Fiscal Problems of the Ilkhanids and the Development of a Bookkeeping System in 14th-century Iran

The Mongol invasion and the establishment of Ilkhanid rule in the 13th century introduced new fiscal policies, which greatly influenced Iranian societies. Two of these policies in particular, which had their origins in the Mongols’ military requisition system from the period of their conquest, caused economic collapse and various social and economic difficulties. They were the new administrative divisions named tümen (ten thousand) and the poll tax system (qupchūr), established after an empire-wide census in the reign of the Great Qa’an Möngke (reign 1251-1259). Many scholars agree that various administrative reforms by the seventh Ilkhan Ghazan Khān(1295–1304), including the enforcement of the iqtā’ system, had some effect on improving financial conditions. In Persian accounting manuals from the 13th and 14th centuries, written for scribes who wished to learn bookkeeping, we can observe that during this period, some kind of accounting books were adapted or developed to manage the expenditure. It appears that in the process of the Ilkhanids' fiscal reforms, Iranian bureaucrats tried to improve the bookkeeping system in the fiscal bureau (dīwān).
This paper will investigate how Ilkhanid bureaucrats tried to improve the bookkeeping system to control the revenue and the expenditure. It will analyze accounting samples in Persian accounting manuals written in the 13th and 14th centuries (Al-Murshid fī al-Ḥisāb, Sa‘ādat-nāma, Jāmi‘ al-Ḥisāb and Risāla-yi Falakīya), and will examine the influence of the Ilkhanid system on bookkeeping systems in later periods through the study of two accounting manuals from the Timurid and Safavid periods (Shams al-Siyāq and Ghiyāth al-Dīn Kirmānī’s Risāla). Based on this analysis, this paper will demonstrate that the social, economic and cultural changes in Iran under Mongol rule had significant influence on the development of bookkeeping systems and bureaucrats’ knowledge in Persianate societies.