Document Type : Research Article

Authors

• Zahra sadat Keshavarz ¹
• Asghar Montazerolghaem ²

¹ Postdoctoral researcher of history in Iran National Science Foundation (INSF) and Isfahan University, Isfahan ,Iran.

² Professor of History, University of Isfahan, Isfahan ,Iran

Abstract

Dealing with social classes in historical periods provides openness to understanding the current situation and getting out of the current social blockages from the area of scrutiny in historical texts. The present research examines local chronicles in order to extract the criteria of reflection of social classes in these texts and the statistics of social class fields. The main question of the research is that the criteria of reflection of social classes in the social history of local chronicles depend on which type of volume, combination and convertibility of capital in the fields of social classes? Therefore, the main hypothesis of the research is that the camouflaged class structure in the social history of the Safavid era indicates the pyramidal hierarchy of capital. This research has been compiled using the three-stage coding of foundation data and relying on the developmental structuralism of the contemporary sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, regarding the fields of classes and their quadruple capitals and is based on five sources of local historiography of the Safavid era, including “Aḥyā al-Mulūk”, “Gilan history”, “Gilan and Daylamān history”,” Šarafnāmeh and Ḵānī history”. The result of the current research is that, the field of governance or court in local chronicles has the highest volume and amount of combination and the amount of transformation of social, economic, cultural and symbolic capital for the hidden classes in it. The field of trade and property is in the second place and the field of culture, poetry and art is in the next ranks. Also, in the lowest order, it is the field of community, which has the lowest volume and lowest amount of composition and conversion of all types of capital for its classes.

Keywords

• Social history
• Social classes
• Habits
• Capital
• local chronicles
• Safavid

Main Subjects

• Social history

Extended Abstract

The framework social history of Iran's Shiites in the texts of local chronicles of the Safavid era

Dealing with social classes in historical periods provides openness to understanding the current situation and getting out of the current social blockages from the area of scrutiny in historical texts. The present research examines local chronicles in order to extract the criteria of reflection of social classes in these texts and the statistics of social class fields. The main question of the research is that the criteria of reflection of social classes in the social history of local chronicles depend on which type of volume, combination and convertibility of capital in the fields of social classes? Therefore, the main hypothesis of the research is that the camouflaged class structure in the social history of the Safavid era indicates the pyramidal hierarchy of capital. This research has been compiled using the three-stage coding of foundation data and relying on the developmental structuralism of the contemporary sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, regarding the fields of classes and their quadruple capitals and is based on five sources of local historiography of the Safavid era, including Aḥyā al-Mulūk, Gilan history, Gilan and Daylamān history, Šarafnāmeh and Ḵānī history. The result of the current research is that the field of governance or court in local chronicles has the highest volume and amount of combination and the amount of transformation of social, economic, cultural and symbolic capital for the hidden classes in it. The field of trade and property is in the second place and the field of culture, poetry and art is in the next ranks. Also, in the lowest order, it is the field of community, which has the lowest volume and lowest amount of composition and conversion of all types of capital for its classes.

Introduction: Historical works, including chronicles, provide the raw materials needed by researchers to compile social history. One of these types of works is local chronicles, which the author tries to analyze and examine the contents of several of them. In the Safavid era, one of the components of Shiite social history is the description and evolution of the social classes of the society. Apart from religion (in the case of Sunnis), none of the indicators of blood, color, race and nationality were involved in obtaining positions and promoting the social base, and to a large extent, virtue and social power played an important role in raising the status and being close to the top of the pyramid, that is, the king. Of course, this does not mean that the class antagonism disappeared and separate social classes did not exist, rather it moves from a static situation to a flow where status distinctions are defined and reproduced over time in relation to cultural objects. In the Safavid era, the concept of capital can be considered in four economic, social, cultural and symbolic dimensions to show important resources (attitudes, habits, entertainments, tastes, beliefs and traditions) that are used in the daily life of people and define the space of social stratification based on class from the point of view of capital. In this era, with these four types of capital and the habits of each class as a model, three factors are influential in capital, including volume, composition and direction.

The main question of the research is that the criteria of reflection of social classes in the social history of the local chronicles of the Safavid Shia government depend on which type of volume, combination and convertibility of capital in the fields of social classes?

The current research has focused on the hypothesis that the camouflaged class structure in the social history of the Shiite Safavid state indicates the pyramidal hierarchy of capital.

Methods: This research has been compiled using the three-stage coding of foundation data and relying on the developmental structuralism of the contemporary sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, regarding the fields of classes and their quadruple capitals and is based on five sources of local historiography of the Safavid era, including Aḥyā al-Mulūk, History of Gilan, History of Gilan and Daylamān, Šarafnāmeh and Ḵānī history, and it has been tried to examine the framework of social history in the local chronicles of the Safavid Shia government by using these.

Conclusion: Re-reading local chronicles as one of the important platforms for studying social history can help to open up our understanding of Iran's social structure in the transition of history.
In this regard, by moving away from the conventional two-stage coding, which has fewer possibilities to pass from the data level to the abstraction and analysis level, and using the three-stage coding available in the foundation's data method, the social classes of different social fields were extracted based on the criteria of introduction and representation of classes by historians of local chronicles were examined based on Bourdieu's theoretical apparatus (formative structuralism). These findings show that the social classes in terms of accumulation and volume and composition and route of capital, have been drawn, respectively, from the field of governance, to the fields of business and property, and then to the field of Shariat, and the fields of culture, poetry, literature, and art, and finally to the field of daily life. This class structure is indicative of a pyramidal structure in the social structure of the Safavid era, which oversees the accumulation of capital and its volume, composition, and transformation path, from top to bottom. At the same time, the relative dispersion of types of capital among fields and social classes, with different volume, composition, and convertibility, indicates a relatively less discriminatory social structure in the Safavid era. Of course, the test of this claim definitely requires an independent survey.

Keywords: Social history, social classes, habits, capital, local chronicles, Safavid.