirements to replace livestock and agricultural implements, and for current expenses such as provision of seed. Often, too, he had to borrow merely to feed himself and his family … . His only remedy when driven to extremity was to leave the land to seek a possibly even more precarious living in the town” (Lambton, 1969, pp. 29-30).

At the beginning of the 1340s Š./1960s the rural population of Persia, accounting for about two-thirds of the total, was divided into three major classes: peasant proprietors and petty landowners, sharecroppers and tenant families (raʿīyat in the more specific connotation of the term), and landless villagers known as ḵošnešīns, who were at the bottom of the village class structure. These strata comprised respectively about 25 percent, 40 percent, and 35 percent of the rural population (Edāra-ye āmār-e ʿomūmī, 1962, XV, table 101; Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1968, p. 119).

The land-reform program of the 1340s Š./1960s modified traditional arbāb-raʿīyat relations, forcing landowners to sell all or part of their property to the occupant sharecroppers (Ashraf and Banuazizi, 1980, pp. 33-35). As a result, ownership of 6-7 million ha of agricultural land (52-62 percent of the total) was transferred to sharecroppers and tenant farmers (estimated from Edāra-ye āmār-e ʿomūmī, 1962, table 101; Ḵosravī, pp. 6-8, 63-66, 98-100, 142-45, 162-64, 189-91). After land reform small landowners and peasant proprietors came to form nearly two-thirds of the rural population. The remaining one-third consisted of landless villagers, who reaped no direct benefits from the reform program.

The new rural strata included prosperous villagers, the middle peasantry, and poor villagers. The prosperous villagers comprised small landowners and peasants, traders, and moneylenders, as well as government functionaries stationed in larger villages. The small landowners were those who had either owned land or had been well-to-do sharecroppers or village traders before the reform (Lambton, Landlord and Peasant, pp. 275-82). Their numbers increased owing to recognition of the property rights of smallholders and the sale of land to occupant sharecroppers. In addition, villagers with small amounts of capital gradually acquired their own plots either from the old landowners or from peasants through moneylending or purchasing crops before the harvest (Keddie, pp. 383-88). The number of prosperous peasants and small commercial farmers, who owned most of the plots from 10 to 50 ha (45 percent of the total arable land), is estimated at about 400,000 households for the mid-1350s Š./1970s (Ketāb-e āgāh, p. 180).

Village traders, moneylenders, and lessors of agricultural implements (oxen, tractors, mills, etc.) formed the second component of the village upper class. As a group, they “control[led] the major portion of rural capital and credit and thus exercise[d] an influence upon the whole production system” (Hooglund, p. 232). After land reform the prosperous villagers, who had previously ranked below the traditional absentee landowners and their bailiffs, moved into the top stratum of the village social structure. They consolidated their position, furthermore, by establishing working relations with the various government functionaries and serving in such newly formed rural organizations as village councils, cooperative societies, houses of equity (ḵāna-ye enṣāf), cultural units, and government-sponsored party cells—all of which were created by the state in the years immediately following adoption of the land-reform program (Ashraf, 1991, pp. 286-87; Kešāvarz, p. 118).

The middle peasantry, which substantially increased in numbers owing to land reform, consisted mainly of former sharecroppers, tenant farmers, and ordinary family owners and peasant proprietors. In the mid-1350s Š./1970s the core of the middle peasantry comprised 930,000 owners of plots from 2-10 ha (28 percent of total arable land; Ketāb-e āgāh, p. 180).

The lower stratum of the peasantry consisted of landless villagers and peasants with plots too small to support a family. In the mid-1350s Š./1970s about 1.1 million holdings (45 percent of the total) were less than 2 ha, accounting for about 5 percent of the total agricultural land (Ketāb-e āgāh, p. 180). Landless villagers, whose number had increased substantially as a result of rapid population growth after World War II, constituted as much as one-third of the rural population in the 1350s Š./1970s. According to the census of 1355 Š./1976, of approximately 2.4 million persons employed in rural areas, 1.1 million were landless agricultural workers and 1.3 million were workers in village industries and services. Half a million of the total were unpaid family workers (Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1981, p. 88).

All villagers, regardless of their position in the social structure, benefited from the economic boom that began in the mid-1340s Š./1960s. The annual expenditure of rural households, at constant prices, increased from about $1,000 in 1344 Š./1965 to about $2,000 in 1354 Š./1975 (Ketāb-e āgāh, p. 186). The rising incomes of villagers reflected a modest growth in agricultural productivity combined with an increase in permanent or seasonal construction, factory, or other work in neighboring—and, at times, more distant—urban areas. The improvements in conditions resulting from land reform and economic growth may account for relatively high levels of peasants’ satisfaction with their living conditions reported by several researchers in the late 1350s Š./1970s (see, e.g., Dowlat, Hourcade, and Puech, passim; Mahdawī, pp. 59-64; “Current Political Attitudes,” p. 5) and for their failure to participate in the Revolution (Ashraf, 1991, pp. 288-89).

