Farming, Land and Water in Safavid Iran

From the Safavid dynasty’s founding in 1501 to its fall in 1722, farming joined local environments to village work, royal administration and religious institutions. Khorasan, a large northeastern province that included Mashhad and Herat, lay far from the Caspian lowlands; Herat is now in western Afghanistan. Rain-fed grain fields, river-fed gardens, Caspian rice and silk, and herds moving between seasonal pastures belonged to different production systems. Cultivators might work land they did not own, while a governor, officeholder or shrine held a claim on its revenue. Two Safavid cases show how these relationships worked: the recovery of abandoned farms in Khorasan in the 1520s and the canal and shrine endowment built around Mashhad under Shah Abbas I.

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Water and crops across the regions

Water supply and climate shaped what farmers grew. Along the southern Caspian, especially in Gilan and Mazandaran in northern Iran, plentiful rainfall and surface water supported rice fields. The same provinces supplied much of Iran’s raw silk. Farmers raised silkworms on mulberry and collected their cocoons before the raw silk could be reeled into thread. German traveler Adam Olearius reported 782 tons of silk from Gilan in 1637. French traveler Jean Chardin estimated 1,350 tons from the province in 1669–70. Farther inland, wheat was the most common grain and barley was widespread, especially in mountain districts. In dry-farmed areas, crop rotation alternated grain with fallow land; gardens near towns supplied vegetables, fruit and herbs for nearby consumers.

Elsewhere, local water determined the method. In Azerbaijan, Caspian districts and river oases such as Isfahan and Herat, cultivators relied on rain-fed farming or surface irrigation. In most other regions underground aqueducts called qanats or kariz brought water to fields. A qanat tapped groundwater at the head of a valley and carried it through a gently descending tunnel to an outlet, where channels distributed it to fields. Vertical shafts at intervals let diggers remove spoil and ventilate the tunnel; they also gave later workers access for maintenance. Skilled workers calculated the gradient so gravity moved water across long distances. In the drier plateau, qanats supported permanent settlements and agriculture beyond dependable rivers. Fields farther from cities retained their own crop patterns.

Village work and harvest shares

The village (deh) or hamlet (mazra’a) was the basic production unit. Within it, households could cooperate in work groups called bona, sometimes organizing common work projects. A separate practice pooled an entire harvest when the village met its tax assessment. Shared work and pooled produce thus served different purposes: one coordinated labor, while the other gathered resources for an assessed payment.

Under mozara’a, or sharecropping, a proprietor supplied land and commonly water and seed; cultivators did the farm work, and the parties divided the harvest according to their agreement and contributions. A field’s water access, labor and seed helped determine both what could be harvested and what each party received. The district’s revenue claim sat alongside this agreement: the holder of a grant might collect income from a territory without personally directing the cultivation of every field within it.

Land use, state revenue and endowments

Safavid records distinguished khassa, whose revenue was controlled directly for the shah and court, from mamālek or divani lands, whose revenue supported other state administration and military costs. This was primarily a division of revenue control, not a map separating the shah’s private fields from everyone else’s. Safavid rulers claimed overarching ownership; cultivators and other holders could possess usufruct, the right to use land and draw income from it. A toyul was a grant of revenue, usually from mamālek, assigned to an official or military figure for service; see how Safavid rulers assigned territory revenues to officials and commanders. In practice such claims could harden into family possession, blurring the intended distinction between a temporary assignment and private control.

Shah Abbas I enlarged crown-administered lands as he built a standing force of Georgian, Circassian and Armenian troops loyal to the ruler. This shifted the revenue base from indirectly administered provinces toward the crown; land grants to officers continued at the same time. In 1606–08 Abbas converted his own substantial holdings into a waqf, a charitable or religious endowment, appointing himself and later rulers as its administrator. These categories mattered to production because they determined who supervised income from villages and what institution was meant to receive it.

Mashhad, in northeastern Iran, offers a dated example of water, urban growth and endowed revenue meeting in one project. In 1612 Abbas ordered an expansion of the shrine of Imam Reza and connected homes and businesses along the city’s Upper Street to an enlarged qanat network. With this water supply, local authorities built hostels and bathhouses. In 1613 a major canal called the nahr-e shahi was completed, carrying water from springs about 35 miles west of Mashhad. The following year the shah endowed to the shrine all revenue from villages, farmland and businesses along the canal. The arrangement joined irrigation to commercial and residential settlement, then directed the resulting revenue to a named religious institution.

Pastoral production and seasonal land

Animal husbandry belonged to both settled agriculture and mobile pastoral life. Farmers kept livestock, while nomadic and semi-nomadic herders moved seasonally between summer pasture (yaylaq) and winter quarters (qeshlaq). Sheep and goats were especially common, alongside horses and camels; some districts also raised poultry or water buffalo. These movements connected highland and lowland grazing grounds, with herds supplying animals and animal products to settled communities. Access to pasture and water complemented cultivation.

Recovery and renewed disruption in Khorasan

War and administration could reshape access to productive land. After excessive taxation under the preceding governor Amir Khan Mawṣellu and famine in Herat, now in Afghanistan, in 1521, Shah Esmail appointed Durmeš Khan governor-general of Khorasan. Under Durmeš Khan and his vizier, excessive tax practices were discontinued and abandoned agricultural land was irrigated and cultivated again; religious endowments that fed the poor were also restored. In later years Uzbek attacks again plundered rural towns and displaced Safavid authority in parts of eastern Khorasan.

For the wider setting, see The Safavid Economy.