Of Diet and Profit: On the Question of Subsistence Crises in Nineteenth-Century Iran

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Of diet and profit: on the question of subsistencecrises in nineteenth-century Iran

Ranin Kazemi

To cite this article: Ranin Kazemi (2016) Of diet and profit: on the question ofsubsistence crises in nineteenth-century Iran, Middle Eastern Studies, 52:2, 335-358, DOI:10.1080/00263206.2015.1119123

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2015.1119123

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Of diet and profit: on the question of subsistence crises innineteenth-century Iran

Ranin Kazemi

Department of History, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA

One day in the winter of 1857, a man in Iran’s northwestern city of Tabriz killed his under-age children; immediately thereafter, he, along with his wife, committed suicide. This fam-ily had been in search of food for weeks. Upon returning home one night, the man sawhow in agony his starving wife, son, and daughter were, and thus, out of continuing frus-tration and despair, ended their misery.1 In April 1887, a desperate young woman fromthe southern city of Shiraz who was unable to obtain food for her four or five very youngchildren took advantage of the absence of her husband and committed suicide. When thehusband returned home, and found his wife dead and his unattended children weepingand crying, he too committed suicide. The children who were too young to do muchremained with the dead parents for a few days before the neighbours learned about theirplight.2 In 1871, an emaciated and extremely poor couple in the central city of Isfahankilled one of their own children, aged eight, and subsisted on the body for a few daysbefore the city authorities learned about their crime and arrested them. That same year,many others across Isfahan and other parts of the country were reduced to beggary andconsuming dogs, cats, horses, donkeys, or the blood of slaughtered animals on the floorof the butcher shops. Some had recourse to cannibalism, both necro- and homicidal.3 InTehran, the capital city, people began to raid houses and shops searching for food � orsomething valuable which they could exchange for food. Circumstances forced others toeat ‘bread’ made of sawdust, ash, and barley flour.4 Incidents such as these abounded innineteenth-century Iran. They were particularly common among the lower and lower mid-dle layers of society. This article, part of a larger project on the social history of famine andfood scarcity in modern Iran, is meant to explain the most important causes of this phe-nomenon in this period.

The problem of food scarcity in Iran or, for that matter, across the rest of the MiddleEast in the nineteenth century is yet to receive the scholarly attention it deserves. Whilethere has been some recent interest in famine in the Ottoman Empire,5 there are stillmany important questions that remain unanswered. We are yet to know, for example, thecomplete geographical extent of subsistence crises or their economic, social, and politicalramifications in the nineteenth-century Middle East. Scholars who have written aboutfood shortage have also focused on extreme cases that resulted in significant mortality.As such, we are yet to know the nature and implications of the type of subsistence crises

CONTACT Ranin Kazemi ranin.kazemi@mail.sdsu.edu

MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES, 2016VOL. 52, NO. 2, 335�358http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00263206.2015.1119123

that did not result in significant mortality but nonetheless caused extreme hardship andchronic malnutrition. With regard to Iran, we have seen a few studies of varying quality onthe Great Famine of 1869�73.6 However, the fact that the nineteenth century was aperiod of chronic food scarcity and recurring famine has eluded many historians of QajarIran.7 Few scholars have noted and written about the subsistence crises that occurredbefore or after the Great Famine. To date, no book-length study has been devoted tothese many instances of food shortage and the social crises they engendered.8 Even withregard to other periods in Iranian history, we see that very little attention has been givento this subject even though all evidence suggests that subsistence crises were an impor-tant theme in the history of this country in both earlier and later times.9

This article is meant in the first instance to demonstrate that subsistence crises, the bestknown example of which was the Great Famine of 1869�73, were by no means isolatedsocial problems in nineteenth-century Iran. It contends that food scarcity was in fact a per-vasive phenomenon, and that a long series of such crises characterized the entire century.The article argues as well that food shortage was caused by many environmental andsocioeconomic factors, but the most recurring and determining of these causes seems tohave been the business practices of certain individuals and groups who were involved inthe production and distribution of food. Time and again, we come across evidence indi-cating that they engaged in hoarding, speculation, and other forms of market manipula-tion that had become increasingly common in the nineteenth century. Of course,subsistence crises and interference in the routine working of the food market existed inthe early modern and medieval periods. My contention is, therefore, not about the unique-ness of these phenomena in the nineteenth century but rather about their scale during aperiod when Iran witnessed an at least twelvefold increase in its exchange with the inter-national market.10 As Qajar Iran began to integrate evermore into the global economy, anappreciable increase followed in the outbreaks of food shortage across the country. Muchof what is discussed in this article is thus a chapter in the history of the economic transfor-mations of Iran and the Middle East in the nineteenth century.11 The discussion belowexplains how food scarcity in Iran was in effect an upshot of what I shall call the ‘over-com-modification’ and monetization of grain in an economy that was rapidly changing and in astate of deep transition.12 Of course, grain had long been commercialized in the Iranianeconomy. As early as the Safavid period, we have records of grain production specificallyfor the export trade.13 However, the significant changes that occurred in the nineteenthcentury brought about further commercialization of grain and many other agrarian prod-ucts. So, with regard to commercialization, we are once again dealing with the question ofscale rather than uniqueness.

The most important of the great transformations that occurred throughout this periodcan be summarized under two separate but interrelated rubrics. First, we see the develop-ment of cheap, fast, and relatively easy communications between Iran and the rest of theworld. This became possible as a result of a series of reforms that brought about theadvent of steam navigation in the Persian Gulf and the Volga River, as well as the Caspianand Black Seas in the late 1830s and 1840s; the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869; thedevelopment of international postal services in the middle decades of the century (andespecially in the 1870s and 1880s); the establishment of international telegraphic lines inthe second half of the century (and particularly in the 1860s and 1870s); and ultimatelythe extension of the Russian railway system to the Caucasus and the shores of the Caspian

336 R. KAZEMI

in the early 1880s.14 These developments were more than enough to revolutionize the for-eign trade and economy of Iran. But equally important were the reforms that resulted inthe more rapid movement of ideas, goods, and individuals inside the country. The mostimportant of these changes consisted of the institution and regular publication of a num-ber of journals and newspapers in the second half of the century; the development of anational network of telegraphic lines in the 1860s and 1870s; the modernization of thepostal services from the mid-1870s onwards; the introduction of a series of legal reformsin the same time period; the centralization of the monetary system in late 1870s; theopening of the Karun River (Iran’s only navigable river) to steam navigation in 1888; andthe establishment of a modern banking system from 1888 onwards.15 It was in such anenvironment that the commercialization of grain reached a tipping point where it wascommonly seen as hard currency in a country that lacked extensive reserves of bullionand specie, and whose currency was in a state of disrepute. The increasing value of grainled certain groups to have recourse to profiteering tactics that enabled them either tohold on to their grain or to market it at ever higher prices. The scale and intensity of thisinterest in the accumulation of capital through grain (and, by implication, other commodi-ties) was peculiar to this period and thus goes a long way towards explaining the inordi-nate increase in the cases of food scarcity in the nineteenth century.

Key features

Food shortage in nineteenth-century Iran had several important characteristics. The mostcritical of these, as noted earlier, was its pervasive and recurrent nature. Food crises of onekind or another existed in Iran in the earlier periods � in the medieval and early moderneras.16 In addition, we have evidence for some cases of food shortage in the early decadesof the nineteenth century. But the number of such cases increases in the middle decadesof the century and continues to rise until, in the final decades of the century, subsistencecrises become an aspect of everyday life in just about all parts of the country.17 Even thethree Caspian provinces of Gilan, Mazandaran, and Astarabad, along with the southwest-ern province of ʿArabistan, which constituted the most productive regions of the countryin terms of agricultural output began to experience shortage of food from the late 1860sonwards.18 Other provinces (for instance, Fars in the south, Azarbayjan in the northwest,Khurasan in the east, and Kirmanshah in the west)19 which had a fair amount of food pro-duction experienced regular subsistence crises as well. Food scarcity occurred in one ormore parts of the country in just about every year in this period (see Table 1). It appears,moreover, that the gravity and geographical extent of these food crises increased overtime. From the 1850s onwards, they seem to have affected more areas in the country andcaused wider public suffering. That food scarcity was a widespread phenomenon in thesecond half of the century may be observed even in areas and regions surrounding Iran.This period witnessed severe shortage of food in places like Iraq, Syria, and Anatolia in theOttoman Empire, as well as Egypt, Ethiopia, southern Russia, and British India.20 The sec-ond half of the nineteenth century was, in other words, the age of food scarcity and fam-ine in large parts of Africa and Asia. This was particularly the case in Iran.

Subsistence crises (ightishash-i maʿkulat) in Qajar Iran as a rule affected only certaincategories in society. Not every social group suffered from them. More importantly, foodscarcity did not amount to an absolute dearth of foodstuffs in a given local community or,

MIDDLE EASTERN STUDIES 337

Table 1. Select subsistence crises in nineteenth-century Iran.

