ABSTRACT
Abrahamian employs a Marxist version of the mosaic model to provide an account of the social organisation of Qajar Iran. The mosaic model of 'Islamic society' is not, therefore, especially convincing since it requires to believe that this social system was both completely integrated around Islamic values and totally divided in terms of ethnicity, stratification and association. While Bill attempts to modify and extend the Marxian analysis of economic classes through Weberian categories of status and power which he derives from Ralf Dahrendorf, Gerhard Lenski and Talcott Parsons, in fact he merely reproduces the old mosaic model of Oriental Despotism. The construction of concepts of modes of production is crucial since, it is impossible to formulate an adequate theory of social classes until we have a coherent view of the modes of production which are present in a given social formation.
