8 - Later Efforts to Revive Agriculture and Commerce

Summary

Ilkhanid Land Reforms

It behoves us to recognize the influence of Rashīd al-Dīn (d. 718/1318), an erudite and perspicacious Persian, in the crafting of Ilkhanid agricultural reforms. Between 1295 and 1312, Rashīd al-Dīn was in dialogue with a Mongolian amir, Bolad Chʾeng-Hsiang (Pūlād Chīnksānk; d. 1313), who had served Qubilai Qaʾan (d. 1294) and helped to reform the Yüan government. Bolad became the vizier’s interlocutor on scientific knowledge from China and India. A subject on which Bolad and Rashīd al-Dīn collaborated was agronomy. Rashīd al-Dīn subsequently compiled an agronomical treatise.

“Revitalization of fallow lands” (iḥyāʾ al-mawāt) became a pillar of Ilkhanid policy. Although Rashīd al-Dīn gives credit for the fiscal-legal reforms to Ghāzān, the reforms vis-à-vis hydrology and agronomy, agricultural and land taxes, will have originated with the Ilkhanate’s Persian bureaucrats. They will have impressed on the Il-Khan the decrepit state of hydrological systems; and the indispensability to state and society (namely, the Ilkhanid fisc) of improving agricultural production and stimulating tax inflows. The Ilkhanid camp was divided: Mongol elements wanted to continue with their pursuit of violent theft; while other elements recognized the logic of gentle theft over the long term. Ghāzān embodied the latter class. He supported the Persian bureaucrats.

Rashīd al-Dīn writes, “there has never been a realm more devastated than this one was recently, particularly places visited by the Mongol army.” Uncertainties arising from arbitrary and capricious laws, regulations, and imposts were thwarting new investments in agriculture and hydrology: “If anyone wants to make improvements, he doesn’t even begin for fear that it is state property or somebody’s property […]” and could be confiscated after “great expenses” were paid by him. A reasonable fear among potential investors was that a Mongol amir or local warlord, observing the success of a project funded by an investor, would swoop down and seize the asset, or extort some portion of the project’s incomes. Hence the twinned imperatives of establishing security and enforcing property rights.

The Economic Theory

“Property,” Adam Smith wrote, is “the grand fund of all dispute”:

the age of shepherds is that where government first commences. Property makes it absolutely necessary.