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Notes on the Economic Obligations of Peasants in Iran, 300–1600 A.D.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Farhad Nomani
Farhad Nomani*
Affiliation:
University of Tehran
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Extract

In a previous paper, on the basis of the definition of feudalism as a mode of production, it was shown that the extra-economic obligations of Iranian peasants in the period between the fourth and the seventeenth centuries resembled those obtaining under feudalism, though these obligations exhibited, also, certain peculiarities that could be attributed to the specific conditions of Iranian history. In the present paper, I will examine the other aspect of the exploitative feudal relations in Iran for the same period, i.e., the economic obligations of peasants to landlords and the state in the form of feudal rent. I will examine, more specifically, the extent of and the forms in which rent was exacted from the peasants by the landowning class and the state during the period in question.

Type
Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 10 , Issue 1-2 , Spring Winter 1977 , pp. 62 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1977

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References

Notes

1. See Nomani, Farhad “Notes on the Origins and Development of Extra-Economic Obligations of Peasants in Iran, 300-1600 A.D.,” Iranian Studies, Vol. IX, Nos. 2-3 (Spring-Summer, 1976), pp. 121-41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. Cahen, C. The Cambridge History of Islam, Vol. II, ed. by Hold, P. M. Ann Lambton, K. S. and Lewis, Bernard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 519Google Scholar; and Petrushevsky, I. P. The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. V, ed. by Boyle, J. A. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), p. 525.Google Scholar

3. Historically, feudalism in Europe has been associated with demesne farming: farming of the lords’ estate, often on a considerable scale, by compulsory labor service. This form of feudal rent was dominant during the early periods of feudalism in Western Europe and was important again in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In Russia demesne-farming with labor rent became important after the twelfth century, and continued to be the dominant form of exploitation until the twentieth century (Postan, M. M. ed., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, Vol. I [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966], pp. 305-447 and 660-739).Google Scholar

4. Ann Lambton, K. S. Landlord and Peasant in Persia (London: Oxford University Press, 1969), pp. 99 and 330-5.Google Scholar

5. Petrushevsky, I. P. Kishāvarzī va munāsebāt-i arzi dar Īrān-i ˓ahd-i Mughūl, Vol. II (Tehran: Tehran University Press, 1966), p. 142.Google Scholar

6. Lambton, op. cit., p. 306.

7. Khusrawi, Khusraw “Muzāra˓ah,” Rahnema-ye Ketab, Vol. XVII, Nos. 7-9 (October-December 1974), pp. 489 and 493.Google Scholar

8. Newman, J. The Agricultural Life of the Jews in Babylonia (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), pp. 49-61.Google Scholar

9. Petrushevsky, Kishāvarzī, op. cit., p. 142.

10. Newman, op. cit., pp. 49-61.

11. Lokkegaard, Frede Islamic Taxation in the Classical Period (Copenhagen: Branner and Korch, 1950), p. 174.Google Scholar

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid., pp. 175-6.

14. According to Najm-i Rāzī and Qummī, muzāra˓ān were those who had some of the means of production; Rāzī, Najm-i Merṣād al-ibād (Tehran: B.T.N.R., 1973), p. 519Google Scholar; and al-Qummī, Hasan Tārīkh-i Qumm (Tehran, 1934), pp. 112-3.Google Scholar Atābak al-Juvaynī also mentions peasants who had some of the implements of production (Muntajab al-Dīn Badī˓ Atābak al-Juvaynī, ˓Atabat alkatabah [Tehran: Shirkat Sahami Chap, 1950], p. 67Google Scholar). According to Rashīd al-Dīn Fazl Allāh, before the Mongol invasion muzāra˓ān of iqṭā˓s owned draught animals and seeds (Fazl Allāh, Rashīd al-Dīn Tarīkh-i mubārak-i ghāzanī [London: Messrs. Luzac and Co., 1960], p. 346Google Scholar). Vaṣṣāf also talks about peasants who lost their means of production during the Mongol period (˓Abdulmuhammad Āyatī, ed., Taḥrīr-i tārīkh-i vaṣṣāf [Tehran: Bunyad-i Farhang-i Iran, 1967], pp. 95, 261-3 and 363Google Scholar). Many of the peasants working on the estates of Rashīd al-Dīn Fazl Allāh did not own any means of production. Therefore, Rashīd al-Dīn used to provide them with seed and draught animal in addition to land and water (Petrushevsky, Kishāvarzī, op. cit., p. 141.

