¹ Only a few English language monographs have examined eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Persian Zoroastrian socio-economic history. For an exception, see Kestenberg-Amighi, J., The Zoroastrians of Iran: Conversion, Assimilation, or Persistence (New York, 1990)Google Scholar.

² E. Waring, S., A Tour to Sheeraz, by the Route of Kazroon and Feerozabad… (London, 1807), p. 76Google Scholar; Kinneir, Sir J. M., A Geographical Memoir of the Persian Empire (London, 1813), p. 113Google Scholar; Pottinger, Sir H., Travels in Beloochistan and Sinde… (London, 1816), pp. 421–422Google Scholar; Malte-Brun, C., Universal Geography, Or, a Description of All the Parts of the World…, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1822), p. 272Google Scholar; Fraser, J. B., An Historical and Descriptive Account of Persia, From the Earliest Ages to the Present Time… (Edinburgh, 1834), p. 57Google Scholar; Conolly, A., Journey to the North of India Overland from England through Russia, Persia and Afghanistan, vol. 1 (London, 1834), pp. 349–350Google Scholar; Kitto, J., Uncle Oliver's Travels in Persia, vol. 1 (London, 1835), pp. 93–94Google Scholar; Ritter, C., Die Erdkunde im Verhältniss zur Natur und zur Geschichte des Menschen oder allgemeine vergleichende Geographie (Berlin, 1838), p. 166Google Scholar; idem, ‘Briefliche Mitteilungen über die Oase Yezd’, Zeitschrift für allgemeine Erdkunde 5 (1855), pp. 76–88, p. 76; Ferrier, J. P., Caravan Journeys and Wanderings in Persia (London, 1856), p. 124Google Scholar; Binning, R. B. M., A Journal of Two Years’ Travel in Persia, Ceylon, Etc., vol. 2 (London, 1857), p. 356Google Scholar; Goldsmid, Sir F. J., Telegraph and Travel; A Narrative of the Formation and Development of Telegraphic Communication between England and India… (London, 1874), pp. 570–572Google Scholar; idem, Eastern Persia: An Account of the Journeys…, vol. 1 (London, 1876), p. 96; Special-Catalog der Ausstellung des Persischen Reiches (Wien, 1873), pp. 63, 54; MacGregor, Sir C. M., Narrative of a Journey through the Province of Khorassan…, vol. 1 (London, 1879), pp. 77–78Google Scholar; Wills, C. J., Persia As It Is: Being Sketches of Modern Persian Life and Character (London, 1886), pp. 234–235Google Scholar; Bleibtreu, J., Persien: das Land der Sonne und des Löwen: Aus den Papieren eines Reisenden (Freiburg, 1894), p. 201Google Scholar; Landor, H. S., Across Coveted Lands or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta, Overland, vol. 1 (New York, 1903), pp. 382–385Google Scholar.

³ W. Floor, ‘Commerce vi. In the Safavid and Qajar periods’, Encyclopædia Iranica, 2011 [1992], http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/commerce-vi (accessed 25 November 2022).

⁴ Issawi, C., An Economic History of the Middle East and North Africa (New York, 1982), p. 94Google Scholar. Persia's population numbered about 5 million in 1800, 5.8 million in 1830, and 9.9 million in 1900. Ibid.

⁵ Yerousushalmi, D., The Jews of Iran in the Nineteenth Century. Aspects of History, Community, and Culture (Leiden, 2009), pp. 65–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶ Oshidari, J., ‘Matbu’āt va Nivishtehā-e Zartushtiyān’, Chistā 1.6 (Bahman 1360/January 1982), p. 681Google Scholar; N. Mohajer and K. Yazdani, ‘The commerce of Yazd and the economic activities of its Zoroastrian merchants and laborers’ (forthcoming).

⁷ Ouseley, Sir W., Travels in Various Countries of the East: More Particularly Persia…, vol. 1 (London, 1819), pp. 355–356Google Scholar. Lady Sheil (d. 1869) corroborated that Persia's Zoroastrians ‘preserve a connexion with their brethren the Parsees of Bombay, and it is on this account, in all likelihood, that their intercourse with us is so intimate’. She added that up to 200 gardeners of the British embassy ‘were always Gebrs [Zoroastrians]…They dwell chiefly in the eastern province of Yezd, from whence they migrate annually in great numbers during spring.’ Sheil, Lady M. L. W., Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia (London, 1856), pp. 135–136Google Scholar.

⁸ Fraser, J. B., Narrative of a Journey into Khorasan in the Years 1821 and 1822 (London, 1825), p. 22Google Scholar. See also idem, An Historical and Descriptive Account, p. 57.

⁹ Money, R. C., Journal of a Tour in Persia, during the Years 1824 and 1825 (London, 1828), p. 132Google Scholar; Eichwald, E. von, Reise auf den Caspischen Meere und in den Caucasus. Unternommen in den Jahren 1825–1826 (Stuttgart, 1834), p. 219Google Scholar.

