Despite the variety of goods traded in the Tehran Bazaar, its large number of shops, its expansive physical size, and disparities in wealth among bazaaris, the Bazaar is generally treated as a single unit. Looking back to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this treatment may be reasonable. There was less specialization and lower levels of capital accumulation among the bourgeoisie. The historical weakness of guilds, a weakness measured in terms of independence from the state and capacity to set prices and control entry and exit, also limited sectoral cleavages. In the late Pahlavi era, we saw that a corporate identity was generated by the crosscutting and multifaceted relations that often bridged sectoral, ethnic, and class lines to create a corporate entity. However, this conceptualization masks underlying sectoral distinctions in larger marketplaces such as Tehran's, sectoral variations that refine our analysis of the Bazaar's internal governance and state–bazaar relations. In particular, this chapter considers the consequence of group size, ethnic composition, relations to the world economy, modalities of geography and economic development, and state regulations under the imperial and revolutionary regimes.

This chapter investigates the hand-woven carpet, tea, and china and glassware sectors in the Tehran Bazaar under the Pahlavi monarchy and Islamic Republic to assess the socioeconomic factors and specific state institutions and development agendas that may have molded their forms of governance. The differences in these bazaars are noteworthy.