Date Location if known

1787�88 Isfahan18111812 Shiraz18151816�17 Isfahan1817 Kashan1830 Tabriz1831�35 Isfahan1833�341839 Azarbayjan and other parts of the country1847 Mashhad and Khurasan1848 Various parts of the country18491850 Darab in Fars1854 Kirman18571858�59 Isfahan1859 Kurdistan1860�61 Qazvin, Gilan, Mazandaran, Tehran, Isfahan, and Khurasan1865 Kirman and surrounding1866�67 Kashan and surrounding1869 Many different parts of the country1870 Gilan1870 Many different parts of the country1871 Many different parts of the country1872 Many different parts of the country1873 Many different parts of the country1876 Qazvin1878 Azarbayjan1879�80 Azarbayjan, Southern Iran, and other cities1880 Urumiyya and Southern Iran1880�81 Khurasan1881 Azarbayjan and Southern Iran1882�83 Qazvin1885�86 Qazvin and Fars1887�89 Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz1887 Khurasan1890�91 Tehran and Isfahan1890�96 ʿArabistan, Kirman, Rafsanjan, and Tabriz1891�92 Shiraz, Tehran, Nahavand, and surroundings1892�93 Tehran and Sari1892 Fars1893 Tehran and Fars1894 Tehran, Mashhad, and Isfahan1895�96 Tehran1895 Tehran and Tabriz1897�98 Tehran and Qazvin1898�99 Qazvin, Hamadan, Kirman, Khamsa, Yazd, and Fars1898�1905 Azarbayjan, Tehran, Kashan, Qum, and Kirman1899 Tehran1900 Qazvin1902�3 Isfahan and Yazd1902 Bandar ʿAbbas and Fars1908 Bandar ʿAbbas and Fars1914 Bandar ʿAbbas and Fars

338 R. KAZEMI

for that matter, across the country. Food shortage was in effect a sudden and sharpincrease in the price of foodstuffs. This point is corroborated by the majority of the pri-mary sources in the nineteenth century which used the term ‘inflation’ (girani) to refer tothe problem of subsistence crisis in society.21 In other words, subsistence crisis and infla-tion meant the same thing for the majority of people. The standard definitions of ‘foodshortage’ and ‘famine’ also articulate a similar point: that these forms of subsistence criseswere historically generated as a result of price inflation. Scholars who have studied famineand shortage of food in Europe, Africa, as well as in East and South Asia, have shown thatthe only difference between the two was that in the cases of ‘food shortage’ or ‘food scar-city’, we see fewer deaths, while in cases of ‘famine’, there was often large-scale mortality.But in both scenarios, there existed severe inflation in the price of foodstuffs, and almostnever an absolute dearth of foodstuffs.22 Put differently, food often existed in the localcommunity, but only some people had access to it.

In the case of nineteenth-century Iran, people likewise witnessed a rapid decline intheir purchasing power but almost never an absolute dearth of foodstuffs in their localcommunity.23 The social groups most affected by food shortage thus belonged to thelower and middle sections of the socioeconomic scale. They consisted of individuals andfamilies who did not have easy access to cash, a large amount of savings, or steadyincome through reliable employment. They were the working and the workless classesconsisting of the lower layers of the guilds, the unskilled day labourers, the peddlers, theurban poor, and the unemployed.24 That subsistence crises did not affect everyoneequally may be seen, for example, in the following observations recorded in the midst ofthe 1895�96 food shortage in Tehran:

Everything has become expensive (giran) except the earnings (mavajib) of the low-rankingservants and employees (s. nawkar). [Food shortage] does not damage anyone except thelow-ranking servants and employees. Obtaining life necessities has become one of the mostchallenging things [these days] while the preoccupation of people (mardum) is only with thismatter… . From morning till evening [they] have to endeavor to obtain daily food (ruzi).[They] have to do a thousand different things in order to obtain the [necessary] food for thatevening.25

That belonging to the lower classes of society meant being the ones who suffered mostfrom food shortage was noted time and again in the contemporary documents.26 The suf-fering of these segments of the population was rooted not only in the rising prices offood but also in the declining wages, unemployment, and lack of access to cash beforeand during such crises. This is evident in the 1879�80 food scarcity in Azarbayjan, forexample, where one eyewitness account described the situation in the following way: ‘[t]here is little or no work to be had, the usual work, spinning cotton, has failed, and at thepresent prices the wages of a day-labourer will buy rations for one, or at most, for two per-sons’ in families that were on average significantly larger and whose breadwinner wasonly one person.27 Similarly, in the 1869�73 famine in Shiraz, we have an account stress-ing the shortage of cash among the working and workless classes: ‘meat fell in price, butthis did not much help [large numbers of people] who had no money to buy evenbread’.28 In other words, a subsistence crisis in Qajar Iran, as in many other societies, wasnothing other than a rapid decline in the purchasing power of the lower layers of society.Scholars such as Amartya Sen and Meghnad Desai have argued that in many cases of sub-sistence crises across the world food supplies are not significantly reduced. It is rather the

breakdown of the ability of certain categories to exchange their labour, goods, and serv-ices for food that results in a sudden lack of access to food. In Iran, as becomes evenclearer in the following discussion, food shortage was likewise due to what Sen hasfamously called ‘a failure of exchange entitlement’.29

Another feature of subsistence crises in this period was their apparent recurrence inurban settings, in towns and cities, rather than in rural society. Circumstantial evidencesuggests that there were some instances of food shortage among the peasants, the land-less rural workers, and the lower strata of the tribal population. But these cases appear tobe documented poorly and to be fewer in number than those in urban settings. We doknow that on the occasions of severest food shortage in a given region or across the coun-try � such as the Great Famine of 1869�73 � the rural population was in fact deeplyaffected.30 We also know that people in the countryside were hardly well nourished.31 Butthey did seem to have experienced starvation less frequently than the poor and theworking classes in towns and cities. Time and again, contemporary sources observed thatgrain was cheap in the countryside but very expensive in major cities.32 This may havebeen so because people in the rural environment had direct access to the land theyworked and the food they produced. In particular, the widespread share-cropping systemin the countryside protected peasants and the tribal population from sudden inflation inthe prices of grain or other cash crops.33 This direct access allowed them not to be at themercy of a food distribution system which, as I will show below, contributed to the makingof subsistence crises in urban society. Moreover, the rural population could often engagein the type of activities that James Scott has termed the ‘weapons of the weak’ and ‘theeveryday forms of resistance’.34 These activities included stealing from landlords’ grain orother food items, or farming for their personal use a section of the land they were sup-posed to cultivate for their landlords.35 The rural population also had access to alternativeforms of grain36 and foodstuffs unavailable in towns and cities. In hungry seasons, peas-ants, the tribal population, and the landless rural workers could find green things, wild ani-mals, and fish to eat in the undomesticated spaces and commons that were so close tothem.37 These factors may have contributed to the relative immunity of rural society fromrecurrent starvation. To what extent scarcity and, in the most extreme cases, famineaffected one thus depended not only on one’s socioeconomic background � that is, onone’s belonging to the lower classes in society � but also on the extent to which one wasremoved from the processes of food production (and distribution). If one did not havedirect access to land or some form of nourishment in the countryside, one was more likelyto be affected by subsistence crises.38

Yet another key feature of the Qajar-era food shortage was its intimate connection withinflation in the price of one single food item, namely grain. Since the staple cereals for themajority of people � especially in towns and cities � were wheat, barley, and rice, themanifestation of any problem in their supplies translated into a steep rise in the prices ofthese items and their subsidiary products, the most important of which was bread. Theprices and availability of other foodstuffs (such as legumes, fruits, and vegetables) andessential goods (including fodder, fuel, and, in certain cases, clothing, shelter, and buildingmaterial)39 were also dependent on those of wheat, barley, and rice. Over the course ofthe century, cereals, especially wheat and rice, became commodified to the extent thatthey had never been before. The development of the world grain market and the integra-tion of the Iranian economy both contributed to what may be called the ‘over-

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commodification’ of grain and, ultimately, its monetization inside the Iranian economy.The increase in the use value, exchange value, and sign value of grain had reached a pointwhere anyone who could afford to stock up on grain did so in order to profit from it. Peo-ple exchanged grain as currency while the local and national governments paid some oftheir employees’ salaries in grain. In addition, taxes and rents were collected in part ingrain.40 Although the practice of giving taxes, rents, and wages in grain went back centu-ries, it is still an indication of a wider use of grain as cash among various groups in societyin the nineteenth century. More people saw grain as currency in this period in an econ-omy that suffered more than ever from the scarcity of bullion and precious metals.41 Thiswas perhaps one reason that contemporary documents referred to wheat and, sometimes,other cereals as the commodity (jins) as if grain had become the commodity par excel-lence.42 This crucial point was perhaps best illustrated in the writing of a certain shop-keeper named Muhammad Shafiʿ from the provincial city of Qazvin who composed atreatise on the subject. Like his late medieval predecessor Ahmad b. ʿAli al-Maqrizi,43

Muhammad Shafiʿ noted that the ‘scarcity of foodstuffs depends on [the unavailability of]bread’. Whenever the prices of grain and bread rose, those of ‘other food items alsoimproved’. ‘Whenever [the affairs of] the bakeries were disturbed, the prices of other fooditems increased by some 40 per cent’.44 He noted that

the explication of the damage [food scarcity causes] on the people can fill a hundred books.[But briefly put:] The first damage is that anyone who needs one batman of bread purchasestwo instead, [and this is because of the lack of security in the affairs of food]. The second dam-age is that anyone who has grain at home does not keep the right amount for one’s consump-tion. Instead, he [keeps] as much as he can in order to see what happens next [as the future isuncertain and he could always use that grain for consumption or sale]. The third damage is thatanyone who is in the business of selling grain does not sell [it]. The reason is that he wants tosee what happens next [since he may always be able to sell it for more]. The fourth damage isthat anyone who is considering selling [grain] for, say, seven tumans [per unit] thinks he cansell [it] for eight tumans. [But eventually] he ends up selling it for ten tumans. The fifth damageis that because of all this, the price of all food items go up 10 per cent on a daily basis. The sixthdamage is that the poor who live from hand to mouth cannot obtain food for themselves.45

The writing of Muhammad Shafiʿ showed how grain had, through overt commodification,become such an extremely sought-after object of economic value. It also showed that theincrease in the prices of grain influenced the prices of other essential goods. Finally, it showedthat the poor and the lower classes were the main victims of price inflation and subsistencecrises. The connection between inflation in the price of grain and inflation in the price ofother essential goods is also noted in reports about the Great Famine of 1869�73 when thesharp rise in the price of wheat, barley, and rice affected the price of all other food items andeven those of fodder, fuel, and shelter.46 Other examples abound. For instance, in the 1895food scarcity in Tabriz, we see how the price of many essential items advanced substantially.‘Rents, for example, have been advanced nearly 100 per cent. Houses which formerly rentedfor $250 a year are now commanding $500, and cheaper ones in the same proportion’.47

