some years past had been half a million sterling per annum in excess
of the receipts and that considerable sums were owing to banks
and commercial firms who had lent money. Most of the money
borrowed is at 12 to 15% interest.
Banking.—It was only in 1888 that a European bank (the New Oriental Bank Corporation, Limited) established itself in Persia and modern ideas of banking were introduced into the country. Until then the banking was done by the native money-changers (sarrafs) and some merchants—foreign and native—who occasionally undertook special outside transactions. In 1889 the shah granted a concession to Baron Julius de Reuter for the formation of a state bank with the exclusive right of issuing bank-notes—not exceeding £800,000 without special assent of the Persian government—on the basis of the local currency, the silver kran. With the title of “The Imperial Bank of Persia” the bank was formed in the autumn of the same year, and incorporated by royal charter granted by Queen Victoria and dated the 2nd of September 1889. The authorized capital was four millions sterling, but the bank started with a capital of one million, and began its business in Persia in October 1889. In April 1890 it took over the Persian business of the New Oriental Bank Corporation, soon afterwards opened branches and agencies at the principal towns, and issued notes in the same year. During the first two years the bank remitted the greater part of its capital to Persia at the then prevailing exchange, and received for every pound sterling 32 to 34 krans; but in consequence of the great fall in silver in 1893 and 1894, the exchange rose to 50 krans per pound sterling and more, and the bank’s capital employed in Persia being reduced in value by more than one-third—100 krans, which at the beginning represented £3, then being worth only £2 or less—the original capital of one million sterling was reduced to £650,000 in December 1894. The bank has made steady progress in spite of innumerable difficulties, and paid a fair dividend to its shareholders. In his paper on “Banking in Persia” (Journal of the Institute of Bankers, 1891), Mr Joseph Rabino pointed out the great difficulties which make the easy distribution of funds—that is, the providing them when and where required—a matter of impossibility in Persia, and gives this fact as the reason why the Imperial Bank of Persia has local issues of notes, payable at the issuing branches only, “for, in a country like Persia, where movements of specie are so costly, slow and difficult as to become impracticable except on a small scale, the danger of issuing notes payable at more than one place is obvious” On the 20th of September 1907 the value of the notes in circulation was £395,000, and the bank held £550,000 deposits in Persia.
In 1889 the shah also granted a concession to Jaques de Poliakov of St Petersburg for the establishment of a “loan bank,” or, as the original concession said, “mont-de-piété,” with exclusive rights of holding public auctions. A company was formed in the same year and started business at Teheran in 1890 as the “Banque des Prêts de Perse.” After confining its operations for some years to ordinary pawnbroking, without profits, it obtained the aid of the Russian State Bank, acquired large premises in Teherān, made advances to the Persian government (since 1898), and in January 1900 and March 1902 financed the loans of £2,400,000 and £l,000,000 to Persia. It has branches at Tabriz, Resht, Mesheol and other places.
Various Armenian firms, one with branches at many places in Persia and Russia also do banking business, while various European firms at Tabriz, Teherān, Isfahan, Shiraz and Bushire, facilitate remittances between Europe and Persia.
The chief business of the native sarrafs (money-changers, bankers, &c.) is to discount bills at high rates, hardly ever less than 12%, and remit money from place to place in Persia for a commission amounting to from 1 to 5, or even 6% on each transaction; and in spite of the European banks giving lower rates of discount and remitting money at par, the majority of the people and mercantile classes still deal with the natives. For advances with good security a native sarraf charges at least 12% interest per annum; as the security diminishes in value the rate of interest increases, and transactions at 10% a month, or more than 120% per annum, are not infrequent. A Persian who obtains an advance of money at less than 12% considers that he gets money “for nothing.” (A. H.-S.)
History
A.—Ancient, to the Fall of the Sassanid Dynasty.
I. The Name.—“Persia,” in the strict significance of the word, denotes the country inhabited by the people designated as Persians. i.e. the district known in antiquity as Persis (q.v.), the modern Fars. Custom, however, has extended the name to the whole Iranian plateau; and it is in this sense that the term Persia is here employed.
