Pages: 43-49

Abstract

Qajar dynasty, which came to power in Iran in early years of the 19^th century (end of the 12^th century AH) inherited a country that, over the previous century, its economic power had been severely degraded due to many domestic problems and chaos as well as foreign wars and aggressions. Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, through about twenty years of persistent efforts, could restore political cohesion and integrity to the country. As economy of Iran is considered an agricultural economy, this means that in this system, land ownership and irrigation system are among the important affairs. It can be said that from the 1800s to the last years of Qajar period, agriculture has used the same traditional system of ownership and rural relations have remained unchanged. The only difference seen in this regard is formation of cities and presence of villagers living in the city. In Qajar period, especially in the nineteenth century, the country had not yet entered into capitalist relations, and its monetary economy had not grown much, and the prevailing economy, which mainly provided internal needs of the country, was traditional agriculture. It is very difficult to draw an approximate picture of Iran’s agriculture in the nineteenth century or to show general evolutions of the country that have led to its development, because on one hand, the government has left nothing but some minor investigations of conditions of villages and, in practice, there is nothing about statistics but tax papers. On the other hand, foreign investigators and travel writers have also not shown an interest to changes in villages or have not understood it at all.