Socioeconomic factors

Food scarcity and famine are often associated with some form of environmental stress. Innineteenth-century Iran, we see different ecological crises contributing to the making of

subsistence crises or exacerbating them. I will discuss these environmental factors in somedetail elsewhere. Suffice it to say here that the most important of the nonhuman factorsincluded rapid climatic change and droughts, the prevalence of organisms that regularlydamaged crops, as well as the mountainous geography of Iran which forced the country’scommunications system to function only seasonally.48 Even the surge in the production ofinedible cash crops (opium, tobacco, and cotton among them) in the second half of thecentury may have had a role in bringing about recurrent food shortages.49 These factorswere all important and need to be scrutinized if we are to understand fully the manycauses of subsistence crises in this period. However, my contention here is that equallyserious were the socioeconomic factors that allowed the surplus grain in a given localityto be hoarded or exported. In fact, the majority of food shortages that I have come acrossdid not entail a significant drop in the food supplies of the local community. Manyaffected areas had a large amount of grain locked up in the local granaries; alternatively,they were exporting grain to their neighbouring regions or to foreign countries. In thesecases, environmental factors were important in initiating or, sometimes, exacerbating sub-sistence crises, but they were not the determining factors. What was most crucial was howvarious groups involved in the production and distribution of grain operated in an increas-ingly over-commodified environment where national, trans-regional, and global connec-tions allowed them to export their grain at much higher prices or alternatively to hold onto large quantities of it until such time as they could sell at the desired rates.50

In such a context, consumers were forced to stock up on grain and other life necessitiesfor several months’ to several years’ personal consumption. They would buy a large quan-tity of grain and other essential goods whenever they had the opportunity (especially dur-ing warmer months of the year or in the harvest season when these items had lowerprices). Essential goods that were hoarded by consumers during this time included wheat,barley, rice, other non-perishable foodstuffs, and other essential goods such as fuel andfodder. Middle and upper class families could accomplish the task of hoarding with con-siderable efficiency.51 But those who could not afford to stock up on grain for an entireyear remained at the mercy of speculators and grain owners for much of the year whenthe prices of these items went up. In a contemporary report pertaining to the 1879�80food scarcity in several villages of Urumiyya, we come across a rare document which givesa sense of the percentage of people who could afford to store grain for several months’ toa year’s personal consumption in a rural environment:

From inquiries in many villages we judge that of a hundred houses, 10 per cent. have a fullsupply of food for the year; 15 per cent. more have provision for six months; 25 per cent. fortwo or three months; while 50 per cent. are destitute, and with difficulty find half rations dayby day, by begging or working. In every village, there are families that, for ten or twenty days,have not tasted bread, and bread in this country is the staff of life.52

While rural society in all likelihood had better food security than did towns and cities, ithoused fewer wealthy and upper class families. So, if no more than half the population invillages could stock up on grain and other essential food items for two months or more,then the situation must have been similar or worse in urban settings where access to foodwas more restricted, but at the same time, there existed more well-to-do and elite families.This leads us to the tentative conclusion that as much as 50 per cent or more of the popu-lation in Qajar towns and cities may not have been able to stock up on grain at all and

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was dependent on the day-to-day purchases of bread and other food items. It was theseconsumers who were most affected by recurrent subsistence crises.

From service grain to official granaries

To understand the nature of subsistence crises in urban settings, we should take a closerlook at the supply chain that brought grain from the countryside to consumers. This sys-tem of grain distribution was in effect a decentralized mechanism of procurement, stor-age, and sale involving a number of different groups and organizations. Despite theseeming diversity of people taking part in the supply chain, distribution depended uponand was managed by two principal groups. On the one hand, there were the landed clas-ses and the grain merchants who constituted the ‘private’ grain owners in a given commu-nity. On the other hand, various government officials were involved in the grain sector inpart as a continuation of their official function to collect and control taxes in kind. Both ofthese categories had their own agents, dependents, and partisans, and they worked withbrokers and professional bakers to distribute their commodity to consumers in the local,national, or international market.

The local authorities had the crucial responsibility of collecting and carrying state grainfrom rural areas. These district- and provincial-level officials were in charge of collectingthe annual taxes in kind, often in grain, which both the landlords and the peasants had topay.53 The government grain collected from them amounted to a large sum and wasknown as the ghalla-yi arbabi, that is, the grain collected from the private estates. Districtand provincial governors also collected the taxes and rents in kind from the crown land;these were known as the ghalla-yi khalisa.54 In addition, the tribal population sometimesproduced grain on the land they possessed and worked. But they did so primarily as pri-vate landowners or leaseholders.55 As such, their taxes and rents in kind were collected aspart of the two types of grain noted above. These tax and rent assignments were calcu-lated through a process that involved cadastral surveys and an annual assessment of out-put in a given locality by the finance departments of the district, provincial, and nationalgovernments. Once calculated, the remittances were brought to the coffers of the localgovernments through the agency of junior officials and agents dispatched to the country-side during the harvest season.56

The involvement of these junior officers � known invariably as muhassils, mubashirs,mutisaddis, zabits, or tahvildars � in the extraction of taxes and rents allowed the latter tocome to possess a substantial amount of grain for their own private use. These officialsacquired their grain in at least three ways. First, they secured their own unofficial emolu-ments (madakhil) while collecting the remittances in kind in the countryside. Often under-paid and unappreciated, these low and mid-ranking government representativesoverestimated the taxes and rents that were due to them unless they had already receivedsignificant inducements from the tax payers.57 We have numerous reports of over-taxationand exaction by these officials; peasants and landowners often complained about theirexcesses and wrote petitions to their superiors in the area or ultimately in Tehran.58 Sec-ond, the junior officials were responsible for conveying the collected ‘state grain’ (mal-i orghalla-yi divan) to the ‘state granaries’ (s. anbar-i divani) which were located some distanceaway from the areas of production. The transportation and handling of the collectedwheat, barley, and rice gave the government officials ample opportunities to remove a

certain portion from the grain consignments. In order to keep the recorded consignmentweight unchanged, they would then introduce into the consignments extraneous ele-ments such as dust and dirt.59 In other words, junior government officials came to possessa substantial amount of grain through either exaction or adulteration. This acquisition wasthen augmented by their semi-regular salaries in kind (mavajib).60 The entire grain thatwas thus collected in the hands of junior officials was known in the Qajar administrativeparlance as ‘service grain’ (jins-i muvazzaf).61 While it is difficult to estimate the totalamount of this grain at any one point in time, it must have amounted to hundreds of ass-loads within a given locality. Whether obtained through exaction, adulteration, or pay-ments of income, the government employees now in possession of such grain would storea portion for their own personal use and sell the rest at the local market. If they couldafford to store their grain for a longer period, they might do that until such time as thegrain prices went up. Such was the customary practice of low- to mid-ranking officials.62

The fate of most of the grain stored in government silos, on the other hand, was chieflyin the hands of the higher ranking officials at district and provincial levels. This grain wasstored for three primary reasons: (1) to control the frequent outbreaks of food scarcityeither locally or in other parts of the country, (2) to address the extraordinary needs of thegovernment which included feeding the army or entertaining officials travelling on govern-ment business as a form of ‘requisition’ (suyursat),63 and (3) to balance the budget and payoff the salaries and unofficial emoluments of the district and provincial authorities.64 Itseems that in this period the significant increase in the official and unofficial expenses oflocal governments led them to devote most of their stored grain for the latter two causes.This was naturally to the detriment of preventing subsistence crises. Even worse, it appearsthat the local governments overestimated the value of the state grain in their possessionin order to balance their annual budgets. Since state grain constituted a large portion ofthe total grain available in a given locality, its sudden inflated price, set by the local govern-ment, prompted other grain dealers in the local market to raise the value of their commod-ity. This situation created a large-scale market manipulation that was described in adispatch to the shah by Mirza Husayn Khan Giranmaya who reported on the scarcity ofgrain in Azarbayjan in 1878. Having noted that people in the province were unhappy withthe shortage of food, he explained that the primary reason for the price inflation was theactions of the local authorities.

Once the [accumulated] tax in cash has proved insufficient for the expenditure and salaries [ofgovernment employees], [the local government] is forced to raise the price of the state grain[in its possession]. Because of its extraordinary expenditure, the government of Azarbayjanhas to add [a substantial amount] to the original [grain] price which was set forth [based ongeneral consideration of the local market value of grain] by its own department of finance. Inthis way, the [grain] price reaches 25,000 [dinars] per ass-load. This is in spite of the muchlower [grain] price � 15,000 [dinars] or one tuman [per ass-load] � in other parts of the coun-try. How could people possibly pay for some 120 ass-loads of grain [for their annual consump-tion] at such a high price as 25,000?65

Mirza Husayn Khan went on to speak of the impact of this situation in various districts ofthe province. Once they had raised the price of grain and appraised it at 25,000 dinars aload, the provincial authorities demanded that district governors remit back to them theequivalent cash for the total value of grain they had in their local state granaries. Theactions of the provincial authorities led the district governors to raise the value of theirgrain, and this in turn created an environment where other grain owners inflated the price

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of their commodity. This province-wide price-gouging affected the purchasing power ofvarious social groups and even led to the pauperization of a large segment of the popula-tion. ‘I swear by your majesty that there would not have been any customer had [theauthorities] priced even 100 loads of grain at 100 tumans [i.e., at a rate equivalent to10,000 dinars per one ass-load]’.66

Similar questionable market practices were common in the authorities’ dealingswith the local retailers. The district and provincial governments were responsible inmost years for allotting a certain amount of state grain to the local bakers. The gen-eral assumption here was that the private grain supply may not have been sufficientto address the entire demand of the local population. As such, the authorities weresupposed to keep a steady supply of grain to the local retailers, so as to address anypopular anxiety over food insecurity and potential price increases. The local authori-ties were, therefore, one of the three main channels for the distribution of grain in agiven local community. The other two (discussed below) consisted of the landedelites and the grain merchants. In good years and under fiscally responsible govern-ments, the authorities sold state grain within a commonly agreed-upon price rangewhich was closer to the prevalent market value of grain. Under fiscally irresponsiblegovernments, the authorities would, however, overestimate the value of their grainand sell it at a rate much higher than the market value. The mid- and low-rankinggovernment agents who were responsible for conducting these transactions on theground and conveying the state grain to the bakers would also add further extrane-ous elements to the grain in order to secure their own unofficial emoluments. In addi-tion, they would demand unjustified dues and fees from bakers. These actions wouldcreate an environment where bakers had to engage in certain unpopular practicessuch as short-selling, price-gouging, or baking adulterated flour. This scenario wasspelled out in a letter from Hajji Mirza Javad Mujtahid, a prominent local cleric inTabriz, again in connection with the food scarcity in Azarbayjan in 1878.