Social inequality and poverty

During the Pahlavi period the standard of living of all classes improved, owing to economic growth; heavy investment in public utilities and communications networks; expansion of public-health, education, social-security, and medical services; and the removal of many traditional obstacles that had restricted the participation of women in public life, education, and employment (Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1355 Š./1976, pp. 35-72, 157-90, 315-32; idem, 1973, passim). However, many of the long-standing disparities in the distribution of resources persisted, and the economic boom of the last fifteen years of Pahlavi rule contributed to a further deepening of the economic inequalities among classes and regions.

Longitudinal data, including distribution of household expenditures by size of household, three national censuses of population and housing(1956, 1966, 1976), and a variety of other economic and social statistics, make it possible to assess the changing patterns of social inequality in Pahlavi Persia for the period beginning in the late 1330s Š./1950s (Pesaran). First, even before the oil boom of the early 1350s Š./1970s Persia had one of the most skewed patterns of income distribution in the world (International Labour Office, 1972, app. C, p. 6); however, a small moderating trend began in 1354 Š./1975. Second, living standards in the countryside were much lower than in urban areas (the ratio between urban and rural income, according to one estimate, was 4:1 in the early 1350s Š./1970s; Mehran, 1975a, p. 21), and the relative position of rural households declined even farther during the period of rapid economic growth. Third, income, as well as other resources, was more unevenly distributed in urban than in rural areas. Fourth, employment factors, including both employment status (i.e., employer, selfemployed, or employee for either wages or salary) and economic sector (i.e., agriculture, industry, services), were more closely associated with income disparities than were regional factors or urban-rural differences. Fifth, the low and regressive taxes levied by the central government had very little impact on income distribution (Mehran, 1975b, passim).

The percentage of the population living in poverty, as defined by the “poverty line” of $800 per average household per year established by the World Bank in 1971, declined from 54 percent in 1350 Š./1971 to 28 percent in 1354 Š./1975; for urban households the decline was from 34 to 15 percent and for rural households from 68 to 41 percent. Of those living in poverty 74 percent were in rural areas, 54 percent worked in agriculture, and 84 percent were illiterate (van Ginneken, 1980, pp. 640, 643-44). Starting in the late 1340s Š./1960s higher urban wages lured hundreds of thousands of landless villagers to the major cities, where they often lived in shantytowns and squatters’ settlements. The stark contrast between the abject poverty of the new rural migrants and the ostentatious life-styles of some affluent urban families became an embarrassment to the government. Particularly in Tehran, attempts by municipal authorities to evict squatters led to confrontations between the poor migrants and security forces (Čerīkhā-ye fedāʾī-e ḵalq-e Īrān, 1978a; Kazemi, pp. 77-88).

Inequality also persisted in housing, education, nutrition, and access to medical and other public services (see Banūaʿzīzī and Ašraf, 1357 Š./1978). Differences between urban and rural areas, among provinces, and especially between the capital and the rest of the country were dramatic (on regional disparities, see also Nattagh; Amirahmadi and Atash; and Aghajanian). Thus, for example, in 1354 Š./1975 the number of persons per physician was 974 for Tehran, 2,855 for the country as a whole, and for provinces like Īlām, Zanjān, Lorestān, and Hamadān two to three times higher than the national average (Kīūmehr, p. 184). The proportion of the school-age population (six to fourteen years old) attending school in 1351 Š./1972 ranged from 76 percent in Tehran to about 40 percent in Kurdistan, Lorestān, Sīstān, Baluchistan, and other underdeveloped provinces (ʿAmmadī, p. 261). In the same year 83 percent of urban families had electricity, and 68 percent had running water; for rural households the corresponding figures were 12 and 5 percent (Kāzemīpūr, p. 208).

The status of women improved substantially under the Pahlavis (Sanasarian, pp. 79-105; Bāmdād, passim). Notable achievements included universal suffrage (Bahman 1361 Š./February 1963); the family-protection laws (Qānūn-e ḥemāyat-e ḵānevāda of 1346 Š./1967 and 1354 Š./1975); a higher rate of female literacy (from 8 percent in 1345 Š./1966 to 36 percent in 1355 Š./1976) and education; and greater participation of women in the labor force (Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1352 Š./1973, pp. 20-95; idem, 1981, pp. 25-69; Mirani, pp. 76-81). In all these areas, however, the principal—though by no means the exclusive—beneficiaries of the changes were urban middle-class women.