II. Ancient Ethnography.—In historical times we find the
major portion of Iran occupied by peoples of Indo-European
origin, terming themselves Aryans (Arya; Zend, Airya) and
their language Aryan—so in the inscriptions of Darius—the
same name, which is used by the consanguineous tribes of
Descent of
the Iranians.
India who were their nearest relations. The whole
country
is designated Ariana (Zend, Airyana)—“the land
of the Aryans ”—the original of the Middle-Persian
Eran and the modern Iran, the Greek
geographers Eratosthenes and Strabo were in error when they
limited the name to the eastern districts of Iran. Thus the
name of Iranians is understood to comprehend all these people
of Aryan nationality.
Besides the Iranians, numerous tribes of alien origin were
found in Iran. In Baluchistan, even yet, we find side by side
with the eponymous Iranian inhabitants, who
only penetrated thither a few centuries ago, the
ethnologically and philologically distinct race of
Alien Tribes
in Iran.
the Brahui, who are probably connected with the Dravidians
of India. In them we may trace the original population of
these districts; and to the same original population may be
assigned the tribes here settled in antiquity: the Paricanii and
Gedrosii (Gadrosii), and the Myci (Herod. iii. 93, vii. 68; the
Maka of Darius, the modern Mekran), to whom the name
“Aethiopians” is also occasionally applied (Herod. iii. 94, vii.
70). In Media the Greek geographers mention a people of
Anariacae (Strabo xi. 508, 514; Pliny, Nat. Hist. vi. 48; Ptolem.
vi. 25; in Polyb. v. 44. 9, Ἀνιαράκαι), i.e. “Non-Aryans.” To
these the Tapuri, Amardi, Caspii, and especially the Cadusii or
Gelae—situated in Ghilan on the Caspian—probably belonged.
Presumably they were also related to the tribes of Armenia and
the Caucasus. In the chains of Zagros we find, in Babylonian
and Assyrian times, no trace of Iranians; but partly Semitic
peoples—the Gutaeans, Lulubaeans, &c.—partly tribes that
we can refer to no known ethnological group, e.g. the Cossaei
(see below), and in Elymais or Susiana the Elymaeans
(Elamites).
That the Iranians must have come from the East to their
later home, is sufficiently proved by their close relationship to
the Indians, in conjunction with whom they
previously formed a single people, bearing the name
Arya. Their residence must have lain chiefly in
Iranians and
Aryan Indians.
the great steppe which stretches north of the Black Sea and
the Caspian, through South Russia, to Turan (Turkestan)
and the Oxus and Jaxartes. For here we continually discover
traces of Iranian nationality. The names and words of the
Scythians (Scoloti) in South Russia, which Herodotus has
preserved, are for the most part perfectly transparent Iranian
formations, identified by Zeuss and Mullenhoff; among them are
many proper names in Aria–(Αριο–) and aspa (–horse–ασπος;
Zend, aspa). The predatory tribes of Turan (e.g. the Massagetae)
seem to have belonged to the same stock. These
tribes are distinguished by the Iranian peasants as Daha (Gr.
Δάαι), “enemies,” “robbers”; by the Persians as Sacae; and
by the Greeks generally as Scythians.
From the region of the steppes the Aryans must have penetrated into the cultivable land of Eastern Iran: thence one part spread over the district of the Indus, then on again to the Ganges; another moved westward to Zagros and the borders of the Semitic world.
The date of this migration cannot yet be determined with
certainty. We know only that the Aryans of India already
occupied the Punjab in the Vedic era, c. 1600 B.C.
On the other hand, about the same period a number
of names, undoubtedly Iranian, made their appearance
Period of
the Iranian Migration.
in Western Asia, (cf. Edward Meyer, “Zur
ältesten Geschichte der Iranier,” in Zeitschrift für vergleichende
Sprachforschung, 1907). In the cuneiform letters from Tell
el-Amarna in Egypt (1400 B.C.), we find among the princelings
of Syria and Palestine names like Artamanya, Arzawiya,
Shuwardata, a name terminating in -warzana, &c.; while the kings
of Mitanni on the Euphrates are Artatama, Shutarna, Artashumara,
and Dushratta—names too numerous and too genuinely
Iranian to allow of the hypothesis of coincidence. Later still,
in the Assyrian inscriptions we occasionally meet with Iranian
names borne by North-Syrian princes—e.g. Kundaspi and