It is some years now that the bakeries are in the hands of [the deputy governor Fath ʿAli KhanSahib Divan]. He would give every day to each bakery between 50 batmans and one ass-loadof wheat, and he would always [sell] at a rate of one tuman and something [per unit] abovethe commonly accepted rate in the city. The agents [of the local government] would also addsome dust [in the bags of wheat] and engage in short-selling [the grain to the bakers]. In addi-tion, they would demand a certain fee [chiz-i muʿayyan] from each bakery. For these reasons,the bakers [were forced to] bake badly … . [They were put in a position where they had to]upset the weight [of bread � i.e., for their part engage in short-selling].67

Extortion from bakers (and sellers of other foodstuffs) became so common and damagingin the nineteenth century that the national authorities eventually abolished all dues, fees,and taxes on bakers (and butchers) across the country. After experimenting in 1848 andagain in 1851�52 with such a measure in the capital city, the shah accordingly issued adecree to this effect just before his assassination in 1896.68

High-ranking government officials had still other ways to profit from grain. They wouldpurchase a significant amount of grain at a low rate during the harvest season. Theywould then store this grain in their private or state silos, and market it only when the pricehad risen sufficiently. As one observer noted,

the service people in this year [of famine] when people need discounts rather than abuse pur-chase wheat … at 25,000 [dinars per unit]. They would then pay its tithe and sell that wheatback to the bakers at a rate close to seven or eight tumans [per unit � meaning 70,000 or

80,000 dinars per unit].… [There have been many cases where] the governor purchased grainat four to five tumans [per unit] and sold that very wheat back to the bakers at a rate close toseven or eight tumans.69

Government officials could also use their offices and fortunes to buy grain from one partof the country and import it into a region that was struck by price inflation. In the 1861food shortage in the Caspian city of Rasht, for example, ʿAbd al-Husayn Khan Tahvildar,the collector of the provincial revenues and manager of its customs houses, importedcheap, low-quality rice from the neighbouring province of Mazandaran, sold it in the city,and benefited by 100 per cent from the transaction at a time when people were report-edly dying of hunger. Meanwhile, he had the government-sponsored imported riceimpounded in the customs house of the port city of Anzali, so that his own personal sup-plies from Mazandaran would sell first before the imported rice, the primary means of theofficial relief efforts, caused a decline in the price of foodstuffs in Rasht.70 A similar situa-tion developed in 1853�57 in Azarbayjan when a few government officials took advan-tage of the high price of essential goods in the Russian Caucasus during and immediatelyafter the Crimean War (1853�56). Over the course of several years, these individuals tookadvantage of the lower prices of essential goods in Azarbayjan and purchased largequantities of grain and meat, along with a great number of beasts of burden, from variousdistricts in and around Azarbayjan. They shipped these goods north over the border toone of the main theaters of the conflict. Much of the export was conducted by associatesand agents of the reform-minded deputy governor of Azarbayjan, Mirza Sadiq MustawfiNuri, better known as Qaʾim-Maqam, and his close friend and reform-minded colleague,the Persian consul-general in Tiflis, Mirza Husayn Khan Qazvini (later Mushir al-Dawla).71

The provincial governor Firuz Mirza Nusrat al-Dawla, under whom Qaʾim-Maqam servedofficially, was probably aware of this profiteering scheme as well and may have beengiven a share in the proceeds of this transnational trade. Similar examples of the involve-ment of governors, as well as their associates, agents, and officials abound in the docu-ments from the second half of the century.72

The private grain owners

It may be clear by now that certain profit-oriented practices of government officials con-tributed to causing recurrent food shortages in the urban areas. But the authorities andtheir junior agents were not the only parties involved in the lucrative grain market. Privatelandowners (arbab, mallakin) and wealthy individuals who leased large tracts of land fromthe state (tuyuldars)73 also engaged in practices that tended to raise the prices of grainand other foodstuffs. The landed gentry in the nineteenth century consisted of local nota-bles, wealthy merchants, prominent clerics, and virtually anyone who had enough capitalto invest in a large tract of land.74 In their private capacity, high-ranking government offi-cials, too, were landowners. Over the course of the century, these ministers frequently pur-chased villages, arable land, and private properties of their own, and became effectivelylarge landowners in their own right.75 In addition, it was customary for the state to grantland assignments to key government officials, tribal leaders, and other magnates. Theholders of these lease agreements were then entitled to consider the proceeds of theland in question as part of their annual salaries. In many cases, these assignments wouldin fact gradually become the private property of the lease holders.76

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People who owned or leased large tracts of land were rarely actively involved in theactual crop production; it was the peasants who worked the land and harvested the crops.Their grain output was then divided between them and their landlords, or between themand the lease holders based on local customs and prior agreements.77 The grain in thehands of peasants was often set aside for seed or personal consumption.78 Alternatively,they sold it at the local market, purchased cheaper grain, and used the extra credit or cashto purchase other life necessities.79 While peasants produced most of the grain in thecountry, they appeared never to have had the luxury of hoarding a large quantity to effectprice inflation in the local market. The same can be said of smallholders. Though not on apar with the landed gentry, the less wealthy landowners were also involved in the produc-tion of grain and other cash crops. But they did not appear to have been able to storelarge quantities of grain in order to influence the market.80

Large landowners and lease holders, on the other hand, had a more significant share ofthe grain crops. Like peasants, the landed elites kept a portion of their grain for seed andthe annual consumption of their own families and close relatives. They also sold a portionof this grain on the spot and at market value. They were, in other words, the second ofthree main channels for the distribution of grain in a particular community. However,those with sufficient capital engaged in speculation and refrained from distributingall their grain in the local market. They kept a large portion in their private silos until oneof the several recurrent ‘extraordinary’ situations provided a context to market this grainat much higher prices. The most predictable of all ‘extraordinary’ circumstances occurredin the coldest months of each year when roads were unsafe for transporting goods. Dur-ing this time, the price of grain and other essential goods went up in many towns and cit-ies across the country. The purported reason was that, roads being unsafe, the import ofessential goods from the countryside into the urban centers was very difficult, costly, orimpossible. Meanwhile, the limited amount of grain already in town caused panic andprice inflation. Bakers would also begin to lower their production and create an environ-ment where grain, bread, and other foodstuffs could be sold at any price.81 In addition tothe coldest months, frequent environmental crises (such as drought or locust plagues), aswell as highly localized instances of social turmoil, political uncertainty, or tribal unrest fur-nished appropriate contexts for grain prices to skyrocket. Even rumours of such environ-mental or social crises led landowners and speculators to raise the grain price.82 Duringthese more or less predictable ‘extraordinary’ situations, private grain owners releasedtheir commodity into the local market but never to an extent that would flood the marketand bring down the price of grain and other foodstuffs. Such was the case, for instance, inthe 1879�80 food shortage in Azarbayjan where there was a limited shortfall in the out-put of grain in the province. Whatever was gathered was ‘mostly in the hands of land-owners … and they [were] holding it for seed, or storing it, hoping to get still higherprices’.83 Similar contemporary evidence suggests that these grain capitalists at timesworked together to move up prices. This large-scale, months- or years-long hoarding andspeculation continued until circumstances allowed for the grain to be sold at the desiredprices.84 Such was the case in the 1899 food scarcity in Tehran where, as a contemporaryobserver noted, ‘landowners kept their wheat in their warehouses expecting that the priceof each ass-load would reach 50 tumans or more’.85

More examples could be provided for the years 1869�73 which went down in historyas the Great Persian Famine of the century. During these years, we hear ‘wealthy

individuals’ locked up their grain in their private silos even as they witnessed firsthand thestarvation and death of their own servants and their families. ‘In each of their houses,some ten poor [servants] and [their] children died of hunger, and yet they did not givethem a bit of bread. The majority of [these wealthy individuals] had silos filled with somuch wheat that was sufficient for some ten years of their own use’.86 In Astarabad, wheregrain was generally in abundant supply, ‘holders of wheat have followed suit as in everyother place [in the country] and are after their own profit. They do not exercise fairnessand hence do not sell at prices [affordable to the general public]’.87 The involvement ofwealthy clerics who, like the local magnates and government officials, were in possessionof large tracts of land was also noted by various contemporary sources. One such reportreferred to the complicity of Mulla ʿAli Kani, the most learned and respected cleric in thecapital, in the years 1869�70.

When wheat became exceedingly expensive, His Highness [Mirza Husayn Khan] Sipahsalarloaded a large sum of money on beasts of burden and dispatched them to one of the greatjurists [in town]. He also sent [him] a message stating that because you are the highestand the most learned of all the clerics, because it is your duty to strive for the welfare of the[Muslim] faithful, and because the condition of the people has been degraded to this state …

my request is that you sell [me] at a fair and current price your surplus wheat, and get thevalue of it in cash, so that [we] may rescue a certain number of people from starvation, andyou would be considered, according to the divine decree, a partner in this meritorious act.Thinking that the price of wheat would go up further, the aforementioned cleric respondedthat he did not have any wheat [in his possession] and refrained from selling [what he hadhoarded in his warehouses]. Even more puzzling was that he retained and ultimately did notsell any of the wheat he had hoarded [ihtikar namuda bud] until the divine hand opened upthe doors of prosperity and welfare, and the spring cloud eventually eliminated the season ofdrought. Ultimately, he was disappointed at the eventual [low] price of wheat and sold hiswheat [after its price had come down considerably].88

As the account suggests, the calculations of landowners who were in possession of largeamounts of grain did not always produce the expected outcomes. Their drive to sell atever higher prices sometimes backfired and resulted in some loss. Still the general trendappeared to have been towards hoarding and speculation. To give another example, inthe 1898�99 food scarcity in Tehran, ‘the clerics and the rich’ worked together to raisethe price of wheat. ‘People who owned large amounts of wheat in Tehran through theirestates [in the countryside] were many’. But the most important of them were Zahir al-Islam who was the Imam Jumʿa of the city and Mirza Muhammad ʿAli Khan Qavam al-Dawla who was a wealthy government official. These landowners collaborated with oneanother and held on to their grain reserves until they could market their commodity atsignificantly higher prices.89

