Financial Books in the Safavid Governmental System

In order to systemize finances, every government needs to follow a regular and written system to be able to organize revenues and costs of the country. To do so, Safavid government planned and organized financial relations. They were handled by Mostufi Al- Mamalek in the scriptorium and the related issues were written down in the financial books.
One of the aims of this research is identifying and introducing these financial books and their functions in the court. The main issue in this research is identifying and evaluating the element of continuity in administrative organizations in the Safavid era with the particular focus on the functions of the financial books which were among the most important elements in the financial processes. In this research attempts have been made to introduce these financial books implementing comparative, analytic and descriptive methods and also using library resources. The researchers tried to investigate the quantity of Safavid administration organizations’ adaptation from the past eras especially regarding the functions of these financial books. The present study relied on epistles from the Safavid period related to the system and financial books of administrative organizations available at Astan-e Quds-e Razavi. The results of this research showed that Safavid administration organizations at least had adapted some functions and applications of these financial books from the previous eras and the element of continuity in this field is quite obvious. In this regard, three main types of books were available: Rooznamche, Avarejeh and Justifications (Toojihat) from the 4th century to the end of Safavid dynasty-even after Safavid era based on the existing data-with the same functions. However, some changes have been made in this process regarding the titles and contents of the books except those above mentioned trilogy books.