¹⁰ J. Snow, ‘Asiatic Cholera Pandemic of 1846–63’, http://www.ph.ucla.edu/epi/Snow/pandemic1846-63.html (last accessed 17 July 2022); Goscha, C., Vietnam: A New History (New York, 2016), p. 60Google Scholar; G. Hosking, Russia and the Russians: A History (Cambridge, 2001), p. 9.

¹¹ Watson, R. G., A History of Persia from the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to the Year 1858… (London, 1866), pp. 187, 189Google Scholar.

¹² National Archives (NA), Kew (London): FO 50/165: Trade Report. Notes on the Trade, Manufactures, and Productions of various Cities, and Countries of Persia, visited by Mr. Consul Abbott in 1849–50, p. 70. By 1852, the British were already complaining about competing Persian opium. It was imported by Bombay firms, mainly to Karachi, and was re-exported to China or sold on to American firms. See Boehme, Kate, ‘Origins of a modern Indian capitalist class in Bombay’, The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Asian History (2019), pp. 1–18, p. 9Google Scholar.

¹³ Karaka, D. F., History of the Parsis, Including their Manners, Customs, Religion and Present Position, vol. 1 (London, 1884), p. 55Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Polak, J. E., Beitrag zu den agrarischen Verhältnissen in Persien (Wien, 1863), p. 33Google Scholar; idem, Persien: das Land und seine Bewohner; ethnographische Schilderungen von Jakob Eduard Polak, vol. 1 (Leipzig, 1865), p. 29.

¹⁵ H. Yule (ed.), The Book of Ser Marco Polo…, vol. 1 (London, 1871), p. 85.

¹⁶ R. Shahmardān, Tārikh-e Zartoshtiān: Farzanegān-e Zartoshti (Tehran, 1363/1984), pp. 617–622; T. Amini, Asnādi az Zartoshtiān-e Moāsser-e Irān (1258–1338) (Tehran, 1380/2001), p. 1; F. M. Kotwal, J. K. Choksy, C. J. Brunner and M. Moazami, ‘Hataria, Manekji Limji’, Encyclopædia Iranica (2016) http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/hataria-manekji-limji (accessed 25 November 2022).The foundation of the abovementioned society was an immediate response to increased Zoroastrian immigration to Gujarat and Bombay during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and their subsequent urge to help their relatives, friends, and co-religionists back in Persia. It was especially Burjoji Faramji Panday (Merwanji's brother) and his mother Golestān who established a fund in 1834 to help recent Persian Zoroastrian immigrants in Bombay. Golestān herself had escaped with her father to Bombay in 1796 to avoid a forced marriage to a Yazdi Muslim. In Bombay, she was married to the affluent Parsi Faramji Bhikaji Panday who, according to Boyce, aided ‘with body, mind and money’ those Iranians who reached Bombay, and it is said that he earned the right to be called ‘the father of the Irani Parsis’. Mary Boyce, ‘Maneckji Limji Hataria in Iran’, K. R. Cama Oriental Institute Golden Jubilee Volume (1969), pp. 19–31, p. 20.

¹⁷ M. L. Hataria, Resāla-e Tarjoma-ye Eẓhār-e Siāḥat-e Irān (Bombay, 1280/1863–1864), p. 41.

¹⁸ Mohajer and Yazdani, ‘The commerce of Yazd’.

¹⁹ According to the British Reverend Napier Malcolm (who spent five years in Yazd between 1898 and 1903), up until about 1860, Zoroastrians ‘could not engage in trade. They used to hide things in their cellar rooms, and sell them secretly. They can now trade in the caravanserais or hostelries, but not in the bazaars, nor may they trade in linen drapery.’ N. Malcolm, Five Years in a Persian Town (London, 1905), pp. 46–47. The circumstances under which the trade ban was abolished still remain obscure. But we know that linens were considered to be more polluting than other types of cloth but also a lucrative trade item. J. Kestenberg-Amighi, ‘Kerman xiii. Zoroastrians of Nineteenth-Century Yazd and Kerman’, Encyclopædia Iranica (2014), http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/kerman-13-zoroastrians (accessed 25 November 2022).

²⁰ For the house of Mehrabān's early commercial activities in Yazd, see the sections in this article titled ‘Mollā Arbāb Mehrabān Rostam’ and ‘A Sketch of the Lives of Ardeshir Mehrabān Irani and his Brother Keikhosrow’.

²¹ Karaka, History, vol. 1, p. 81.

²² Shahmardān, Tārikh-e Zartoshtiān, p. 626; Boyce, ‘Maneckji’; M. Ringer, ‘Reform transplanted: Parsi agents of change amongst Zoroastrians in nineteenth-century Iran’, Iranian Studies 42.4 (2009), pp. 549–560, p. 556. According to Boyce, ‘Maneckji’, ‘the education offered was a modern secular one, based on reading, writing and arithmetic’ (p. 28). It was a boarding school where the children had to stay for five years and all costs were defrayed by Hataria, including financial support for their parents. In the next decades, these pupils went on to become some of the most prominent Zoroastrians. Amini, Asnādi, p. 8.

²³ C. E. Stewart, Through Persia in Disguise, (ed.) Basil Stewart (London, 1911), p. 268.

