The growth of Iran's economy, like that of any developing country, is dependent not only on how its natural resources are used, but also its human resources. The two together can lead to increases in both the quantity and quality of physical capital. This process does not require absolutely synchronous improvements in the way both natural and human resources are employed, but certainly changes must be parallel.

If, on the other hand, exploitation of natural resources moves forward much more rapidly, considerable physical capital can be acquired in a short time. But without ample supplies of skilled labor, capital goods may then be used inefficiently or even stand idle. This problem can be partly overcome in the short run if it is possible to hire foreigners to supplement the domestic labor in sufficient amounts and with the proper skills. On the other hand, if a nation's growing educational system turns out skilled people at rates faster than the growth in available jobs, then employment, underemployment, or migration are the immediate choices facing many workers and their families.

Historians have tended to ignore the structure of tribalism in writing the history of Iran. Numerous references to tribal leaders can be found in the literature (Turkoman, Bakhtiyari, and Qajar khans appear and reappear as important figures in Iranian political history), but the nomadic societies that produced these leaders and shaped and limited the contours of their actions have been left to the researches of anthropologists and other social scientists. While historians have undertaken detailed studies of urban and agrarian institutions, they have continued to ignore tribalism as a factor in Iranian history.

Between the twelfth and the nineteenth centuries, pastoral nomads comprised approximately one-fourth of the population of Iran. Forming over two hundred separate tribal units divided into five major ethnic groupings (Turkoman, Iranian, Kurdish, Arab and Baluch), these pastoral groups have been and continue to be integral elements in the shaping of Iranian history.

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