ABSTRACT

The mid-nineteenth century, when Muhammad Hassan arrived in Tehran, was the beginning of the period when the effects of the Industrial Revolution in Europe were being felt in Iran, as a result of which there was a significant change in the composition of Persian trade. The earliest documented account of Muhammad Hassan's own commercial activities concerns a company he formed in Tehran in 1274/1857. Muhammad Hassan rented a house for the family in the Abbas Abad quarter of Tehran south of the bazaar. Although the shops in the bazaars of Tehran were full of various goods, the upper classes and the many Europeans preferred to have these goods offered to them at home. Jakob Eduard Polak writes that the Persians were very proud of their fortifications of Tehran, to the extent that the minister of war asked an Austrian officer in all seriousness whether such fortifications existed in Austria.