²⁴ E. A. Floyer, Unexplored Baluchistan. A Survey, with Observations Astronomical, Geographical, Botanical, etc., of a Route through Mekran, Bashkurd, Persia, Kurdistan, and Turkey (London, 1882), pp. 353–354. Floor confirms that, as early as 1876, the trade in textiles (especially silk) in Persia was mostly in the hands of Zoroastrians from Yazd. W. Floor, The Persian Textile Industry in Historical Perspective 1500–1925 (Paris, 1999), p. 21.

²⁵ E. Stack, Six Months in Persia, vol. 1 (London, 1882), pp. 263, 269.

²⁶ Lieutenant H. B. Vaughan, ‘Journeys in Persia (1890–91)’, The Geographical Journal 7.1 (1896), pp. 24–41, p. 29. See also Landor, Across Coveted Lands, p. 383; MacGregor, Narrative, vol. 1, pp. 77–78.

²⁷ India Office Records, British Library (IOR): /L/PWD/7/1097: Lieutenant H. B. Vaughan, Memorandum on the Parsis of Yezd, 22 July 1889, p. 4. However, he later noted that the 15 naturalised British subjects comprised both Zoroastrians and Muslims. IOR/L/PS/20/91: Henry Bathurst Vaughan, Report of a Journey through Persia (1890), p. 29.

²⁸ Ibid.

²⁹ Vaughan, Memorandum, p. 3.

³⁰ In the mid-nineteenth century, Karaka observed that ‘property newly purchased [by Zoroastrians] was liable to be taxed for the benefit of the “mullas” to the extent of a fifth of its value’. Karaka, History, vol. 1, 78. Around the same time, the prominent Russian Orientalist and Iranologist, Zhukovskiĭ, corroborated that the clergy skimmed 20 per cent from Zoroastrians when they inherited, bought, or sold property. V. A. Zhukovskiĭ, ‘О Положеніи Гевровъ въ Персіи’ [On the position of Gabrs in Persia], Журналъ Министерства НароднагоПросвѣщенія 237 (1885), pp. 77–94, p. 87. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to Victor Zatsepine for helping with the translation of the latter. In 1888, Vaughan pointed out that: ‘Whenever a Parsi purchases landed property he has to pay for it twenty per cent more than the estimated value.’ Vaughan, Memorandum, p. 2. In 1892, Curzon also attested that when Zoroastrians ‘purchase property, a higher price is exacted from them than from Mohammedans; they are forced to conceal their means, and to restrict their commercial operations for fear of exciting hostile attack; while in the streets they are constantly liable to insult and personal affront.’ G. N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, vol. 2 (London, 1892), p. 241. In 1907, this was also confirmed by Baggaley. He wrote that, when a ‘Parsee buys a piece of land from a Moslem he has to pay the “Khums” [khams], i.e. 20% to the Mullas of the actual price paid to the seller.’ Baggaley cited in P. Oberling, ‘The role of religious minorities in the Persian Revolution, 1906–1912’, Journal of Asian History 12.1 (1978), pp. 1–29, p. 17.

³¹ NA: FO 60/539: H. B. Vaughan, 19.6.1889, pp. 13–14 and 9.7.1889, pp. 1–5; NA: FO 60/539: J. E. Gordon: Appointment of Mr. Ardeshir Mihrban as British Agent at Yezd, 30.6.1892, pp. 52–53; Bleibtreu, Persien, p. 201; Landor, Across Coveted Lands, p. 398.

³² Curzon, Persia, vol. 2, pp. 241–242.

³³ M. J. Fisher, ‘Zoroastrian Iran between Myth and Praxis’, (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Chicago, 1973), p. 116.

³⁴ Sir Mortimer Durand to the Marquis of Salisbury, in Foreign Office. 1896. Annual Series. No. 1662. Diplomatic and Consular Reports on Trade and Finance. Persia. Report for the Year 1894–95 on the Trade of Ispahan and Yezd (London, 1896); Deutsches Handels-Archiv. Zeitschrift für Handel und Gewerbe. Herausgegeben im Reichsamt des Innern. Zweiter Theil: Berichte über das In- und Ausland (Berlin, 1896), pp. 224–227.

³⁵ Major P. M. Sykes, Ten Thousand Miles in Persia or Eight Years in Iran (London, 1902), pp. 423–424.

³⁶ The exports mainly consisted of almonds and nuts, tobacco, opium (to China), colouring matters, walnut wood, silk, wool, cotton, carpets, felts, skins, assafoetida, shoes, copper pots, country loaf-sugar, and sweetmeats. Imports included spices, cotton goods, yarn, prints, copper sheeting, tin slabs, Indian tea, broadcloth, jewellery, arms, cutlery, watches, earthenware, glass and enamel wares, iron, loaf-sugar, and powdered sugar. Landor, Across Coveted Lands, pp. 382–385, 398, 405.

³⁷ Karaka, History, vol. 1, p. 55.

