"The Soul of the Market: Knowledge, Authority and the Making of Expert Merchants in the Persian Rug Bāzār" by Narges Erami

Narges Erami

Deposited 2008

Abstract
This is an ethnographic and historical account of the rug-producing merchants of the holy city of Qum in the contemporary Islamic Republic of Iran, placing emphasis on their processes of self-fashioning through the acquisition of specialized knowledge. Merchants, or bāzārīs, comprise a particular group that is socially coded and historically situated in Iran, a group defined more by vocation than by social stratum (or class). In order to understand bāzārīs, one must understand their specialized knowledge, that at which they excel. Rug-producers represent a distinct subgroup among Iranian bāzārīs and are distinguished by their own specialized expertise.

I argue that two important factors have made the rug-producing bāzārīs and their authoritative knowledge singular. The first is that, historically, the Persian rug has been a commodity that embodies a national past. Persian carpets have a colonial history that is imbued with the exotic, and with the desire to possess the other. The second is that the city of Qum itself, a space known for its famous seminaries and its strict adherence to Shī'ī identity and way of life, has become the religious capital of Iran. Qum is home to one of the youngest and most successful rug industries in Iran. I argue that the city's unique history provided a special foundation for the self-awareness of ordinary men and women in the creation of a community of experts.

In Qum, rug-producers organized themselves extremely effectively since the 1979 Revolution in a professional association called the ittihādīyih . This entity began solely to resolve economic disputes within the rug bazaar, but has expanded to resolving extra-commercial conflicts. In my analysis, I document such settlements and I also describe the exercise of morality in the market, where the bāzār has honor and relies on that very virtue to function. Bāzārī identity becomes a key terrain of investigation in this dissertation. I trace the sources of the "language" and the piety of the marketplace in the dicta and the model of Imām 'Alī. I interrogate the importance of charitable spaces in the production of historical religious identity for members of the bāzār. Through an ethnography of smuggling, I highlight the mechanisms that morphs legitimate behavior into illicit activities and renders identities fluid due to the necessities of the revolutionary regime in reconstituting the state. Finally, I demonstrate the use of accounting books as a critical frame to study and understand local history and the process of chronicling the life of bāzārīs .