Moving beyond the landed elites, we see that grain dealers (s. tajir-i gandum or ghalla-furush) too engaged in practices that raised the price of grain. These urban-based holdersof grain often obtained their commodity from peasants, smallholders, large landowners,fellow merchants, or government officials. Some wealthy grain dealers were themselvesabsentee landlords, and had a personal connection to the land and the means of grainproduction. The general practice of these merchants was to buy up different types of grain� especially wheat and rice � in the warmer months of the year or whenever their prices(and those of the other foodstuffs) were low. They marketed a portion of this grain locallyand on a regular basis; they were thus the third of the three main channels for the

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distribution of grain in a given community. But many grain dealers kept an ever larger por-tion of this commodity in their private silos waiting for the colder months of the year orone of the aforementioned ‘extraordinary’ situations to occur.90 In many localities, itwas possible for a few grain dealers to buy up the majority of the available grain in themarket � excluding that which was already held up by the landed and political elites �and become its main distributors. It was in this capacity that they could control the marketprice of grain by lowering or withholding their regular distribution of it.91

There is ample evidence of such practices by the grain merchants. One familiarobserver, for instance, reported that when ‘the market appeared sluggish’, these grain deal-ers ‘stored their commodity, so that after some time due to [some predictable] shortagethey could sell it’ at a much higher price.92 The ‘grain holders’ could collaborate with oneanother and engage in collective hoarding in a given locality. This happened in 1871 inKurdistan, a region that was not affected by drought or any environmental stress duringthe Great Famine. ‘Grain holders found a pretext’ in the popular panic and the in-migrationof some families from neighbouring regions. As such, ‘they worked hard to raise the priceof grain’, despite the rigorous efforts exerted by the local governor to distribute a largequantity of discounted and free food.93 Similarly, the grain merchants in Yazd, as describedby Mirza Muhammad Navvab Razavi, better known as Vakil al-Tawliya, worked together todrive up foodstuff prices during the 1898�99 political transition between two governors.The upshot of this orchestrated practice was widespread food scarcity in the city; we aretold that the price of wheat, when found in the market, was close to eight qirans per bat-man.94 The market manipulation of merchants was also noted by Arthur Herbert in thecase of the 1886 famine in south and central Iran: ‘sometimes, as at present in Ispahanand Shiraz, the market is “rigged” by speculators who buy up what corn there is and storeit, thus forcing a rise for their own profit, but great distress to the poorer classes’.95

The practice of locking up grain for a few months to several years at a time had otherrepercussions. The long-term storage of grain by the mercantile, landed, and politicalelites in their private � or, for that matter, state � silos led to a situation where wealthygrain owners had different grades of this commodity: from the several-year old grainwhich was stale and chewy to recently harvested grain that was fresh and most expensive.When in times of food scarcity, the local or national authorities intervened in the crisis andset the prices of grain and bread, those who had kept grain for years marketed their low-grade products within the government-dictated price range. They would then sell theirquality grain at much higher prices in the black market. The stale and chewy grain pro-duced terrible bread which was the subject of much popular anger, while the quality grainwhen available drained the monetary resources of the lower classes.

It may be clear by now that private grain owners took full advantage of the market fluc-tuations they could predict or generate in their specific localities. But like the politicalelites, they also shipped grain to various parts of the country and more importantly to for-eign states. Private grain owners worked with colleagues, associates, brokers, or foreignfirms to export grain to one of the neighbouring countries or even distant internationalmarkets. In one of the clearest signs of the assimilation of the local and international grainmarket in this period, India, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, as well as the more distant partsof Europe and Asia, became important destinations for Iranian cereals.96 Exporting a por-tion of their grain to these countries whose grain prices were more often than not manytimes those in Iran was a common and secure way for grain owners to ensure a high profit

margin.97 International grain markets became even more lucrative during regional orinternational crises. The second half of the century was a period of incessant environmen-tal, social, and political crises in many countries across the Afro-Eurasian world and espe-cially those bordering Iran. Some of these crises have been explained by world historianMike Davis in places like southern Russia, British India, East and North Africa, China, andSoutheast Asia where food scarcity and famine became ever present throughout much ofthis time.98 Other scholars have shown that the Middle East � regions such as Iraq, Syria,and Anatolia in the Ottoman state � experienced ecological stress, food scarcity, and mas-sive social dislocation during this period.99 In addition, regional and international wars,which were by no means infrequent throughout the century, generated a promising mar-ket for grain. In fact, as noted earlier, one of the earliest instances of food scarcity causedprimarily by exporting grain to a neighbouring state occurred during and immediatelyafter the Crimean War. I have already noted the involvement of government officials inAzarbayjan and Tiflis in exporting essential goods to the Russian Caucasus. But privategrain owners were also involved in this major transnational export of grain.100

Bakers as scapegoats?

I have already explained the role of the principal grain distributors in the making of foodscarcity. But what about the retailers, the bakers (jamaʿat-i khabbaz) especially, who werecommonly accused of hoarding grain, adulterating flour, as well as overpricing andshort-selling bread in times of scarcity? In most subsistence riots that occurred through-out the century, bakeries were targets of popular violence. To protect individual bakers,and their properties and staff, the authorities often had to station police guards in frontof their shops.101 All this indicates that common people considered bakers to be one ofthe responsible parties in recurrent instances of food shortage. One of the most frequentaccusations against bakers was that they lowered their level of production at certaintimes of the year. While under normal circumstances, they baked continuously from sun-rise to three hours after sunset, in the coldest months of the year or during periods ofenvironmental or social crises, they suddenly worked only for a few hours a day. Evenworse, it was never clear when exactly during the day they were going to bake.102 Thispractice made the lives of those who lived from hand to mouth quite difficult. As Qazviniput it quite bluntly, ‘if the wretched worker [who] makes 1,000 dinars a day goes to getbread for his family, he loses his day job [as he has to wait all day in front of the local bak-ery]. [And] if he goes to work, he loses his family [since he would have no bread to takehome that night]’.103 In addition, the bread that bakers produced in winter or in times ofcrisis swiftly became more expensive, smaller in size, very distasteful, or completely inedi-ble.104 Even more troubling was the fact that bakers demanded cash for bread andthereby monetized transactions previously based on credit. Demanding cash in an econ-omy where most transactions were conducted in credit had the immediate outcome ofalienating large sections of the community who did not have steady access to cash forsuch daily transactions.105

Popular accusations against bakers were not unfounded. It is clear that bakers, likeother groups involved in the distribution of grain, did engage in practices that were meantto enhance their own financial gain. In times of crisis, they frequently cheated when sell-ing and weighing their bread. In the Great Famine of 1869�73, bakers reportedly mixedsawdust with their flour.106 In Shiraz,

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[t]he bakers baked as little bread as they could, mixing their dough in as small quantities andas slowly as possible; the loaves became gradually worse and worse, though the priceremained nominally the same. The coarse barley-bread [which was the staple food of thepoor and the lower classes] ceased to be baked altogether, and at last the bakers refused tosell to the crowds which formed at their shop doors unless they were their regular customers,and then only for ready money, and one small loaf to each person, selling by weight [whichwas common under normal circumstances] being discontinued altogether. All who hadenough ready money laid in a store of grain and flour.107

Likewise, in the crisis of 1899 in Tehran, bakers reduced their level of production, raisedthe price of bread, and mixed ‘salt’ and ‘sawdust’ in their flour.108

These reports notwithstanding, bakers were never in a position to generate food scar-city single-handedly. To be sure, they were often forced to sell expensive, distasteful, orinedible bread because, as we have seen, they were given expensive, stale, or adulteratedgrain. As Qazvini pointed out, ‘when [bakers] purchase [one ass-load of] wheat for 10tumans to 100 riyals [100 riyals were 12 tumans and five qirans], how can they sell breadfor eight tumans [per load]’?109 The bakers’ questionable practices were also a responseto the price-fixing policy of the local authorities. In times of scarcity, the governmentdemanded that bakers sell their bread within a certain price range which was almostalways below its inflated current value. When the government-sanctioned price was sig-nificantly lower than the market value of flour and bread, bakers found themselves in aposition where they had to come up with creative ways to secure their own financial sur-vival. Such factors which were frequently outside their control placed bakeries in a direand disadvantageous position. In times of scarcity, they experienced a decline in theamount of their earnings. It was in part to compensate for the uncertainty of their workand the decline in sales that bakeries took private orders in the midst of an ongoing caseof food shortage. These private orders allowed them to work primarily for a few middleclass and wealthy families for several days or weeks at a time, and gave them a reliablestream of income. Seen with a great deal of contempt by common people and known inthe popular parlance as ‘specialized baking’ (khassa-pazi), these large-scale private orderswere placed by various local families who had the wherewithal to stock up on grain fortheir own personal use. I have already explained that many of these families belonged tothe social and political elites of a given locality. By bringing their own flour to the localbakers, and monopolizing their time and resources in the midst of an ongoing subsistencecrisis, these families put bakers in an awkward position. That the latter could producequality bread but only for a small segment of the population during times of food short-age was yet another factor that agitated the famished crowd. People were frustrated byspending hours in front of bakeries watching them bake for the local elites. They wouldthen blame the bakers for being in league with the grain owners in town to starve largeparts of the local community.110

Conclusion

Subsistence crises in nineteenth-century Iran had multiple reasons. Environmentalfactors were certainly important and did often contribute to the making of foodshortage. My aim in this article was, however, to show how certain common practicesby profit-seeking individuals and groups were often the determining factors in thisprocess. The most common of these practices consisted of hoarding, price-gouging,

adulterating, short-selling, marketing stale grain, selling quality grain in the blackmarket, and ultimately exporting grain to foreign countries. It was also not uncom-mon for a handful of individuals to monopolize the supply of grain in a given areaand work together to drive up prices. Naturally, these practices were not conduciveto steady, transparent, and consumer-oriented distribution of grain in society. Theywere rather meant to enhance the material interests of the grain merchants, thelanded elites, and the local authorities who were the most important groups involvedin the production and distribution of grain. These categories could rely on the stableor increasing value of grain during certain times of the year since this commodity,like several other agrarian products (such as opium, tobacco, cotton or silk), was notonly fully commercialized, but functioned like hard currency or even better than hardcurrency in an economy that suffered from the drain of specie. While Qajar currencylost its value over the course of the century, grain appears to have gained in value.Cereals, therefore, generated a large amount of return for those in the business ofproducing or supplying them. The practices of grain owners were ultimately to thedetriment of the welfare of large sections of urban society and particularly thosewho were among the working and workless classes. These practices kept nutritionfor at least half of the population in towns and cities below subsistence levels. Grad-ually, they drove many to immiseration and starvation, as the contemporary depic-tion of the urban poor and working classes confirmed.