³⁸ Vaughan, Memorandum, p. 2 and Appendix. According to Isaac Luria, the headmaster of the Alliance Israélite school in Baghdad, there were 1,500 Jews in Yazd in 1872. In 1879, Houtum-Schindler mentioned that there were 1,200 Jews in Yazd, out of whom 1,000 lived in extreme poverty, whereas Menant and Malcom estimated that the population of Yazd amounted to 70,000 or 80,000 inhabitants, including 2,000 Jews, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century respectively. Yerousushalmi, The Jews, pp. 67, 82, 125, 202; General A. Houtum-Schindler, ‘Reisen im südlichen Persien 1879’, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin 16 (1881), pp. 307–366, p. 320; D. Menant, Les Parsis, translated in part by R. A. Vakil (London, 1902 [1898]), p. 51; Malcolm, Five Years, p. 44.

³⁹ Shahmardān, Tārikh-e Zartoshtiān, p. 13; Menant, Les Parsis, p. 42.

⁴⁰ Report on the Trade of Ispahan and Yezd for the Year 1906 by Mr. Consul-general Barnham, in Annual Series. No. 3923. Diplomatic and Consular Reports. Persia. Report for the Year 1906 of the Trade of Ispahan and Yezd (London, 1907), p. 575 (18).

⁴¹ To what degree the population increase was related to a higher birth rate or immigration is not clear. But we know that a number of Parsis had moved to Persia and were living in Yazd from the 1850s, adding up to almost three dozen Parsi merchants by the 1880s. Moreover, the Zoroastrians’ legal situation improved in the wake of the activities of the Parsis as well as the goodwill of Nasser ed-Din Shah, prime ministers Amir Kabir and Mirzā Hossein Khān Sepahsālār, and, to some degree, the governor of Yazd, Prince Imad ud-Dawla. But the amelioration of medical and sanitary conditions in Persia from the second half of the nineteenth century is also likely to have stimulated overall population growth, including the increase of Persia's Zoroastrian communities.

⁴² Amini, Asnādi, p. 25; K. Namiraniān, Zartoshtiān-e Irān Pas az Eslām ta Konoun (Tehran, 2008/1387), p. 206.

⁴³ F. Ādamiat, Amir Kabir va Irān (Tehran, 1983), pp. 456–456. Prime Minister Amir Kabir (r. 1848–1851) tried to prevent the emigration of Zoroastrians and intended to bring back many who had already left for India. To achieve this, he sent Mirzā Hossein Khān Sepahsālār on a mission to Bombay to convince those who had departed the country to come back. He seems to have persuaded seven families who had left for Bombay to return to Persia. Ibid.

⁴⁴ Shahmardān, Tārikh-e Zartoshtiān, pp. 578–579; J. R. Hinnells, M. Boyce and S. Shahrokh, ‘Charitable Foundations’, Encyclopædia Iranica (2011 [1991]), http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/charitable-foundations-mpers#pt2 (accessed 25 November 2022)

⁴⁵ Shahmardān, Tārikh-e Zartoshtiān, p. 433.

⁴⁶ Amini, Asnādi, p. 25; Shahmardān, Tārikh-e Zartoshtiān, pp. 399–400; J. Oshidari, Tarikh-e Pahlavi va Zartoshtiān-e Irān (Tehran, 1976/2535) (shāhanshāhi), p. 267. Interestingly, the ‘Zoroastrian anjomans [societies] have a longer history than other anjomans in Iran, dating from as early as the mid-19th century with the arrival in Yazd of Manekji Limji Hataria’. M. Kasheff, ‘Anjoman-e Zartoštīān’, Encyclopædia Iranica (2011 [1985]), http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/anjoman-e-zartostian (accessed 25 November 2022). Boyce points out that in the 1850s, Hataria promoted the conversion of traditional Zoroastrian councils of elders in Yazd and Kerman into elected anjumans, ‘each with a secretary and written minutes’. M. Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London/Boston, 1979), p. 218. See also S. Stiles, ‘Early Zoroastrian conversions to the Bahá’í faith in Yazd, Iran’, in From Iran East and West. Studies in Bábí and Bahá’í History, vol. 2, (eds) J. R. Cole and M. Momen (Los Angeles, 1984), pp. 67–94.

⁴⁷ Maharashtra State Archives, Bombay (MSA): Political Department, Persia, Vol. 1, No. 204 (1875), Certificate, Bombay Castle, 1 February 1869; Shahmardān, Tārikh-e Zartoshtiān, pp. 433, 576. Some of the dates provided by Shahmardān are inaccurate and inconsistent with other available sources. Accordingly, he assumes that Keikhosrow was born around 1828–1829. But Keikhosrow himself told the British colonial administration in Bombay that he was born around 1838. If Shahmardān was right that Keikhosrow's father died when he was 12, it would have been more likely that he was born in the mid-1840s since his father could not have met Hataria prior to 1854, the date of the latter's arrival in Persia. Alternatively, if 1838 was the correct date of birth, Keikhosrow must have been older than 12 when his father died.

⁴⁸ Shahmardān, Tārikh-e Zartoshtiān, p. 578.