15. Lokkegaard, pp. 68-9 and 174.

16. Ḥellī, Muḥaqeq-i Sharāya˓ al-islām (Tehran: Tehran University Press, 1967), pp. 272-4.Google Scholar See also Lambton, op. cit., p. 208, n. 2.

17. Ben Shemesh, A. Taxation in Islam, Vol. I (Leiden: Brill, 1967), pp. 38-9Google Scholar, and Ben Shemesh, A. Taxation in Islam, Vol. III (Leiden: Brill, 1969), pp. 102-3.Google Scholar

18. Ibid., p. 102.

19. Ibid., p. 117.

20. Taxation in Islam, Vol. I, op. cit., p. 53.

21. Lokkegaard, op. cit., pp. 68-9 and 174-5.

22. For example, see Tārīkh-i Qumm, op. cit., pp. 112-3. and Merṣād al-ibād, op. cit., p. 519.

23. ˓Atabat al-katabah, op. cit., pp. 23-4.

24. See idid., p. 52.

25. Tārīkh-i mubārak, op. cit., p. 306 and Taḥrīr-i tārīkh-i vaṣṣāf, op. cit., p. 95.

26. Tārīkh-i mubārak, op. cit., p. 306.

27. Taḥrīr-ī tārikh-i vaṣṣāf, op. cit., p. 95.

28. Mustawfī, Ḥamdullāh Nuzhat al-qulūb (Tehran: Tahoori, 1958), p. 32.Google Scholar

29. Frye, Richard N. The Heritage of Persia (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1963), p. 218.Google Scholar

30. Ḥanīfah Daynūrī, Abū Ākhbār al-ṭavāl (Tehran: Bunyad-i Farhang-i Iran, 1967), p. 75.Google Scholar

31. Al-Ṭabarī, Tārīkh al-rusūl va al-mulūk (Tehran: B.T.N.K., 1972), p. 199.Google Scholar

32. Ibid., pp. 199-201. It is interesting to note that according to Qummi land tax was first introduced and was made customary during the reign of the founder of the Sassanid dynasty (Tārīkh-i Qumm, op. cit., pp. 82-3.

33. Lambton, op. cit., p. 32.

34. Tārīkh-i Qumm, op. cit., pp. 112-2 and 120. Those who did not embrace Islam and were not enslaved upon the conquest of the country by Moslems were called ahl al-Ẕimmah. Each adult male, free ẕimmah had to pay a poll tax which was fixed in agreement with the Moslems. His lands either became waqf for the whole body of Moslems, and he was turned into a tenant, or he held it as his own. In either case, he paid a land tax on the land and its crops. He was liable to distinguish himself from the Moslems by dress and had limited civil rights. On the other hand, the Moslems guaranteed him security of life and property, protection in the exercise of his religion, and defense against others (Cahen, C. “Dhimma,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. , Vol. II [1965], pp. 227-31Google Scholar).

35. Cahen, C. “Djizya,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., Vol. II (1965), p. 560.Google Scholar

36. Pigulevskaya, N. V. and others, eds., Tārīkh-i Īrān, Vol. I (Tehran: Tehran University Press, 1970), pp. 177-237 and 260-70.Google Scholar

37. Lokkegaard, op. cit., p. 72.

38. Lambton, op. cit., p. 31. According to Abū Yūsuf Moslems paid ˓ushr on unirrigated lands and half the ˓ushr on irrigated lands (Taxation in Islam, Vol. III, op. cit., p. 130; see also Baladhuri, Futuh albuldan, Vol. II (New York: Columbia University Press, 1924), p. 447.Google Scholar

