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Document Details : Title: Silk and Silver Subtitle: The Trade and Organization of New Julfa at the End of the XVIIth Century Author(s): BAGHDIANTZ McCABE, I. Journal: Revue des Études Arméniennes Volume: 25 Date: 1994-1995 Pages: 389-415 DOI: 10.2143/REA.25.0.2003788 Abstract : The group of Armenians known as the merchants of New Julfa, or sometimes erroneously as “Persians” in Europe, lived in exile in Iran under Safavid rule for over a century. The genealogies of the most important families of this community have been recorded and preserved in the archives of New Julfa. An analysis of their contents was published into a unique history of New Julfa in the late nineteenth century. Recently, two documents in Armenian, an account book and a commercial manual, have been the subject of close scholarly attention. A recent publication in Erevan has examined ties between the merchants of New Julfa and the Russians. Aside from a few articles on one or two aspects of their lives, the commercial importance of this group has remained unexplored, for the last part of the century, save by the scholars in Erevan who have concentrated on presenting the crucial sources. The following article is a brief synopsis of a section of an extensive study of the commercial system of this group. In that work, the Armenian sources have been combined with the narrations of European travellers who were typically merchants themselves, plus some archival materials, to obtain an image of the commercial activity and social life of these merchants. The Armenian sources provide a wealth of information about accounting, organization, and commercial routes and products, while the observations of the European merchants provide details about the Armenians’ social life absent in the commercial documents, as well as crucial information on their commerce itself. |
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