⁴⁹ Ibid., pp. 576, 578. At Keikhosrow's behest, Yazd's Zoroastrians donated Rs 14,250 to finance the building of schools. He also built and paid the expenses of the Keikhosrow School and deposited Rs 5,000 in his own name and Rs 2,500 on Khosrow Mehrabān's behalf to be entrusted to the Parsi Amelioration Fund. Ibid., p. 555. Pavri confirms that in 1890 Keikhosrow spent Rs 10,000 to build a school by the name of Dabirestan-e-Keikhosrowi in Yazd and also donated Rs 5,000 for its maintenance. It became one of the most reputable schools in Yazd, with about 200 students. Ibid., p. 579; J. Pavri, ‘Arbab Rustam Bahman Guiv, (1888–1980)’, http://www.zoroastrian.org.uk/vohuman/Article/Rustam%20Guiv.htm (accessed 25 November 2022).

⁵⁰ MSA: Political Department, Persia, Vol. 1, No. 204 (1875), Certificate, Bombay Castle, 1 February 1869; Ibid., 12 February 1869; Ibid., 13 February 1869; NA: FO 60/539: Ardeshir Mehrabān, Bombay Castle, 22.9.1891, pp. 46–47. According to Pavri, Ardeshir was married to Dowlat and had four sons, Bahman, Jamshid, Fereydun, and Rashid, and two daughters, Gulchehr and Morvarid. Pavri, ‘Arbab Rustam’.

⁵¹ MSA: Political Department, Persia, Vol. 1, No. 204 (1875), Certificate, Bombay Castle, 1 February 1869; Ibid., 12 February 1869; Ibid., 13 February 1869. For the specificities of the Naturalization Act XXX of 1852, see R. Clarke (ed.), Digest, Or Consolidated Arrangement, of the Regulations and Acts of the Bengal Government from 1793 to 1854 (London, 1855), pp. 10–12.

⁵² NA: FO 60/539: Ardeshir Mehraban, Bombay Castle, 22.9.1891, pp. 46–47; Landor, Across Coveted Lands, p. 404.

⁵³ Jackson was a professor of Indo-Iranian languages at Columbia University who travelled through Persia during the early twentieth century. Curiously enough, Jackson alleged that Ardeshir was Rostam's adopted son. A. V. W. Jackson, Persia Past and Present: A Book of Travel and Research (London, 1906), p. 397.

⁵⁴ Hinnells et al., ‘Charitable Foundations’. Shahmardān also notes that Keikhosrow and his brother Arbāb Rostam built an āb-anbār in Asrabad (around Yazd) to facilitate access to a water supply. They also built another one in the middle of the desert, six kilometres from Allahabad, named after their murdered brother Rashid Mehr(abān). Shahmardān, Tārikh-e Zartoshtian, p. 579. A number of contemporary European travellers confirmed that a caravanserai and its property, including a house that adjoined it, was donated by Godarz Mehrabān and had been turned into a well-equipped hospital by Dr White of the Church Missionary Society (CMS). Sykes, Ten Thousand Miles, pp. 423–424; Jackson, Persia, p. 377; C. C. Rice, Mary Bird in Persia (London, 1916), p. 133. Interestingly, Fisher notes that, before donating the caravanserai and house to the CMS, Godarz refused to sell them to the Tobacco Regie. Fisher, ‘Zoroastrian Iran’, p. 436. In 1900, the CMS in Yazd treated 35,600 patients, ‘some of whom even came from Baluchistan and Afghanistan to seek treatment’. W. Floor, ‘Hospitals in Safavid and Qajar Iran: An enquiry into their number, growth and importance’, in Hospitals in Iran and India, 1500–1950s, (ed.) F. Speziale (Leiden, 2012), pp. 37–116, p. 101.

⁵⁵ The American Annual Cyclopaedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1871, vol. 11 (New York, 1872), pp. 625–626.

⁵⁶ Ibid., p. 625.

⁵⁷ The Church Missionary Intelligencer. A Monthly Journal of Missionary Information, vol. VII (London, 1871), p. 328.

⁵⁸ Ibid., p. 329.

⁵⁹ Allen's Indian Mail and Official Gazette, 1 August 1871, p. 731.

⁶⁰ Ibid.

⁶¹ S. Patel, ‘The Great Persian Famine of 1871, Parsi refugees and the making of Irani identity in Bombay’, in Bombay Before Mumbai: Essays in Honour of Jim Masselos, (eds) P. Kidambi, M. Kamat and R. Dwyer (New York, 2019), pp. 57–76, p. 71.

⁶² The American Annual Cyclopaedia, vol. 11, p. 625.

⁶³ Patel, ‘The Great Persian Famine’, pp. 57, 66–67.

⁶⁴ Ibid.

⁶⁵ Ibid., p. 67. Interestingly, on 3 June 1871, ‘two significant contributions were made: the Victoria Theatrical Company held a special performance of the play Bezun and Munizeh, donating the profits of the event (Rs 425), to the Fund; and at the meeting of the Lodge Rising Star of Western India No. 342 S.C., it was resolved to contribute Rs 300 from the charity fund of the Lodge towards famine relief’. Ibid., pp. 67–68.

⁶⁶ Ibid., p. 68.

⁶⁷ Yerousushalmi, The Jews, p. 331.

