Caravans of Silk and Imperial Armies: Ottoman- Safavid Rivalry over the Silk Hub of Tabriz

Silk was the most precious item of cross- cultural trade in the early modern Middle East and the Mediterranean world. Persian raw silk from the Caspian Sea region ( Gilan) and Shirvan was the most sought after good in the Ottoman Empire and Western Europe. The Silk Road connected the caravan city of Tabriz to Erzurum, Bursa, Aleppo, Istanbul and Izmir as well as Venice, Marseille, and London from the sixteenth until the eighteenth century. The silk industries of Bursa, Venice, Marseille and London depended on the supply of Persian silk and Safavid and Ottoman states collected a high tax from this rich trade in the early modern period..
Based on Ottoman archival records, this paper will examine the impact of silk trade and its ebb and flow on the economic development of these cities stretching from Tabriz to Marseille. I will also examine the impact of Ottoman occupation of Azerbaijan in 1725 on this trade based on Ottoman tax records and customs registers. I will argue that the control of silk road and the silk producing regions as well as its hubs was the most important factor in Ottoman strategic plans and the Safavid resistance to lose the control of Azerbaijan for two hundred years. However, the shift in the silk road from the Azerbaijan- Anatolia route to the Persian Gulf as a result of the policies of Shah Abbas the Great and his Europeans allies ( England and the Netherlands) was one of the most important outcomes of this rivalry in the late sixteenth century although the silk trade between Azerbaijan and Anatolia continued into the eighteenth century. However continuous wars and political instability contributed to the decline of this trade and economic life in our borderland. The Ottomans started producing their own raw silk in several regions and European traders found cheaper silk in Italy, Bengal, and China. Raw cotton became the new item of cross cultural trade in our region in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.