Much ink has been spilled over the causes of popular frustration in the nineteenthcentury. The historical literature on Qajar Iran tends to portray these causes as grandin nature and as pertaining to the political order in the country. The absolutism ofthe Qajar monarchs and European imperialism in Iran (and across the broader MiddleEast) have been singled out time and again as two important sources of popular frus-trations. On occasion, some have argued that the penetration of European economyinto Iran led to many social and economic problems. These factors broadly speakingdid contribute to the making of popular frustrations. But the historical literature hasso far dealt with the grievances of the middle and upper classes of Qajar society,overlooking how the same groups exploited the lower layers of society. In otherwords, few scholars have shown how middle and upper class Iranians actuallybenefited from the economic transformations of the century, and how they, morethan the Qajar monarchs and European statesmen, were responsible for the povertyand starvation of large sections of Iranian society. My contention here is to showthat these groups not only benefited from major economic transformations of theperiod but were also actively involved in the creation of a vast human crisis acrossthe country. It was this social and economic crisis that eventually politicized thelower sections of urban society and facilitated their participation in large nationalmovements in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful for the Abbas Amanat, Alan Mikhail, Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Navid Fozi, Robert Harms,Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan, Touraj Atabaki, Leo Lucassen, and Karin Hofmeester for theircomments on the earlier drafts of this article. This article benefited from discussions that ensued at aroundtable on famine that I put together at the American Historical Association conference in 2014.I am grateful for the comments I received from Lillian M. Li, Yaron Ayalon, and Sarah Cameron. I

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have written this article in part with the support of the Prince Dr Sabbar Farman-Farmanian ResearchProject Fellowship at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. I am grateful toTouraj Atabaki, in particular.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

1. ʿAbd al-ʿAli Adib al-Mulk, Dafiʿ al-ghurur, I. Afshar (ed.) (Tehran: Khvarazmi, 1970), pp.94�6.2. Shiraz Agent to British Legation, 17 May 1887 in the Foreign Office Papers (FO) 248/455 and

248/456, the United Kingdom National Archives; and ʿAli-Akbar Saʿidi Sirjani (ed.), Vaqayiʿ-i itti-faqiyya (Tehran: Asim, 2004), p.286.

3. See, for example, A. Mahmud b. Mirza Baba, ‘Baz ham sanadi az qahti-yi sal-i 1288’, Ayanda,Vol.13.6-7 (1987), p.472; Muhammad ʿAli Irvani Mahmudabadi, ‘Girani-yi sal-i 1287 Qamari’,Ayanda, Vol.13.8-12 (1987), p.674; Muhammad Ismaʾil Rizvani, ‘Sanadi az qahti-yi sal-i 1287Hijri-yi Qamari’, Barrasiha-yi tarikhi, Vol.15�16 (1968), pp.145�50.

4. ʿAli Muhammad Dawlatabadi, Khatirat va mulahizat-i Sayyid ʿAli Muhammad Dawlatabadi, I.Afshar (ed.) (Tehran: Sukhan, 2009), pp.3�5; and J. Gurney and M. Sifatgul (eds.), Qum darqahti-yi buzurg-i 1288 Qamari (Qum: Kitabkhana-yi Marʿashi Najafi, 2008), pp.10�106; see espe-cially the account of famine in Qum in, ibid., pp.111�38.

5. Y. Ayalon, Natural Disasters in the Ottoman Empire: Plague, Famine, and Other Misfortunes (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014); and O. Ertem, ‘Eating the Last Seed: Famine, Empire,Survival, and Order in Ottoman Anatolia in the Late 19th Century’ (PhD thesis, European Uni-versity Institute, 2012). For an earlier source, see The Famine in Asia Minor: Its History Compiledfrom the Levant Herald (Constantinople: n.p., 1875).

6. S. Okazaki, ‘The Great Persian Famine of 1870�71’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and Afri-can Studies, Vol.49 (1986), pp.183�92; C. Melville, ‘The Persian Famine of 1870�1872: Pricesand Politics’, Disasters, Vol.1 (1988), pp.309�25; A. Sayf, Iqtisad-i Iran dar qarn-i nuzdahum(Tehran: Nashr-i Chashma, 1994), pp.243�71; H. Natiq, ‘Qahti-yi 1286�88 Q. (1870�72) vaasnad-i Hajj Muhammad Hasan Amin Dar al-Zarb’, in N.M. Kashani and S.M.H. Marʿashi (eds.),Hadis-i ʿishq (Tehran: Majlis-i Shawra-yi Islami, 2004); and Gurney and Sifatgul, Qum.

7. A few exceptions of varying quality include: W. Floor, ‘The Creation of the Food Administrationin Iran’, Iranian Studies, Vol.16.3-4 (Summer�Autumn 1983), pp.199�227; ʿAli-Riza Nazari,‘Qahti va girani dar Iran-i ʿasr-i Nasiri va Muzzafari’ (MA thesis, University of Tehran, 1988); andM. Mirkiaʾi, ‘Buhranha-yi siyasi va iqtisadi-yi nashi az masʾala-yi nan dar ʿasr-i Nasiri’ (PhD thesis,University of Tehran, 2013).

8. By a ‘book-length’ study, I mean specifically a monograph. As I indicated in an earlier note,John Gurney and Mansur Sifatgul have produced a book on the famine of 1288 AH/1871�72in Qum. This is an important contribution to the study of famine in Qajar Iran. The authorsedited a contemporary account of food scarcity by a certain ʿAli Akbar Fayz. In addition, theyhave provided an extended commentary and some original documents about famine in Iranduring the nineteenth century; Gurney and Sifatgul, Qum. See also Abbas Amanat, ‘Of Fam-ine and Cannibalism in Qum’, Iranian Studies, Vol.47.6 (2014), pp.1011�22.

9. There are only two general chronologies of famine throughout Iranian history: X. de Planhol,‘Famines’, Encyclopedia Iranica; and A. Kitabi, Qahti-ha-yi Iran (Tehran: Daftar-i Pazhuhishha-yiFarhangi, 2005). See also idem, ‘Pazhuhishi dar zamina-yi jamʿiyyat-shinasi-yi tarikhi-yi Iran’,Jamʿiyyat, Vol.25�8 (1998�1999), pp.105�38; and M.G. Majd, Great Famine and Genocide inPersia, 1917�1919 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003).

10. C. Issawi (ed.), The Economic History of Iran, 1800�1914 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1971), p.70.

11. The best single volume history of the nineteenth century is Christopher Bayly’s The Birth ofthe Modern World, 1780--1914 (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), which deals with large partsof the Islamic world and situates its history in the broader context of the history of theworld.

12. Much has been written on the integration of the Iranian economy into the world market. See, forexample, H. Amirahmadi, The Political Economy of Iran Under the Qajars: Society, Politics, Econom-ics, and Foreign Relations, 1796�1926 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012); and Issawi, Economic History.

13. W. Floor, The Economy of Safavid Persia (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2000), pp.125�95; and H. Lippo-mano, ‘A Report on the Condition of Persia in the Year 1586’, The English Historical Review,Vol.7.26 (1892), pp.314�21.

14. Issawi, Economic History, 152�205; M.E. Fletcher, ‘The Suez Canal and World Shipping’, Journalof Economic History (December 1958), pp.556�73; and passim.

15. G. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, Vol. 2 (London: Longmans, 1892), pp.464�514;Issawi, Economic History, Vol.70, pp.152�205; A. Herbert, ‘Report on the Present State of Persia’,7 May 1886, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP), Paper No. C.4781, pp.299-322.On a series of reforms undertaken in the second half of the century, see F. Adamiyyat, AmirKabir va Iran (Tehran: Khvarazmi, 1975); A.R. Sheikholeslami, The Structure of Central Authorityin Qajar Iran, 1871�1896 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1997); and G. Nashat, The Origins of Mod-ern Reform in Iran, 1870�80 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982).

16. A.K.S. Lambton, Continuity and Change in Medieval Persia (Albany, NY: Bibliotheca Persica,1988), 165�6; and R. Matthee, Persia in Crisis: Safavid Decline and the Fall of Isafahan (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), pp.47, 63, 85, 158, 227, 231, and 253.

17. S. Gwynn (ed.), The Letters and Friendships of Sir Cecil Spring Rice, Vol.1 (London: Constable,1930), pp.296�8.

18. A. Mahmud, ‘Sanadi az qahti’, p.472; M.A. Kazembeyki, Society, Politics and Economics in Mazan-daran, Iran, 1848�1914 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003), pp.140�1; S. Shahnavaz, Britain andSouthwest Persia, 1880�1914: A Study in Imperialism and Economic Dependence (London: Rout-ledgeCurzon, 2005), pp.109�11, 129; and H. Natiq, ‘Taʾsir-i ijtimaʿi va iqtisadi-yi bimari-yi vabadar dawra-yi Qajar’, in idem, Musibat-i vaba va bala-yi hukumat (Tehran: Gustara, 1979),pp.23�4.

19. Other grain-producing regions included Isfahan, Khamsa, and Garus; A.K.S. Lambton, ‘LandTenure and Revenue Administration in the Nineteenth Century’, in P. Avery, G. Hambly, and C.Melville (eds.), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol.7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1991), pp.473�4; Saʿidi Sirjani, Vaqayiʿ, pp.246�8, 264�5; J. Clark, Provincial Concerns: A Politi-cal History of the Iranian Province of Azerbaijan, 1848�1906 (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2006),pp.96�8, 161�4; C.E. Yate, Khurasan and Sistan (London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1900),pp.32�3, 325; and passim.

20. Drawing on a large number of primary and secondary sources, M. Davis, Late Victorian Holo-causts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World (New York: Verso, 2001), chroniclesan unusual series of subsistence crises in large parts of the world (from China to West Africa,from Southeast Asia to Latin America) in the period after the 1870s.

