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Minorities of Isfahan: The Armenian Community of Isfahan 1587–1722

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Vartan Gregorian
Vartan Gregorian*
Affiliation:
a University Professor of Caucasan History and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences , University of Pennsylvania
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Extract

In their “recreation of the Persian nationality” and their proclamation of Shiᶜite Islam as the official state religion of Persia, the Safavids performed a crucial historical role. They formalized, institutionalized, intensified and politicized the Sunni-Shiᶜite doctrinal and regional schism within the Islamic world. Coming in the wake of the four centuries of Turko-Mongol invasions which had already helped to “harden the division of the Muslim lands into separate Arabic, Persian and Turkish regions between which literary communication was confined to the restricted circles of the educated,“ the triumph of the Shiᶜite revolution in Persia formalized the division of Islamic Asia into three major Muslim political entities: Ottoman, Safavid and Mughal. Safavid Persia drove wedges between the Sunni Ottoman empire, the Mughal empire and Central Asia. Safavid and shicite Persia, however, was not a monolith. It was an ethnic, linguistic, and religious mosaic.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 3-4: Studies on Isfahan: Proceedings of the Isfahan Colloquium, Part II , Summer-Autumn 1974 , pp. 652 - 680
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1974

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References

Notes

* This paper is part of a larger study dealing with Safavid nationality and religious policies.

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34. Catholicos Grigoris of Aghtamar wrote in 1519 about an Armenian merchant who reached Samarkand and Bukhara and then India. See Kostaniants, K., Grigoris Aghtamartsin yev eer taghere (Tiflis: 1898), pp. 88–91Google Scholar.

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47. There are no monographs in European languages on the history and evolution of the Armenian community of Persia in general and that of New Julfa in particular. The best work on the latter subject is still the two volume study by Harootiun T. Her Hovhaniants (in Armenian) published in New Julfa in 1880-81. Soviet Armenian scholars have published many valuable articles on various facets and phases of the Armenian community of Isfahan, but so far no major monograph has replaced the important work of Leo, Khojayakan Kapital (Erevan: 1934), an effort to study the impact of the financial wealth of the Armenian merchant class. Papazian's, H.D., ed., Persidskiye Dokumenti Matenadarana: Ukazi, 2 vols (Erevan: 1956, 1959)Google Scholar is a valuable collection of the edicts of the Safavid rulers, published in three languages, Persian, Armenian and Russian. An important work also is that of Minassian, L.G., patmootiun Periayi Hayeri (Antilias: 1941)Google Scholar, dealing with the Armenian villages near Isfahan. John Carswell's excellent New Julfa, The Armenian Churches and other Buildings (Oxford: 1968)Google Scholar, fills a major gap. Ismail Raiin recently published the first monograph in the Persian language dealing with the general history of the Armenians in Iran including those of New Julfa. See his Īrānian-i Armānī (Tehran: 1970). There is a sketchy and general survey of the Armenians of Persia in Waterfield, Robin E., Christians in Persia (London: 1973)Google Scholar. For a survey of the New Julfa community in the seventeenth century, see Bournatian, George, “The Armenian Community of Isfahan in the Seventeenth Century,” The Armenian Review XXIV, No. 96, pp. 27–45Google Scholar and XXV, no. 97, pp. 33-50.

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51. Carswell, p. 6-12 passim. Raiin, pp. 82-84.

52. See Hovnaniants, I, pp. 30-32; Minasian, pp. 28-33; Lockhart, The Fall of the Safavi Dynasty, pp. 474, 477.

53. See Hovnaniants, II, pp. 105-08.

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59. Manrique, II, pp. 342-43. See also Henry Bernford's account of his journey from Agra to Tatta (1639) in The English Factories in India: 1637-1641 (Oxford; 1912), pp. 134, 135; Mesrovt Seth, p. 207.

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66. Takirat al-mūlūk, p. 175.

67. The ranks of these artisans included, among other things, goldsmiths, blacksmiths, printers, masons, watchmakers, carpenters, book binders, furriers, rug weavers, tailors, etc. Hovhaniants, I, p. 189 and Raiin, pp. 129-31.

68. Takirat al-mūlūk, p. 14.

69. Ibid., p. 180.

70. V.A. Bayburdian, “Nor Djughayi Vatchurakanootiune yev arevmtayevropakan Kapital Antesakan expantsian Iranum”, P.H., no. 3 (1966), p. 219.

71. Thomas Boys to the Earl of Salisbury, June 10, 1609 in Sainsbury, ed., p. 186.