Kroch Library Asia Collections

Author: Drechsler, Andreas
Date: 1996
Institution: University of Bamberg, Germany
Subject: History
Degree: Ph.D.

Abstract:
Although it is in German, it contains an English summary (p. 368-377), has an extensive index and can be of interest for researchers occupying themselves with medieval Iranian political and economical history. The following points of the emerging historical picture of Qom can be emphasized as especially noteworthy: the period of the first cursory Arabic conquest and subsequent second seizure (sometimes violent) of the region through the descendants of the first conquerors, the urban genesis, the various tax rebellions caused by extreme tax burdens (a repeated pattern), the loss of authority of the caliphate and the incorporation into the rule of the changing dominating dynasties in Western Iran, the impoverishment under the Buyids in the lifetime of the author of the main source (the Tarikh-i Qumm), the relative urban prosperity under the Saljuqs and the slow recovery under the Ilkhanids after the Mongol slaughter. The pre-Islamic period is also shortly discussed. It can be said that Qom and its region were since long inhabitated although the importance of Qom can not have been as big as other urban centres of pre-Islamic Iran. Special consideration is given to the economical situation as described in length in the Tarikh-i Qumm. The questions of the complex taxation system, the irrigation and the cultivation are extensively treated. Also the social situation can be investigated to some extent and the topography of Qom in the tenth century can be very roughly reconstructed.