39. Lambton, op. cit., pp. 22-4.

40. Dāliīeh and dūlāb were a type of water-wheel.

41. Ibid., pp. 31-3.

42. Ibrāhīm Iṣtakhrī, Abū Isḥaq Masālik va mamālik (Tehran: B.T.N.K., 1969), pp. 136-7.Google Scholar

43. Ibid., p. 137.

44. Cahen, C. “Ikta,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., Vol. III (1970), p. 1088.Google Scholar

45. Lambton, op. cit., pp. 72-3.

46. Petrushevsky, Kishāvarzī, op. cit., pp. 192-6.

47. Ibid., pp. 205-6.

48. Petrushevsky, op. cit., p. 531.

49. See Lambton, op. cit., p. 94 and Petrushevsky, Kishāvarzī, op. cit., pp. 194-201.

50. Ibid., pp. 199-201.

51. Lambton, op. cit., p. 94.

52. Petrushevsky, Cambridge, op. cit., p. 531.

53. See al-Juvaynī, Tārīkh-i jahān-gushā, Vol. II (Leiden: Brill, 1912), pp. 229-30 and 269-78.Google Scholar

54. Petrushevsky, Kishāvarzī, op. cit., pp. 207-16.

55. According to Baladhuri, the inhabitants of Qumm, Ray, Ardabil, Gurgan, Tabaristan, Shapur and Istakhr refused to pay the kharāj in the early period of the Islamic occupation. However, their rebellions were suppressed and sometimes peasants were forced to pay even higher taxes (Baladhuri, op. cit., pp. 41, 45, 130 and 133). At the time of the Abbassids also there were frequent rebellions according to Qummī (Tārīkh-i Qumm, op. cit., p. 163).

56. Belyaev, E. A. Arabs, Islam and the Arab Caliphate (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), p. 210.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., pp. 216-22.

58. Quoted in Petrushevsky, Cambridge, op. cit., p. 494.

59. Ibid., p. 439.

60. Balkhī, Ibnu'l Fārs-Nāma (London: Cambridge University Press, 1921), pp. 90-3.Google Scholar

61. Al-Jūvaynī, Vol. II, op. cit., pp. 223 and 244. Exorbitant taxes and rents made peasants flee their villages. The poet Nīzārī talks about a village in Kuhistan whose peasants had deserted it because of the oppression of a tyrant landlord. Rashīd al-Dīn also speaks of mass flights of peasants. Speaking of one of these incidences, he says: “When the tax collectors went around the locality, they found some villain or other who knew the houses, and at his direction discovered the people in corners, cellars gardens, and ruins. If they could not find the men, they seized their wives. Driving them before them like a flock of sheep, they brought them to the tax official who had them hung up on ropes….” Quoted in Petrushevsky, Cambridge, op. cit., pp. 527-8. Rashīd al-Dīn also speaks of mass flights of peasants in Yazd and Bam (ibid.)

62. Frye, op. cit., p. 218.

63. Ibid.

64. Lambton, op. cit., pp. 32-3.

65. Masālik va mamālik, op. cit., p. 136.

66. Tārīkh-i Qumm, op. cit., pp. 101-6 and 186.

67. Ibid., pp. 112-22.

68. Ibid., pp. 120-2.

69. Ibid., p. 152.

70. Ibid., p. 143.

71. Lambton, op. cit., p. 72.

72. Petrushevsky, Kishāvarzī, op. cit., p. 196.

73. According to Qummī tax-collectors used a yardstick shorter than regulations in lands whose tax was assessed by the measurement of the cultivated areas [Tārīkh-i Qumm, op. cit., p. 163).

74. According to Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān, the local ruler of Amul, Chalūs and Rūyān, who was under the overlordship of Tahirids, levied kharāj three times in a year. Such tyranny made the people flee to other places (Isfandīār, Ibn Tārīkh-i Ṭabaristān, Vol. I [Tehran, 1941], pp. 223-4).Google Scholar

75. Niżam al-Mulk states that the tax collectors should not “demand any tax from [the peasants] until the time comes for them to pay, because when they demand payment before the time, trouble comes upon the peasants, and to pay to tax they are obliged to sell their crops for half, whereby they are driven to extremities and have to emigrate” (al-Mulk, Nizam Siyassat-Name [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1960], p. 23).Google Scholar

76. Petrushevsky, Kishāvarzī, op. cit., pp. 216-22.