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HomeAbstracta IranicaVolume 274. Histoire, Période Musulmane4.2. Histoire du XVe au XIXe siècle4.2.1. Safavides et QâjârsSaid Amir Arjomand. « Coffeehouse...

4. Histoire, Période Musulmane
4.2. Histoire du XVe au XIXe siècle
4.2.1. Safavides et Qâjârs
161

Said Amir Arjomand. « Coffeehouse, Guilds and Oriental Despotism. Government and Civil Society in Late 17th to Early 18th Century Istanbul and Isfahan, as seen from Paris and London ». Archives européennes de sociologie / European Journal of Sociology, 45/1 (2004), pp. 23-42.

Rudi Matthee

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1The author probes the question of the existence and nature of a civil society in 17th century Istanbul and Isfahan through the prism of contemporaneous Western perspectives on the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Iran with their focus on despotic and oppressive governments. These same sources, however, also suggest the limited reach of rulers, and they reveal the existence of a lively “public sphere”, of which the court itself was part inasmuch as it was, at least in the Iranian case, public spectacle. Focusing on Iran, the author concludes that, within limits set by time and place, and with the understanding that institutions like guilds and madrasas were hardly autonomous bodies, an overarching sense of urban community did exist in early modern times.

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Rudi Matthee, “Said Amir Arjomand. « Coffeehouse, Guilds and Oriental Despotism. Government and Civil Society in Late 17th to Early 18th Century Istanbul and Isfahan, as seen from Paris and London ». Archives européennes de sociologie / European Journal of Sociology, 45/1 (2004), pp. 23-42.”Abstracta Iranica [Online], Volume 27 | 2006, document 161, Online since 02 January 2007, connection on 08 December 2025. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/abstractairanica/5933; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/abstractairanica.5933

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Rudi Matthee

University of Delaware

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