⁶⁸ Allen's Indian Mail and Official Gazette from British & Foreign India, China, & All Parts of the East (London, 23 May 1871) p. 492. It is unclear what the ascribed identity of ‘Mogul’ means in this context, but one can speculate that it was an allusion to an Indian Muslim.

⁶⁹ Ibid., 13 June 1871, p. 555.

⁷⁰ The Friend. Religious and Literary Journal, vol. 46 (Philadelphia, 1873), p. 69.

⁷¹ The Illustrated London News, No. 1681, vol. 59, 2 December 1871, p. 518.

⁷² Allen's Indian Mail and Official Gazette from British & Foreign India, China, & All Parts of the East (London, 16 January 1872), p. 58.

⁷³ Journal officiel de la République, 10 January 1872.

⁷⁴ Major O. B. St. John, ‘Narrative of a Journey through Baluchistan and Southern Persia, 1872’, in Eastern Persia: An Account of the Journeys of the Persian Boundary Commission, 1870–71–72, vol. 1, (ed.) Major-General Sir F. J. Goldsmid (London, 1876), p. 94.

⁷⁵ Ibid., p. 96.

⁷⁶ Ibid., p. 98.

⁷⁷ Yerousushalmi, The Jews, p. 327. The prominent Jewish leader and philanthropist Sir Moses Montefiore (1784–1885), through his leadership on the Board of Deputies of British Jews, was able to transfer funds to Persia and Yazd with the help of the wealthy Jewish philanthropist Reuben David Sassoon. Ibid., pp. 324–333. See also London Committee of Deputies of the British Jews, Session 5637–40–1877–80 (London, 1880), pp. 38–39.

⁷⁸ M. G. Majd, A Victorian Holocaust: Iran in the Great Famine of 1869–1873 (London, 2018), p. 46.

⁷⁹ Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons, Session 8 February–15 August 1876. Commercial Reports, No. 2. Reports from her Majesty's Consuls on the Manufactures, Commerce, & Co, of their Consular Districts, Part I (London, 1876), p. 65.

⁸⁰ Stack, Six Months, p. 278.

⁸¹ MacGregor, Narrative, vol. 1, pp. 64–65.

⁸² Stack, Six Months, p. 278. According to Seyf, this would have accounted for ‘an annual rate of increase of about 7 per cent (compound) for 1874–1880. Such a high rate of population growth can only be explained by regional mobility, i.e. some of the people who left the town of Taft during the famine years had perhaps returned when it was over. This hypothesis may be supported by the fact that in a census taken in the town of Nain (north-west of Taft) in 1872–73, the total population was 8,000 souls but in 1880–81 it had only 5,000.’ A. Seyf, ‘Iran and the Great Famine, 1870–72’, Middle Eastern Studies 46.2 (2010), pp. 289–306, pp. 297–298.

⁸³ MSA: Political Department, Persia, Vol. 1, No. 204 (1875), Letter to W. J. Thomson (British envoy and plenipotentiary in Persia), Bombay, 15 January 1875, fol. 21. When his mission ended, Sepahsālār returned to Persia and was on the same ship as Hataria. Shahmardān, Tarikh-e Zartoshtiān, p. 623; Oshidari, Tarikh-e Pahlavi va Zartoshtiān-e Irān, p. 231.

⁸⁴ Shahmardān, Tarikh-e Zartoshtiān, p. 400.

⁸⁵ MacGregor, Narrative, vol. 1, pp. 78–79. It is not clear whether the Mehrabān brothers had another sibling by the name of Key Kāvus or whether McGregor is misspelling Keikhosrow.

⁸⁶ Karaka, History, vol. 1, pp. 66–67.

⁸⁷ Vaughan, Memorandum, p. 2.

⁸⁸ MSA: Political Department, Persia, Vol. 1, No. 204 (1875), Letter by Kaikhushroo Meherban Irani and Ardaseer Meherban Iranee to W. J. Thomson (British envoy and plenipotentiary in Persia), Bombay, 15 January 1875, fol. 21–22. Edward Browne confirmed that ‘Ardashir's own brother Rashid was murdered by fanatical Musulmáns as he was walking through the bazaars, and I saw the tablet put up to his memory in one of the fire-temples of Yezd.’ E. G. Browne, A Year Amongst the Persians (London, 1893), p. 371. On 22 March 1907, H. Baggaley, the British vice-consul in Yazd, conjectured that Rashid was shot dead ‘simply for riding through the bazaars’. Baggaley cited in Oberling, ‘The role of religious minorities’, p. 17.

⁸⁹ MSA: Political Department, Persia, Vol. 1, No. 204 (1875), Letter by Kaikhushroo Meherban Irani and Ardaseer Meherban Iranee to W. J. Thomson (British envoy and plenipotentiary in Persia), Bombay, 15 January 1875, fol. 21–22.

⁹⁰ Ibid., 17 February 1876.

