The period of reasonably free and vigorous political party activity in Iran was remarkably brief when viewed in the perspective of the very long history of that ancient land. Beginning slowly after the abdication of Reza Shah in 1941, party activity became steadily more intense until August 1953 when it was suddenly suppressed. But as brief as this period was, these twelve years witnessed patterns of political party development which deserve comparison with the experience of other developing states.

The term “developing” has been in vogue throughout the post-World War II era. But for all that the term remains a vague one. Why Iran with its recorded history of over twenty five hundred years should be classified as “developing” while the United States with a history of less than two hundred years should be classified as “developed” is not immediately obvious.

It is axiomatic that, if a language does not have a word for a given concept, that particular concept does not exist for the people who speak that language. We must therefore begin consideration of the evolution of the Ṣafavid state by making the negative statement that, for the Ṣafavids the concept of the state in any Western sense did not exist. As Minorsky has said: “it is a moot question how the idea of the State, if ever distinctly realized, was expressed in Ṣafavid terminology.” The term dawlat, meaning “bliss, felicity”, was sometimes used in an abstract way to denote the aura of beneficence which surrounded the just ruler and sheltered his subjects. Thus the principal officers of the Ṣafavid state were termed arkān-i dawlat. that is, the pillars which supported this regal canopy. So too, especially from the time of shāh ᶜAbba I onwards, the vazīr was entitled iᶜtimād al-dawla, that is, its trusty support or prop.

The object of this article is to open up to speculation a historiographical problem which the serious student of Iranian urban history necessarily encounters. This is the problem of the motivation of the authors of medieval urban histories. In studying any single work or city, it may be possible to work around the problem; but as soon as a broader approach is attempted, encompassing several cities and numerous works, it looms as a major obstacle.

The root of the problem is essentially the very richness and volume of medieval urban historical writing itself, for that is what makes the comparative study of Iranian cities potentially so rewarding. There is hardly a single major city in the Persian speaking world that has not been the subject of at least one local history. Many of these works are extant, published or unpublished; but many, many more that at one time existed have disappeared.

In this study the contribution of petroleum revenues, as a source of capital formation, for the economic development of the exporting countries is considered. Initally, the question of significance of capital as a necessary factor for economic development is investigated. The overall rate of development is greatly affected and limited by shortage of productive factors, and among the scarce factors associated with underdevelopment capital is a very important one. However, the effectiveness of capital itself is limited by the absorptive capacity of the given economy. The availability of noncapital factors and their relative elasticities not only determine the rate of development but generally in the short run set a limit to the amount of capital which can efficiently be invested. For the purpose of this study the assumption is that absorptive capacity in some of the petroleum exporting countries is not the limiting factor to economic development.