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Iran
Urban Society
Historically, towns in Iran have been administrative, commercial,
and manufacturing centers. The traditional political elite consisted
of families whose wealth was derived from land and/or trade and
from which were recruited the official representatives of the
central government. In larger cities, these families could trace
their power and influence back several generations. Influential
families were also found among the Shia clergy in the largest
cities. The middle stratum included merchants and owners of artisan
workshops. The lowest class of urban society included the artisans,
laborers, and providers of personal services, such as barbers,
bath attendants, shoemakers, tailors, and servants. Most of these,
especially the artisans, who were organized into trade associations
or guilds, worked in the covered bazaars of the towns.
The urban bazaar historically has been the heart of the Iranian
town. In virtually all towns the bazaar is a covered street, or
series of streets and alleyways, lined with small shops grouped
by service or product. One part of the bazaar contains the shops
of cloth and apparel dealers; another section those of carpet
makers and merchants; and still another, the workshops of artisans
making goods of copper, brass, or other metals, leather, cotton,
and wool. In small towns the bazaar might be the equivalent of
a narrow, block-long street; in the largest cities, such as Tehran,
Esfahan, Mashhad, Tabriz, and Shiraz, the bazaar is a warren of
streets that contains warehouses, restaurants, baths, mosques,
schools, and gardens in addition to hundreds and hundreds of shops.
The modernization policies of the Pahlavi shahs both preserved
and transformed all of these aspects of urban society. This process
also led to the rapid growth of the urban population. The extension
of central government authority throughout the country fostered
the expansion of administrative apparatuses in all major provincial
centers. By the 1970s, such cities were sites not just of the
principal political and security offices but also of the local
branches of diverse government offices such as education, justice,
taxation, and telecommunications.
The establishment of modern factories displaced the numerous
artisan workshops. Parts of old bazaars were destroyed to create
wide streets. Merchants were encouraged to locate retail shops
along these new streets rather than in the bazaars. Many of the
stores that opened to meet the increased demand for commerce and
services from the rapidly expanding urban population were in the
new streets. The political elite in the last years of the Pahlavi
dynasty spoke of the bazaars as symbols of backwardness and advanced
plans to replace some of them with modern shopping malls.
Data as of December 1987
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