Isfahan Market Approach to the Policies and Approvals of the Pahlavi I Government

Iranian-Islamic markets as an institution of urban solidarity, along with performing economic duties, played a significant social role in urban society. The relationship between traders and business owners as the constituent elements of the market with the ruling system has been a bilateral and long-standing relationship. The cornerstone of this relationship derived from the need of the market to provide security by the government and the need of the government to provide its financial resources from the context of market revenues. Understanding this relationship, which has undergone a variable process according to political and economic requirements, is of particular importance. At the beginning of the formation of the Pahlavi government, merchants whose activities were disrupted due to the inefficient economic policies of the Qajar era, sought to establish new relations with the newly established government. On the contrary, the government's policies to bureaucratize its structure caused the market-government relationship to take a new direction and change. Projects such as codifying economic laws, paying attention to national industries, and meeting the minimum demands of traders and economic actors by the government created a new perspective and window in market-government relations that greatly influenced the position of this spectrum towards the government. The present study tries to find the roots of the position and policies of Isfahan market against the plans of Pahlavi I government and how they are related, relying on documents and other available sources.