21. See, for example, Irvani, ‘Girani’, 674; J. Qaʾim-Maqami, ‘Girani-yi sal-i 1316 Qamari dar Tihran’,Yaghma, Vol.17.2 (1964), pp.84�8; and N.Q. Astarabadi, ‘Girani’, Vahid, Vol.17 (Urdibihisht1965), p.60.

22. C.�O Gr�ada, Famine: A Short History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), pp.1�44.23. M.S. Qazvini, Qanun-i Qazvini, I. Afshar (ed.) (Tehran: Talaya, 1991), pp.57�8, states that grain

production in the country was sufficient to cover the national consumption for at least twoyears in the event of drought or some form of environmental collapse.

24. ‘Report by Mr Jenner on the Condition of the Working Classes in Persia’, 2 November 1870,HCPP, Paper No. C.414, pp.395�400.

25. Q.M. Salur, ʿAyn al-Saltana, Ruznama-yi khatirat-i ʿAyn al-Saltana, M. Salur and I. Afshar (eds.),Vol.1 (Tehran: Asatir, 1995), pp.892�3. For examples of the jobless poor being affected by foodscarcity, see ibid., p.272; and Qazvini, Qanun, pp.57�81.

26. For another example, see Alison to Foreign Office, 2 March 1861, FO 248/195.

354 R. KAZEMI

27. ‘Urgent appeal signed by native agents and endorsed by the American missionaries to theNestorians in Oroomiah’, in ‘Famine in North Persia among the Nestorians’, The Christian Week,Vol.16 (14 January 1880), p.244.

28. C.J. Wills, In the Land of the Lion and Sun; or, Modern Persia (London: Macmillan and Co., 1883),p.251; and ʿAyn al-Saltana, Ruznama, Vol.1, p.562.

29. A.K. Sen, Poverty and Famines: An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation (Oxford: Oxford Univer-sity Press, 1983); M. Desai, ‘The Economics of Famine’, in G.A. Harrison (ed.), Famine (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 1988), pp.107�37; M. Desai, S.H. Rudolph, and A. Rudra (eds.), AgrarianPower and Agricultural Productivity in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984);D. Arnold, Famine: Social Crisis and Historical Change (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp.1�28; �OGr�ada, Famine, pp.1�44; and Davis, Late Victorian, pp.17�22.

30. ‘Tabreez: Report by Consul-General Jones’, 20 April 1872, HCPP, Paper No. C.637, p.1190; andLambton, ‘Land Tenure’, pp.470, 472.

31. F.M. Farmanfarma, Safarnama-yi Kirman va Baluchistan, M.I. Nizam Mafi and Suʿad Pira (eds.)(Tehran: Nashr-i Tarikh-i Iran, 2000), pp.81�3, 112�3, 118. On the condition of the rural popula-tion, see W. Floor, Agriculture in Qajar Iran (Washington, DC: Mage, 2003), pp.88�162; andLambton, ‘Land Tenure’, pp.480�2.

32. See, for example, ʿAyn al-Saltana, Ruznama, Vol.1, pp.950, 958; and ‘Tabreez: Report by Consul-General Jones’, HCPP, Paper No. C.799 in 1873, p.377.

33. Lambton, ‘Land Tenure’, pp.479�80.34. J.C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale Univer-

sity Press, 1985).35. Floor, Agriculture, pp.88�123; and passim.36. R. Kazemi, ‘“Neither Indians, Nor Egyptians”: Social Protest and Islamic Populism in the Making

of the Tobacco Movement in Iran, 1850�1891’ (PhD thesis, Yale University, 2012), pp.175�82.37. A. ʿAli Khan Vaziri, Jughrafiya-yi Kirman, M.I. Bastani Parizi (ed.) (Tehran: Anjuman-i Asar va

Mafakhir-i Farhangi, 1996), pp.226, 278�9, and 314; ʿAyn al-Saltana, Ruznama, Vol.1, pp.111�2,128�9, 139, 145, 148, 184; Floor, Agriculture, pp.584, 586�645; and passim.

38. Qazvini, Qanun, pp.72, 76.39. This was not always the case. In fact, in some instances of shortage, the price of shelter had a

reverse relation with the price of food; see, for example, ‘Urgent appeal’, p.244. On the relationbetween food scarcity and inflation in the prices of fodder, fuel, clothing, and building mate-rial, see ʿAyn al-Saltana, Ruznama, Vol.1, pp.317�9, 323, 491, 498, 646, and 692.

40. Vaziri, Jughrafiya, p.144; Gazetteer of Persia, Vol.1 (Simla: Government Monotype Press, 1910),pp.92, 373; and Lambton, ‘Land Tenure’, pp.498�500.

41. On the flight of bullion from Qajar Iran, see R. Matthee, W. Floor, and P. Clawson, The MonetaryHistory of Iran (London: I.B. Tauris, 2013), pp.179�263; Issawi, Economic History, pp.70�151,335�72; idem, ‘European Economic Penetration, 1872�1921’, in P. Avery, G. Hambly, and C.Melville (eds.), The Cambridge History of Iran, Vol.7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1991), pp.590�608; A.K.S. Lambton, Qajar Persia: Eleven Studies (London: I.B. Tauris, 1987),pp.108�39; Amirahmadi, Political Economy, p.246; and passim.

42. See, for example, various references to grain as jins, in M. Tahir-Ahmadi (ed.), Tiligrafat-i ʿasr-iSipahsalar (Tehran: Sazman-i Asnad-i Milli, 1991), pp.165, 404, 405, 474, 528, 656, 686, and 715;Gurney and Sifatgul, Qum, pp.164�6, and 170; and passim.

43. A. ibn ʿAli Maqrizi, Mamluk Economics: A Study and Translation of al-Maqrizi’s Ighathah, trans-lated by A. Allouche (Salt Lake City: University of Utah, 1994).

44. Qazvini, Qanun, p.58; Amin al-Zarb to Hajji Abu al-Qasim Isfahani, 9 Zihajja 1287 AH, in A. Mah-davi and I. Afshar (eds.), Asnad-i tijarat-i Iran dar sal-i 1287 Qamari (Tehran: Intisharat-i ʿIlmi vaFarhangi, 2001), pp.203, 216; and N. Pidram and I. Afshar (eds.), Kirman dar asnad-i Amin al-Zarb (Tehran: Surayya, 2005), pp.309�12.

45. Qazvini, Qanun, pp.77�8.46. Hajji ʿAbbas ʿAli Kharashadi in Rizvani, ‘Sanadi az qahti’, pp.148�9; and passim.47. Letter from Mr Whipple in Tabriz, 5 September 1895, Bible Society Record, Vol.40.11 (November

1895), p.164.

48. I have discussed these elsewhere; Kazemi, ‘“Neither Indians, Nor Egyptians”’, pp.182�201.49. Lambton, ‘Land Tenure’, p.473.50. As I noted earlier, this point is in agreement with the findings of other scholars who have

studied famine in other world regions. For example, in a 1981 essay on the complicatedcauses of famines, economist Amartya Sen has argued that famines develop not primarilybecause of the absence of foodstuffs, but rather because of the inequalities that are builtinto the mechanism of food distribution within a society; Sen, Poverty and Famines.

51. For an example, see the letter of Khadija Sultan to her son Muhammad ʿAli Khan (undated,Record No. 1386A2 in Nezam Mafi Collection, Women’s World in Qajar Iran) where she notedthat she stocked up on flour (100 ass-loads) and charcoal (five ass-loads), and was contemplat-ing purchasing a large quantity of fodder and barley before the onset of the cold season.

52. ‘Urgent appeal’, p.244.53. On tax collection from landlords, peasants, or both, see W. Floor, A Fiscal History of Iran in the

Safavid and Qajar Periods, 1500�1925 (New York: Bibliotheca Persica Press, 1998), pp.269�315;and Lambton, ‘Land Tenure’, pp.479�80.

54. Lambton, ‘Land Tenure’, pp.479�82, 484�5; Gazetteer of Persia (Simla: Government MonotypePress, 1914), Vol.2, 68�70; and passim.

55. J.B. Fraser, Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan (London: Longman, 1825), p.257; H. Pottinger,Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde (London: Longman, 1816), pp.237�8; R. Gibbons, ‘Routes inKirman, Jebal, and Khorasan’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol.11 (1841),p.144; and G.C. Napier and K.S. Ahmad, ‘Extracts from a Diary of a Tour in Khorassan’, Journal ofthe Royal Geographical Society of London, Vol.46 (1876), p.75. Some tribes obtained their grainby purchasing it in towns and villages; Lambton, ‘Land Tenure’, p.472.

56. Lambton, ‘Land Tenure’, pp.496�504; Amirahmadi, Political Economy, pp.79�94; and Floor,Fiscal History, pp.269�315.

57. R.M. Thomson, ‘Persia: Report by Mr. Thomson’, 20 April 1868, HCPP, Paper No. 3954-I-IV,especially pp.253�5.

58. ʿAyn al-Saltana, Ruznama, Vol.1, 463�4, 531; L.M. Sheil, ‘Note on the Persian Revenue’, in idem,Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia (London: John Murray, 1856), pp.391�3; I. Bird, Journeysin Persia and Kurdistan, Vol.1 (London: John Murray, 1891), pp.115�6, 298�9; Lambton, ‘LandTenure’, pp.480�2, 496�504; and passim.

59. Report from Qazvin, Document No. 295002848, 1287 AH in File No. 149BARA, the NationalArchives of Iran (NAI); and Gurney and Sifatgul, Qum, p.170.

60. See note 40.61. Because it was part of the income of ‘service people’ (ahl-i vazaʾif).62. Qazvini, Qanun, pp.60�1.63. On suyursat see Lambton, ‘Land Tenure’, p.503; and Floor, Fiscal History, pp.431�4.64. Lambton, ‘Land Tenure’, p.485.65. Mirza Husayn Khan Giranmaya to the Shah, 1295 AH, in I. Safaʾi (ed.), Asnad-i nawyafta (Tehran:

Babak, 1970), p.25.66. Ibid. See also A. ʿAli Khan Vaziri Kirmani, Tarikh-i Kirman, M. Bastani Parizi (ed.) (Tehran: Kitab-

cha-yi Iran, 1961), pp.419�20. To get a sense of how the central government often calculatedthe amount of grain left in state reserves, see ‘Kitabcha-yi baqi-yi jins-i [ghalla-yi] vilayat azbabat-i tushqanʾil’, MS No. 3697566, NAI.