Social mobility

Between the early 1300s Š./1920s and the late 1350s Š./1970s Persia experienced significant changes in the sizes and boundaries of its social strata, as well as considerable individual mobility across class lines. First, there was the general shift from agriculture to industry, beginning with Reżā Shah’s modest industrialization program and continuing at a much more rapid pace during his son’s reign, particularly in the 1340s Š./1960s and 1350s Š./1970s. At most levels industrial work required more education and technical competence than agriculture and offered greater social prestige and opportunities for advancement.

Second, migration from the countryside to the city provided another basis for mobility. Having remained fairly constant at about 21-22 percent for the first four decades of the century (Bharier, 1971, p. 25), the proportion of the Persian population living in cities increased dramatically in the following three decades—to 31 percent in 1335 Š./1956, 38 percent in 1345 Š./1966, and 47 percent in 1355 Š./1976 (Markaz-e āmār-e Īrān, 1981, pp. xvi-xvii). Although the prospect of better jobs was the chief motivation for migrants from the countryside (Hemmasi, p. 112), the cities also provided more opportunities for children to advance beyond their parents’ stations in life.

Third, the rapid expansion of the military and civilian bureaucracies under the Pahlavis swelled the ranks of the modern urban middle class. The increasing reliance of employers, particularly in the public sector, on educational credentials as prerequisites for employment ensured that education would be the main means by which individuals from working-class or lower middle-class backgrounds could achieve middle-class status.

Fourth, the relaxation of state control over the economy after the departure of Reżā Shah in 1320 Š./1941 and the economic opportunities created by World War II provided many avenues for further development of the commercial and industrial bourgeoisie, most of whom had been bāzār merchants, commercial agents, or prosperous shopkeepers. During the 1340s Š./1960s and 1350s Š./1970s the land-reform program and subsequent expansion of the industrial and service sectors helped to replace great landowners with an industrial-commercial bourgeoisie and a professional-bureaucratic intelligentsia. These processes expanded the size of the privileged urban strata and introduced greater diversity within their ranks.

A survey of 1,800 male heads of households in Tehran and Shiraz in 1356 Š./1977 illustrates these changes (Banūʿazīzī and Ašraf, 1359 Š./1980). In Tehran 40 percent of their fathers had worked in agriculture, and more than 10 percent of the heads of households themselves had begun their careers in that sector. The industrial sector, in which 38 percent of respondents were employed at the time of the survey, had been the entry point into the labor market for 40 percent, whereas only 18 percent of respondents’ fathers had worked in that sector. The service sector, where 61 percent of the respondents were employed in 1356 Š./1977, had served as the entry point for 49 percent of the men and had employed 40 percent of their fathers. Thus, the two generations of workers who had lived under the Pahlavis had moved from agriculture to industry and, to a lesser degree, from both agriculture and industry into the service sector. The Tehran survey showed high rates of upward and downward social movement over the two generations. For example, the proportion of sons who held jobs comparable to those of their fathers ranged from 48 percent among manual workers (18 percent having moved down, 34 percent having moved up) to 36 percent among white-collar employees (26 percent having moved down, 39 percent having moved up), 28 percent for the traditional middle class (shopkeepers and craftsmen, 34 percent having moved down, 38 percent having moved up), 10 percent for lower-level service workers (3 percent having moved down, 87 percent having moved up), and 18 percent for upper-level professionals (64 percent having moved down; 18 percent having moved up). The pattern of intergenerational mobility for Shiraz was generally similar to that of Tehran.

Social classes and the Revolution of 1357 Š./1979

Three groups provided the leadership, ideological formulations, and financial backing for the Revolution: the young intelligentsia, the militant ʿolamāʾ, and the younger generation of the bāzār community. White-collar workers in the public sector and industrial workers joined in only in the later stages of the Revolution, but they broadened its social base and staged strikes that pushed the economy to the verge of bankruptcy and ultimately incapacitated the state apparatus. The urban poor and rural migrants were involved in mass demonstrations and occasional violent confrontations with the police and the army, but they functioned primarily as auxiliaries to other groups, rather than on their own initiative. Finally, the peasants played no significant role in any phase of the revolutionary movement (Ashraf and Banuazizi, 1985, pp. 25-35).

