War and Peace in Qajar Persia: Implications Past and ... - Oguzlar.az

Merchants without frontier 185the merchants were inherently “without ideology.” Ideational factors wereas important and consequential among merchants as they were among othersocial classes. However, many merchants held that their commitments to ideasand obligations could be pursued only after an effective pursuit of business.The other commitments and obligations included family, religious dues, andcharity, subsidizing the constitutionalist press, or at times even paying forguns and bullets or financing hospital care for armed constitutional fighters. 9I first came across the second half of the original manuscript of theMemoirs in the early 1980s. 10 This second half was subsequently publishedin Tehran in 1984. 11 The first half of the manuscript was found morerecently and thus the new edition represents the complete text. 12At the outset one may be puzzled by the very existence of the manuscript.The author, Hajj Mohammad-Taqi, was a mid-ranking merchant, a familyman, a devout Shia Muslim, and normally very busy. In addition, he hadto cope with a revolution or, in effect, with several revolutions: one in hisnative Tabriz and others in various places in the Caucasus that he visited ortraded with; and if not a revolution, at least a riot, a siege, or foreign occupation.In other times he had to cope with bandits, famine, and epidemics.These were the parameters around which he had to organize first and foremosthis business and commercial travels, and then the life of his family.At first glance some questions may arise with regard to the author’s personaand the very act of writing a testimony – that a busy and devout merchantsuch as Hajj Mohammad-Taqi should make time to commit pen topaper and methodically write a memoir. These questions, simple as they mayappear, are not easily resolved by reliance on conventional categorizationssuch as “class structure” or “ideal type.” Hajj Mohammad-Taqi was not awriter, but a bazaar-based Azeri merchant who produced a detailed narrativein Persian about private and social life. Why should he, in all devotionto faith and dedication to business, invest time and effort to author a memoir?This was an endeavour which ordinarily was someone else’s trade (suchas those clerics or intellectuals who were busy writing tracts). Here and therein the text, the author offers some clues to such questions.Apparently his initial decision to write was hastened by the revolutionarysituation and the interruption of business activities, which inevitably affordedhim extra time. Instead of spending this spare time dawdling and sitting idlearound the house or fixating on endless worries (which, as he puts it, may“harm one’s person”), 13 he decided to record certain social and political eventshe had witnessed, and also to record for posterity some information relatingto his family. He wrote this “History” (Tarikh) in order to maintain hissanity and put the rapidly transforming conditions into perspective. He wasabout 42 or 43 years of age at the time of writing the Memoirs. Accordingly,“the reason for writing this history is the recent upheavals [in Tabriz]; I havebeen writing this book as a result of too much despair and anguish ...Asthings calmed down, it was no longer possible to write,” 14 – as he was againbusy doing business. 15