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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 January 2011
European merchants and investors doing business in the Middle East during the long 19th century expected that commercial disputes in mixed cases would be conducted according to procedures and laws familiar to and accepted by them. In the Ottoman Empire and Egypt, mixed courts based on the French commercial code were established during that century. The Qajars, however, offered the foreign commercial community a different judicial institution: the local kārguzār (agent) and his majlis (court). By the beginning of the 20th century, thirty-six kārguzār offices operated in Iranian towns and harbors. Nevertheless, foreign (mainly British) merchants and their consuls complained bitterly that it was not an effective institution and that it clearly favored the local tujjār (big merchants). They claimed that these defects meant huge financial losses to them. The Qajars viewed this institution and its functioning differently. It served their policy of discouraging foreign penetration, and it contributed to the competitiveness of the Iranian tujjār in their struggle for commercial superiority.
Author's note: The last sections of this article were presented at the XXV International Conference on the Historiography of Asia and Africa, St. Petersburg State University, April 2009. I am grateful to the IJMES anonymous reviewers and to the editor and the managing editor of the journal for their insightful comments and suggestions. I am also indebted to my colleague Dr. Boris Morozov for his help with this study. Research in British and Russian archives was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (Grant No. 865/06).
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91 The ʿulamaʾ of Isfahan played a central role in the campaign to refrain from buying foreign (mainly British) textiles and in the establishment of the Iranian joint stock textile company Shirkat-i Islamiyi in 1899. See Jamalzada, Ganj-i Shaygan, 98; Lambton, Ann K. S., “Secret Societies and the Persian Revolution of 1905–6,” St Antony's Papers: Middle Eastern Affairs 1 (1957): 51Google Scholar; Hatam, Anja Pistor, “Islamic Trading Companies as a Prerequisite for Progress: The Case of the šerkat-e eslamiyeh of Isfahan,” in Matériaux pour l'histoire économique du monde Iranien, ed. Gyselen, Rika and Szuppe, Maria (Paris: Association pour l'avancement des études Iraniennes, 1999), 322–23Google Scholar; and Walcher, In the Shadow of the King, 200–202.
92 On the fierce opposition of Hajj Mirza Jawad Aqa Mujtahid, see Adamiyat and Natiq, Afkar-i Ijtimaʿi, 356–61; and Gilbar, “Rise and Fall,” 661–65.
93 “Report by Consul-General [Henry M.] Jones on the Trade of the Province of Azerbijan for the Year 1870,” PPAP 66 (1871): 961; “Report by Consul-General [Henry M.] Jones on the State of Trade in the Province of Azerbijan during the Year 1872,” PPAP 65 (1873): 969; and “Report on the Trade and Commerce of Bunder Abbas and Lingah for the Year 1907–08 by Lieutenant C. H. Gabriel . . .,” DCR AS 4076 (1908), 7.
94 For a discussion of the difficulties British firms faced in Qajar Iran, see Bostock, Frances and Jones, Geoffrey, “British Business in Iran, 1860s–1970s,” in British Business in Asia since 1860, ed. Davenport-Hines, R. P. T. and Jones, Geoffrey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 40–45Google Scholar. The authors did not, however, touch upon the judicial factor in their study.
95 On the attitude of the Iranian tujjār toward foreign firms and banks and their relations with foreign merchants and investors, see Ashraf, Mawaniʿ-i Taʾrikh, 50, 55; Natiq, Huma, Bazarganan dar Dad wa-Sitad ba Bank-i Shahi wa-Rizhi Tanbaku (Paris: Intisharat-i Khawaran, 1992), 163–75Google Scholar; Ittihadiyya, Mansura (Nizam Mafi), Inja Tihran ʾAst . . . Majmuaʿ-i Maqalat darbarah-i Tihran 1269–1344 H.Q. (Tehran: Nashr-i Taʾrikh-i Iran, 1998), 337–52Google Scholar; and Mahdavi, Shireen, For God, Mammon, and Country: A Nineteenth Century Persian Merchant, Haj Muhammad Hassan Amin al-Zarb (1834–1898) (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999), 39–42Google Scholar.
96 Nouraei and Martin, “Karguzar. III: Disputes,” 162–63.
97 See, for example, Qawwam al-Dawla to Wolff, [Tehran], 11 Jumada ʾl-ukhra 1306/12 February 1889, FO 248/488, NAUK.