⁹¹ The 1864 census of Bombay counted 49,201 Parsis (6.03 per cent of the total Bombay population). According to the general census of 1891, the number of Parsis in India amounted to 89,904: 47,498 Parsis lived in Bombay, 12.757 in Surat, and the rest in Broach, Thana, Karachi, and so on. Karaka, History, vol. 1, pp. 92–93; D. Menant, ‘Zoroastrians and the Parsis’, The North American Review 172.530 (1901), pp. 132–147, p. 146; Das Ausland. Ueberschau der neuesten Forschungen auf dem Gebiet der Natur-, Erd- und Völkerkunde, vol. 38 (Tübingen, 1865), p. 794; C. E. Dobbin, Asian Entrepreneurial Minorities: Conjoint Communities in the Making of the World-Economy 1570–1940 (London, 1996), p. 89.

⁹² For the economic rise and commercial activities of the Parsis in South, West, and East Asia as well as eastern Africa, see N. Mohajer and K. Yazdani, ‘The Socio-Economic Ascendancy of the Parsis in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century’, (forthcoming).

⁹³ W. Dymock, The Vegetable Materia Medica of Western India (Bombay, 1885), p. 317.

⁹⁴ Vaughan, ‘Journeys’, p. 28; Landor, Across Coveted Lands, vol. 1, p. 405.

⁹⁵ In 1888, he became a university lecturer in Persian at Cambridge and from 1902 until his death, Professor of Arabic. Browne published a great number of works, including 55 major publications, mostly on Persian history. Among others, these examine the literary history of Persia, Babism/Bahaism, the Constitutional movement, etc. and include a number of editions and translations of major Persian and other Oriental writings. G. M. Wickens, J. Cole and K. Ekbal, ‘Browne, Edward Granville’, Encyclopædia Iranica (1989), http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/browne-edward-granville (last accessed 25 November 2022)

⁹⁶ Browne, A Year, p. 368. Dastur Tirandāz is said to have stayed in Bombay for a few years where he studied and published a Persian translation of the Avesta. In 1892, Tirandāz, the then agent of the Bombay Society, also founded the Anjuman-e Nasseri of Yazd. He is further credited with having brought a facsimile of Bundahishn from Persia to India, published in Bombay in 1908. Amini, Asnādi, p. 26; Oshidari, Tarikh-e Pahlavi va Zartoshtiān-e Irān, p. 283; E. T. D. Anklesaria (ed.), The Bundahishn, being a Facsimile of the TD Manuscript, No. 2 brought from Persia by Dastur Tîrandâz… (Bombay, 1908).

⁹⁷ Browne, A Year, p. 364.

⁹⁸ Ibid., pp. 340, 364. According to the late nineteenth-century historian Menant, Ardeshir was the ‘lay chief’ of Yazd. Menant, Les Parsis, p. 53.

⁹⁹ Browne, A Year, p. 387.

¹⁰⁰ Malcolm, Five Years, p. 46. Jackson also noted that the ‘comparative scarcity of upper stories on the houses in the Gabar quarter [of Yazd] is still noticeable’. Jackson, Persia, p. 374.

¹⁰¹ Browne, A Year, pp. 375, 363–364; Jackson, Persia, p. 377; Rice, Mary Bird, p. 133.

¹⁰² Browne, A Year, p. 382.

¹⁰³ Ibid., p. 385.

¹⁰⁴ Ibid., p. 376.

¹⁰⁵ Ibid., p. 379.

¹⁰⁶ For a list of Dari words that Browne picked up in Yazd, see Ibid., p. 389.

¹⁰⁷ Ibid., p. 388.

¹⁰⁸ Ibid., pp. 369–370.

¹⁰⁹ Maclean, J. M., Guide to Bombay, Historical, Statistical and Descriptive, 14th edn (Bombay, 1889), p. 108Google Scholar. This date is earlier than the one provided by Ardeshir himself. See above.

¹¹⁰ Bombay Municipal Department, Record of Proceedings of the Municipal Corporation and the Standing Committee, 1889–90. Vol. XIII, Part I: Proceedings of the Corporation; Part II: Proceedings of the Standing Committee (Bombay, 1890), pp. 9–10, 299–300.

¹¹¹ NA: FO 60/539: 9.7.1889, pp. 1–5.

¹¹² Ibid., H. B. Vaughan, 19.6.1889, pp. 13–14.

¹¹³ Vaughan, Memorandum, p. 4.

¹¹⁴ NA: FO 60/539: Horace Walpole, 23.1.1890, p. 21.

¹¹⁵ Curzon, Persia, vol. 2, p. 241.

¹¹⁶ Vaughan, Memorandum, p. 4.

¹¹⁷ Browne, A Year, p. 340.

¹¹⁸ NA: FO 60/539: Ardeshir Mehraban, Bombay Castle, 22.9.1891, pp. 46–47.

