Customer Reviews

The Shah's Silk for Europe's Silver: The Eurasian Trade of the Julfa Armenians in Safavid Iran and India, (1530-1750) (University of Pennsylvania Armenian Texts and Studies)

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I found this book to be an excellent analysis of part of the Iranian economy during the Safavi period. Although it is slanted toward the Armenian minority and does not cover the whole economy, it provides a unique and perceptive view of a section of the economy that has been previously ignored. Aside from bringing to light the power of the Armenian minority in a hypothetically theocratic state, it will change the reader's perception of the economic, political and social sophistication of Iran and, in fact, the Middle East at the time of European expansion. The book is very well written and the analysis excellent. The absence of tables in the discussion of the volume of exports as given in different sources and and conversions of currency is sorely missed. Such tables would have made it considerably easier to compare the various references. However, this is minor in the general context of the book.

A detailed and fascinating study of international trade and Safavid politics in the seventeenth century. I found it to be extremely well researched, drawing together evidence from Armenian and Persian documents, as well as European archival collections. The book chiefly focuses on the Armenian merchants who managed the export of silk from Iran to Europe, and the import of European silver back to Iran and India. It successfully demonstrates the crucial financial role these merchants played in the consolidation of the Safavid state in Iran, with comparisons to other outsiders financing the formation of absolutist states in Europe.