The Volume of Iranian Raw Silk Exports in the Safavid Period

Pre-nineteenth century Iranian history is short on numbers, or at least on reliable ones. Lack of quantitative data is perhaps the greatest obstacle confronting historians of pre-modern Iranian economy and society, and the Safavid period is scarcely better provided than earlier ages. The Safavid archives were destroyed, the Persian histories provide few hard facts, and the accounts of visiting Europeans, though often full of comment on social and economic matters, are generally unreliable when it comes to quantitative information. Safavid Iran thus presents a depressing contrast to its neighbours to East and West, where the earlier and deeper European penetration has left arich record in the archives of several European countries, while in the case of the Ottoman Empire, the survival of extensive state archives can only remind the historian of Iran of how much was lost through the destruction of their Safavid counterparts.