¹¹⁹ Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh trading communities from Gujarat and Punjab had long been active in Persia, especially since Safavid times. According to Levi, ‘F. A. Kotov recorded the presence of a Multani diaspora community in Isfahan, and in 1637 Adam Olearius reported that this community consisted of some 12.000 merchants…In the 1660s, Jean Chardin reported that the total number of “Multani Indians” in Safavid territory exceeded 20.000…The importance of the Multani merchants in supplying Persian markets with Indian textiles is underlined by Raphaël du Mans’ collective identification of them as bazzaze (‘cloth merchant’) in his late 17th -century account…Considering that a significant proportion of the many thousands of “Multani” merchants in Safavid Persia were Khatris, it is probable that many, if not most, of the Sikh merchant families that established communities in Persia during the 19th and 20th centuries had antecedents who were fully engaged in the same commercial activities as Hindu Multanis.’ Levi, S. C., ‘India xiii. Indo-Iranian Commercial Relations’, Encyclopædia Iranica (2014 [2004])Google Scholar. https://iranicaonline.org/articles/india-xiii-indo-iranian-commercial-relations (last accessed 25 November 2022).

¹²⁰ Vaughan, Memorandum, pp. 4–5. As Dobbin points out: ‘The Bank of Western India, established in 1842 as a joint British-Parsi initiative and renamed the Oriental Bank in 1845, had at one time three-eighths of its share capital in the hands of [the Parsi] Dadabhai Pestanji Wadia.’ Dobbin, Asian Entrepreneurial Minorities, p. 90. The Oriental Bank Corporation had ‘a paid-up capital of £1.5 million. In 1845 its head office was relocated to London…The charter was revised on 30 August 1851, when the bank was renamed the Oriental Bank Corporation. By 1860 it was one of the largest and most important British-owned overseas banks with assets of over £12.6 million and 14 branches including Bombay, Calcutta, Madras, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Yokohama, Mauritius, Sydney and two branches in Ceylon (Sri Lanka)…The Oriental Bank was in decline by the early 1880s, due in part to a contraction of business, and partly due to the discovery of defalcations estimated at around £29.000 at its Mauritius offices. The bank failed in 1884, largely due to misjudgment of silver price movements and the lock up of funds in Ceylonese coffee plantations and Mauritian sugar estates. The business was reconstituted under new legislation as a limited liability company, the New Oriental Banking Company Ltd., but this too failed in 1892.’ Quoted from the Oriental Bank Corporation, https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/bc488aca-8091-32b7-8e36-cf9b7299ee68 (accessed 25 November 2022). See also J. McGuire, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Oriental Bank in the Nineteenth Century: A Product of the Transformations that Occurred in the World Economy or the Result of its Own Mismanagement’, Paper presented to the 15th Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia (Canberra, 29 June–2 July 2004).

¹²¹ Curzon, G. N., Persia and the Persian Question, vol. 1 (London, 1892), p. 474Google Scholar. In 1889, after Nasser ed-Din Shah granted an exclusive bank concession to Julius Reuter, ‘the New Oriental Bank closed its operations and sold its assets for 20.000 pounds sterling to the resulting Imperial Bank of Persia (Bank Melli Iran, 1958, p. 55)…Although all indications show that the New Oriental Bank was successful in Iran, that bank did not enjoy a favorable reputation in London. Despite the fact that in 1887 the bank's world-wide profits were 31.730 pounds sterling with equity capital of approximately 500.000 pounds sterling and paid 6 shillings dividends on 5.00 pounds sterling book value shares (Times, 16 June 1888, p. 8), it “suspended payment” in 1892 and was liquidated in 1893 (Bankers Almanac, 1974, pp. 611–31)’. Quoted in Basseer, P., Clawson, P. and Floor, W., ‘Banking’, Encyclopædia Iranica (1988), http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/banking-in-iran (accessed 25 November 2022)Google Scholar.

¹²² Issawi, An Economic History, p. 46.

¹²³ NA: FO 60/539, 9.7.1889; H. B. Vaughan, 19.6.1889, pp. 13–14.

¹²⁴ NA: FO 60/539: 9.7.1889, pp. 1–5.

¹²⁵ Browne, A Year, p. 381.

¹²⁶ NA: FO 60/539: Marquess of Salisbury, Tehran 7.3.1892, p. 38 and J. C. Lascelles, Tehran 1.3.1892, p. 42.

¹²⁷ Ibid., Ardeshir Mehraban, Bombay Castle, 22.9.1891, pp. 46–47. Ardeshir added that, ‘regarding my appointment as British Agent of Yezd…I have received no official intimation of my appointment in such a capacity though I have been managing the business of the Agency for more than 15 months…in the event of my being officially appointed I will always endeavor to serve the British Government to the best of my power, and will look to the interest of all British subjects of whatever need, who may be brought into relation with me, with the utmost impartiality.’

¹²⁸ Ibid.

¹²⁹ Ibid., Sir F. Lascalles, 9.5.1892, p. 49.

¹³⁰ NA: FO 60/539: J. E. Gordon: Appointment of Mr. Ardeshir Mihrban as British Agent at Yezd, 30.6.1892, pp. 52–53.

¹³¹ Ibid., Horace Walpole, 30.9.1892, p. 65.

¹³² Malcolm, Five Years, p. 261; Rice, Mary Bird, p. 133.

¹³³ Landor, Across Coveted Lands, p. 404.

¹³⁴ Ibid., p. 405.

¹³⁵ Shahmardān, Tārikh-e Zartoshtiān, p. 579.