Taxation or Extortion: A Study of the Tax Collection System in Iran After Ilkhanids with Emphasis on the Safavid and Qajar Eras

Abstract

For several years, corruption news has been heard from Iranian government agencies, a type of intra-group relationships in power structure in which members of each political faction act against the public interest and for their benefit and other members of their group. On the other hand, cooperation on bribery and ransom with the public and agents at the lower levels of the country's executive system has developed in recent years, so that the perception of corruption in the country in recent years has decreased in comparison with the other countries in the region. Systematic corrupt practices in the power structure and in the interactions of agents with citizens and a kind of cultural relations referring to as the "culture of pessimism" have always existed in a stable manner in the Iranian society as if there were no way out. Therefore, this article tries to obtain a new and, of course, historical understanding of the financial relations between the government and the people from a historical sociology point of view. In this regard, valid historical documents and secondary analyses have been used. Moreover, for a good observation of the historical evidence, a conceptual model has been designed to better explain the relationships of the components of the observed events. In designing this model, the views of theorists such as Elias, Gambetta and Tilly have been used for a conclusion based on the best explanation. The research findings show that in the points of interaction of government agents with citizens, a set of financial relations with strictness, corruption and pessimism prevailed, which did not follow any ritualized codes.

Keywords

• history of iranian taxation system
• historical sociology
• safavid era
• qajar era