Place · Safavid capital · Iran
Isfahan
Also known as Isfahan, Esfahan, New Julfa, Safavid capital
Shāh ʿAbbās's capital from 1598 and the great inland market between the Gulf and the Levant, where European travellers to India routinely wintered and where Tavernier did business on every one of his six voyages. Indian textiles, indigo and diamonds were resold here.
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 32.655, 51.668
Worth knowing
The Safavid court was the other great buyer of Golconda diamonds and of Coromandel painted cottons, and the Armenian merchants of New Julfa in the city ran a credit network reaching Surat, Madras and Manila. Much of the European trade to India was financed on Isfahan paper before it was financed on London paper.
Connections (1)
- Trade routeSurat
Isfahan and Surat are the two hinges of the overland-and-sea route between Europe and Mughal India, and the Armenian houses of New Julfa financed both ends. European merchants wintered at Isfahan, drew credit there, and crossed to Surat on the monsoon — which is why a Safavid capital appears in the itinerary of every seventeenth-century French traveller to India.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Isfahan”. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Les Six Voyages (1676); Sebouh Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (2011).
Open Isfahan in the repository →