Iran, located in Western Asia, is a very old country, as early as 5,000 years ago, the southwest of Iran has emerged Elam civilization. However, when it comes to ancient Iran, most people still think of the powerful Persian Empire, the Persian army that invaded Greece, and Cyrus, the king of kings. Indeed, on the Iranian plateau there have been countless rich and powerful nations, and the Persian civilization is longer than the European civilization, and this article will give the reader a glimpse into how rich ancient Iran was.
Portraits of ancient Persians
To know the richness of an ancient country is not entirely to listen to the history of the nation, because almost all the peoples of the world have a strong sense of pride in their own people, which inevitably makes their historians deliberately exaggerate the richness and strength of the countries founded by their ancestors. As the saying goes, in 1314 AD, the Italian traveler Ordolico set out from Venice to travel to the lands of the East, he stayed in Iran for a long time before going to China, and his own memoirs can give us an insight into the real life of Iranians in that era.
Born in 1286 AD in the Italian province of Friuli, Ordolik joined the Franciscan Order as a teenager and aspired to become an ascetic when he grew up, wearing no shoes and simple clothes all year round, living with water and bread. At the age of twenty-eight, Ordolick decided to follow the example of the great traveler Marco Polo and travel to the East. Riding on a Venetian merchant ship, Ordolik decided to go to Iran after arriving in Constantinople, where he stopped in major cities.
Portrait of Ordolik
At the time of Ordolik's arrival in Iran, Iran was under Mongol rule, and in 1256 AD, Hulagu, the grandson of Genghis Khan, led an army to the west, and after several years of war, Hulagu conquered most of the land of Iran and established the Ilkhanate, one of the four major Mongol khanates, on Iranian soil. When the Mongols invaded Iran, they destroyed Iranian cities, but with the establishment of the Ilkhanate, Iran began to recover from the destruction of the war, although these cities were not as large as before, but the magnificence still made Ordolik sigh.
After Entering Iran, Ordolik came to Tabriz, the largest city in northwestern Iran, and although Tabriz is not as famous as the ancient iranian cities of Tehran, Isfahan and Shiraz, the city became the capital many times before the seventeenth century. When Ordolik arrived in Tabriz, the city was the capital of the Ilkhanate and the political, cultural and economic center of the Ilkhanate at that time.
Ancient architecture of Tabriz
When Ordolik entered Tabriz, he was immediately struck by the richness of the city, which at that time was a city of trade, where goods from all over the world could be bought, as if the city and the cities of the world were traded. Let The Italian countryside from Edoric can't help but sigh:
"The city is so rich that it's hard to believe what you see there."
And, according to Ordolik's recollection, there was also a salt mountain on the outskirts of Tabriz, which provided a large amount of salt to the local area, and the inhabitants of the city could go there to get salt at will without paying anyone. No wonder Ordolik couldn't believe what was happening in Tabriz, because salt was still a very expensive commodity in Europe at the time.
Now the Iranians
In addition, Orolik asked the local Christians about the annual taxation in tabriz and compared it with the European countries at that time. According to the Account of Ordolik,
Abu Saeed, the Great Khan of the Ilkhanate at that time, received more income per year from the city of Tabriz than the King of France at that time received from his entire land. From this, it can be seen that the inhabitants of Tabriz at that time were much richer than the French.
The French king at that time was named Philip V, who was the sixteenth king of the Capetian dynasty of France, which was in the midst of its demise like the Ilkhanate, but still controlled most of the land in France. Although Tabriz under the Ilkhanate was only a city, its economy was very developed, and the Mongol rulers of the Ilkhanate had always liked to collect heavy taxes, so it was not surprising that Odolic believed that tabriz's taxes were higher than those of France as a whole.
Reference: Journey to the East of Ordolik