University students, dissident intellectuals, writers, human-rights activists, and lawyers were the first to challenge the regime openly. žTaking advantage of the government’s relaxation of curbs on political dissent in the early months of 1356 Š./1977, they initiated a variety of peaceful actions, including the circulation of open letters, protest meetings, nights of poetry reading, and public rallies, at which they condemned government censorship and infringement on other political and civil rights (see, e.g., Kāvešgar, 2, 1366 Š./1987, passim; Eṭṭelāʿāt, 12 Bahman 1357 Š./22 February 1979, pp. 4-5; Moʾaḏḏen, passim; Pākdāman, 1365 Š./1986, pp. 61-94). Throughout the nearly two-year span of the Revolution the young intelligentsia participated more actively than any other social group in every form of protest and revolutionary activity from peaceful marches to strikes to armed insurrection. Of nearly 2,500 demonstrations in that period about one-quarter originated in secondary schools and universities; moreover, students often played key roles in demonstrations outside the schools. Secondary-school and university students, along with young bāzārīs, helped to organize and actively participated in nearly half the approximately 1,200 strikes that occurred in Mehr and Ābān 1357 Š./October and November 1978 (Ashraf and Banuazizi, 1985, pp. 25-26; Bāzargān, pp. 25, 30, 39, 45-46, 48).

Although some members of the ʿolamāʾ were actively involved in the initial stages of the Revolution, most were suspicious of the radical youth and of Ayatollah Khomeini’s militant stance and thus remained politically inactive through nearly the entire two years (Bāzargān, pp. 21-22, 39). As early as 10 Ābān 1356 Š./1 November 1977 Khomeini had exhorted them to become more active: “Writers belonging to political parties now criticize the regime. They write letters and sign petitions. You should write letters too. A hundred of the ʿolamāʾ should sign them” (Šahīd-ī dīgar, pp. 56-57).

The third major component of the revolutionary coalition was the bāzār community: merchants, shopkeepers, artisans, and apprentices. Many of the more successful tactics for agitation and revolutionary mobilization were planned and carried out by the younger generation of bāzārīs under the leadership of militant members of the ʿolamāʾ. The bāzār also provided financial support for other revolutionary groups, particularly those of the ʿolamāʾ (see Parsa, pp. 91-125).

Members of the modern middle class joined the ranks of the opposition in the later stages of the Revolution. Like the students and the bāzārīs they organized protests and strikes and intensified their efforts when they met with little or no harsh response from the government. For the most part, however, their participation was limited to making demands for higher salaries and other job benefits, staging peaceful strikes, and the like. Although they did not organize street demonstrations, they did participate in many such public protests organized by others (see Ashraf and Banuazizi, 1985, pp. 32-33).

Members of the industrial proletariat, especially those working in public enterprises, joined the Revolution at about the same time as white-collar state employees. They often struck alongside white-collar workers in the same industries, which enhanced the effectiveness of their protests and enabled them to close down many essential services and industries. Industrial workers in the private sector remained relatively inactive throughout the Revolution. During the critical months of Mehr and Ābān 1357 Š./October and November 1978, for example, strikes or protest activities were reported for only 110 (12 percent) of the country’s 773 large (100 or more workers) industrial establishments (based on a survey conducted by the present authors). The Fedāʾī guerrillas complained openly in Mehr 1357 Š./October 1978 that “a major segment of our people, especially the workers, has still not entered the field … . We demand that our combatant workers and toilers not stand silent in the face of the slaughter and massacre of the suffering masses … . Protest against the regime’s plots to stage phony, government-sponsored demonstrations by politically uninformed workers!” (Čerīkhā-ye fedāʾī-e ḵalq-e Īrān, 1978b, p. 7).

Villagers, who constituted about half the population of Persia on the eve of the Revolution, remained indifferent to the uprisings in the cities. Of 2,483 demonstrations in support of the Revolution, only 2 percent occurred in rural areas. Some peasants even took part in counterrevolutionary demonstrations, for example, those in which demonstrators opposed to the regime were attacked with clubs and the bāzārs, local offices of the Ministry of education, and homes of revolutionary activists were pillaged (for a discussion of the counterrevolutionary role of the peasants, see Ashraf, 1991, pp. 290-91).

In its final stages (Ābān-Bahman 1357 Š./November 1978-February 1979) the Revolution, having been transformed from a series of sporadic protests by a small segment of the intelligentsia to an all-encompassing mass movement, came to include virtually all urban classes and groups. The important ʿolamāʾ, despite their small numbers, played an increasingly decisive role in the movement, furnishing it with a utopian vision of a just “Islamic government” and, more important, providing in Khomeini an uncompromising and charismatic leader. Disillusionment with the Pahlavi regime and the prospect of a better postrevolutionary society helped to unite the diverse elements of the revolutionary movement until the final collapse of the government on 22 Bahman 1357 Š./11 February 1979. That victory, which came far more swiftly than anyone had expected, reflected not only the ability of the revolutionary leadership to rally the support of nearly all major social strata but also the utter failure of the Pahlavi regime to hold the allegiance of the very social classes that it had helped to create and that had directly benefited from its economic and social policies for more than half a century.