67. Hajji Mirza Javad to Mirza Husayn Khan Sipahsalar, 1295 AH, in Safaʾi (ed.), Asnad,pp.39�40. See also ʿAbd Allah Mustawfi, Sharh-i zindagani-yi man, Vol.1 (Tehran: Zuvvar,1964), p.110.

68. M. Yiktaʾi, Tarikh-i daraʾi-yi Iran (Tehran: Dihkhuda, 1973), pp.101�2; M. Rustaʾi, ‘Akhirin farman-iNasir al-Din Shah Qajar’, Kitab-i mah: Tarikh va jughrafiya (2008), pp.102�7; and ʿAyn al-Saltana,Ruznama, Vol.1, 926, 929.

69. Qazvini, Qanun, pp.60�1; and Vaziri, Tarikh, pp.405-�9, 419�20.70. KacKenzie to Alison, 19 July 1861, FO 248/199. A similar situation occurred in the 1895�96

food scarcity in Tehran when Kamran Mirza Naʾib al-Saltana purchased all the lambs, goats,

356 R. KAZEMI

and rams in the outskirts of Tehran, withheld the distribution of meat, and singlehandedlycaused price inflation in meat; ʿAyn al-Saltana, Ruznama, Vol.1, pp.928�9.

71. Several letters from Consul Abbott to British Legation in Tehran dated 4 February; 10 and 16March; 12, 19, and 23 April; 7 August; 19 October; and 2 November 1855; and 4 March 1856, FO248/163; Consul Abbott to Qaʾim-Maqam, ibid; M.H.K. Iʿtimad al-Saltana, Khalsa, mashhur bihkhvab-nama, M. Katiraʾi (ed.) (Tehran: Tahuri, 1969), p.101; M. Bamdad, Sharh-i hal-i rijal-i Iran,Vol.1 (Tehran: Zuvvar, 1992), pp.407�8; and ibid., Vol.2, p.169. Corroborating Iʿtimad al-Saltana’sassertion, ‘Gobineau’, in A.D. Hytier (ed.), Les D�epeches Diplomatiques du Comte de Gobineau enPerse (Paris: Librairie Minard, 1959), p.65, states ‘Ce fonctionnaire [Qaʾim-Maqam], dit-on, avaitlaiss�e emporter, moyennant une prime �enorme, des quantit�es consid�erables de bl�e en Russie’.

72. See, for example, an anonymous and accusatory ‘shabnama’ written against Nizam al-Sal-tana Mafi, the Governor of Fars in ‘Shabnamaʾi bar zidd-i Nizam al-Saltana’, Ayanda, Vol.13(6�7) (1987), p.457. The involvement of senior government officials in the 1899 food scar-city in Tehran is also noted in the original documents presented in Qaʾim-Maqami, ‘Girani’,pp.84�8.

73. On leaseholders, see Lambton, ‘Land Tenure’, pp.488�96. The proceeds derived from thecrown land (khalisa) given to leaseholders were essentially their private income. As such, theyhad private ownership over the grain they received from this land.

74. Lambton, ‘Land Tenure’, pp.477, 486; and passim. The importance of commercialized agricul-ture to produce wealth is emphasized in C. Issawi, An Economic History of the Middle East andNorth Africa (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), pp.118�49; S. Pamuk, The OttomanEmpire and European Capitalism, 1820�1913: Trade, Investment, and Production (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp.82�107; and R. Owen, The Middle East in the World Econ-omy, 1800�1914 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1993), p.290.

75. Lambton, ‘Land Tenure’, p.477.76. Documents related to the properties of several high-ranking Qajar officials may be found in

‘Sarih al-Mulk (fihrist-i) khalisijat, muqufat va amlak-i intiqali-yi Divan-i ʿAla’, MS No. 3171639,NAI. See also A.K.S. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia: A Study of Land Tenure and LandRevenue Administration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), pp.139�40, 155; and idem,‘Land Tenure’, pp.488�95, especially p.494.

77. Floor, Agriculture, pp.71�7; Lambton, Landlord, pp.171�3; and idem, ‘Land Tenure’,pp.459�505.

78. Floor, Agriculture, pp.88�123.79. Kazemi, ‘“Neither Indians, Nor Egyptians”’, pp.179�80.80. On smallholders, see Floor, Agriculture, pp.71�7.81. For an example, see the food shortage in 1308 AH in Tehran and Kashan discussed in ʿAyn al-

Saltana’, Ruznama, Vol.1, p.335.82. For a case of locust attack resulting in food shortage, see Vaziri, Tarikh, p.405. An example of

tribal unrest contributing to the making of food scarcity is given in N. Mirza, Tarikh va jughra-fiya-yi Dar al-Saltana-yi Tabriz, G.-R. Tabatabaʾi Majd (ed.) (Tabriz: Intisharat-i Sutuda, 1994),pp.475�8. An instance of inflation in the price of foodstuffs during a time of political uncer-tainty is provided in 1896 when Nasir al-Din Shah was assassinated; ʿAli Asghar Khan to Aminal-Zarb, 23 Ziqaʿda 1313 AH in Pidram and Afshar, Kirman, 269. See also ʿAbd al-Karim Muʿin al-Tujjar to Amin al-Zarb, 4 Ziqaʿda 1311 AH, in ibid., p.310; and M.S. Sanandaji, Tuhfa-yi Nasiri dartarikh va jughrafiya-yi Kurdistan, H. Tabibi (ed.) (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1987), pp.312�4.

83. ‘Famine in North Persia’, p.244.84. This process is best described in M.M.N.R. Vakil al-Tawliya, Khatirat-i Vakil al-Tawliya, ʿAli-Akbar

Tashakkuri Bafqi (ed.), Vol.1 (Terhan: Sukhan, 2009), pp.20�8, 42�7, 67�78, 113�4; andMuhammad Rahim Isfahani to Amin al-Zarb, 27 Shavval 1299 AH in Nargis Pidram and MuzhdaMahdavi (eds.), Tabriz dar asnad-i Amin al-Zarb (Tehran: Surayya, 2007), p.266.

85. G.H. Adib, Afzal al-tavarikh-i Muzaffari quoted in Qaʾim-Maqami, ‘Girani’, p.84.86. Report, Document No. 295003223, 1286 AH in File No. 528BARA, NAI; and Gurney and Sifatgul,

Qum, pp.162�3.

87. Mudir al-Mulk and Hishmat al-Mulk to the Shah, 21 Zihajja 1286 AH, Document No. 295000082in File No. 182AAARA, NAI; and Gurney and Sifatgul, Qum, pp.164�5.

88. Report, Document No. 295003223 in File No. 528BARA, NAI; and Gurney and Sifatgul, Qum,pp.162�3.

89. M.G.H.K. Afzal al-Mulk, Afzal al-tavarikh, M. Ittihadiyya and S. Saʿadvandiyan (eds.) (Tehran:Nashr-i Tarikh-i Iran, 1982), p.289.

90. The practice of hoarding grain was indeed common in many other parts of the world in thisperiod. As Richard Grenville, the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, noted with regard to Indiain 1876, ‘The rise (of prices) was so extraordinary, and the available supply, as compared withwell-known requirements, so scanty that merchants and dealers, hopeful of enormous futuregains, appeared determined to hold their stocks of grain for some indefinite time and not partwith the article which was becoming of such unwonted value’; B.M. Bhatia, Famines in India(Delhi: Konark, 1991), p.94.

91. Qazvini, Qanun, pp.77�8.92. Sayyid Hasan Razavi to Amin al-Zarb, 30 Rabiʿ I 1304 AH in Asghar Mahdavi and Iraj Afshar

(eds.), Yazd dar asnad-i Amin al-Zarab (Tehran: Talaya, 2000), p.459.93. Sanandaji, Tuhfa, pp.312�4.94. Vakil al-Tawliya, Khatirat, Vol.1, pp.266�74.95. A. Herbert, ‘Report on the Present State of Persia’, 7 May 1886, HCPP, Paper No. C.4781, p.312.96. Curzon, Persia, Vol.2, p.496.97. Muhammad ʿAli Jamalzada, Ganj-i shayigan (Tehran: Bunyad-i Muqufat-i Duktur Mahmud-i

Afshar, 1997), pp.21�4; and Qazvini, Qanun, pp.57�8.98. Davis, Late Victorian.99. Ayalon, Natural Disasters; Famine in Asia Minor; and Ertem, “Eating the Last Seed.”

100. See note 71.101. In cases of famine (such as the one in 1869�73), other shops that sold essential goods (e.g.,

grocery stores, pastry shops, and sellers of fodder) could also be assailed. The owners of theseshops hired personal guards to fend off the emaciated and hungry people who could notafford to purchase the articles on sale; Astarabadi, ‘Girani’, p.60.

102. Qazvini, Qanun, pp.75�6.103. Ibid.104. Ibid., pp.57�62, 75�81.105. On the credit economy, see D. Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years, updated edition (New York:

Melville House, 2014).106. Astarabadi, ‘Girani’, p.60.107. Wills, Land of the Lion, p.251. The typical diet of the lower classes is explained in the context of

port cities like Bandar ʿAbbas and Linga in Willem Floor, The Persian Gulf: Bandar Abbas, theNatural Trade Gateway of Southeast Iran (Washington, DC: Mage, 2011), p.50; and idem, The Per-sian Gulf: The Rise and Fall of Bandar-e Lengeh (Washington, DC: Mage, 2010), p.27.

108. Adib, Afzal al-tavarikh quoted in Qaʾim-Maqami, ‘Girani’, p.84.109. Qazvini, Qanun, p.59; ʿAbd al-Karim Muʿin al-Tujjar to Amin al-Zarb, 4 Ziqaʿda 1311 AH in

Pidram and Afshar, Kirman, p.310; and the report on Hamadan in Ruznama-yi dawlat-i ʿaliyya-yiIran (Tehran), 11 Rajab 1278 AH, No. 511.

110. Qazvini, Qanun, pp.57�60, 76�8.

358 R. KAZEMI

Of Diet and Profit: On the Question of Subsistence Crises in Nineteenth-Century Iran

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