Scriptorium
New Julfa and the Gem Trade: An Armenian Merchant Diaspora
How Armenians deported to Isfahan in 1605 built one of the early-modern world's great trade networks — in silk, and in the long-distance trade of diamonds and precious stones.
New Julfa — Nor Jugha — is the Armenian quarter of Isfahan, founded in 1604–05 when Shah Abbas I deported the merchant community of Old Julfa to his Safavid capital. From it, Armenian khoja family-firms built a trade network that reached across the early-modern world: in raw silk first, and then in the long-distance trade of Indian diamonds and precious stones. This is the history of that network and that trade — a story of merchants and diaspora, not a guide to gems.
In the winter of 1604, in the course of a scorched-earth retreat against the Ottomans, Shah Abbas I uprooted the prosperous Armenian merchant town of Julfa on the Aras and resettled its people in the heart of his empire. There, on the right bank of the Zayandarud, they built New Julfa. What had begun as a forced deportation became, within a generation, the base of one of the most far-reaching commercial networks of the age. What follows traces the founding, how the network worked, the gem trade at its edges, and the goldsmiths of the quarter itself.1“In early summer of 1605, the Julfa deportees were given temporary shelter in Isfahan, and they began with the building of New Julfa… For the first decades after its foundation, New Julfa was exclusively populated by Armenians from Old Julfa.” — Vazken S. Ghougassian, “Julfa i. Safavid Period,” Encyclopaedia Iranica.
What was New Julfa?
New Julfa is the Armenian quarter of Isfahan, and it began in catastrophe. In 1604, retreating before the Ottomans, Shah Abbas I forcibly deported the Armenians of Old Julfa — a wealthy merchant town on the Aras — to the heart of his Safavid empire. By the early summer of 1605 the deportees were settling on the right bank of the Zayandarud river, on royal land, where they built a new town that kept the old name: Nor Jugha, New Julfa. For its first decades it was populated exclusively by these Armenians of Old Julfa, and the shah granted them privileges designed to put their commercial talents to work for his economy.2New Julfa was built on khāṣṣa (royal) land on the right bank of the Zayandarud; the deportation itself ran from late 1604, with settlement in Isfahan by spring 1605. — Ghougassian, “Julfa i. Safavid Period,” Encyclopaedia Iranica.
How did the Julfa trade network work?
Within a generation, New Julfa became the hub of a commercial network of extraordinary reach. It was not a state-backed corporation like the Dutch or English East India Companies, but a diaspora of khoja — wealthy merchants — organised as agnatic family firms, bound together by kinship, a shared commercial culture, and what the historian Sebouh Aslanian calls relations of “trust.” Their agents and capital moved along a circuit that ran, in Aslanian's account, from London and Amsterdam to Manila and Acapulco, with raw silk from Safavid Iran as the founding commodity and a diversified trade growing on top of it.3“The New Julfan Armenians were the only Eurasian community that was able to operate simultaneously and successfully in all the major empires of the early modern world… a mercantile group unified by strong kinship ties… based on collective discipline and solidarity.” — Sebouh David Aslanian, From the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean: The Global Trade Networks of Armenian Merchants from New Julfa (University of California Press, 2011).
Did New Julfa Armenians really trade in diamonds?
They did — though it is worth being precise about it. The gem trade was one strand of a diversified network, carried above all by a handful of the wealthiest khoja houses. The Sceriman (Shahriman) family is the clearest case: prospering under the Safavid shahs, they established branch houses, staffed by family agents, in Venice, Livorno, and the Russian port of Astrakhan, dealing in diamonds, precious stones, and silk. The diamonds themselves came largely from the mines of India, which the Julfan network's long reach into the Indian Ocean world put within its grasp.4The Sceriman/Shahriman family of New Julfa were diamond and precious-stone merchants with branch houses in Venice, Livorno, and Astrakhan. — Aslanian (2011); corroborated by Encyclopaedia Iranica and standard reference scholarship.
The trade also drew European gem merchants into the Julfan orbit. The most famous, the 17th-century Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Tavernier — whose voyages to Persia and India made him the era's best-known dealer in diamonds — moved through this world directly. He was in Julfa in February 1668, and his travel accounts are among the richest European sources on the New Julfa Armenians, their property, and their religious life.5Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605–89), the French gem merchant, had documented dealings with and detailed accounts of the New Julfa Armenians (e.g. present in Julfa, 12 February 1668). — Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Tavernier, Jean-Baptiste.”
Were there goldsmiths in New Julfa itself?
New Julfa was not only a place of merchants and middlemen; it was also a place of makers. The Armenian quarter of Julfa was historically a centre of the goldsmith's trade — the zargar — and the craft endured there into modern times. Engraved silver and gold pieces from the area sometimes carry Armenian inscriptions alongside the more common Persian verses, marking the objects as belonging to the community Shah Abbas had settled on the southern edge of Isfahan.6“In the 1950s, 500 workers were employed in 169 goldsmith shops, the most notable of which were situated in the Armenian quarter of Julfa”; engraved pieces “occasionally bear Armenian inscriptions… [and] probably belonged to members of the Armenian community established by Shah ʿAbbās in New Julfa.” — Encyclopaedia Iranica, “Isfahan xiii. Crafts.”
Frequently asked questions
- What is New Julfa?
- New Julfa (Nor Jugha) is the Armenian quarter of Isfahan, Iran, founded in 1604–05 when Shah Abbas I deported the Armenian merchant community of Old Julfa to his Safavid capital. It became the base of a far-reaching early-modern trade network.
- Was New Julfa a centre of the diamond trade?
- It was part of one. New Julfan Armenian merchants — especially elite families like the Sceriman — traded in Indian diamonds and precious stones as one strand of a diversified network whose founding commodity was silk. It is documented economic history, not a claim that New Julfa was “the” diamond capital.
- How is Tavernier connected to New Julfa?
- Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, the famous 17th-century French diamond merchant, dealt directly with the New Julfa Armenians and used their trans-regional networks; his travel writings are among the most detailed European accounts of the community.
- Why were the Armenians deported to Isfahan?
- In 1604, during a scorched-earth campaign against the Ottomans, Shah Abbas I forcibly relocated the Armenians of Old Julfa to his capital — partly to deny resources to the enemy, and partly to harness the community's commercial skill for the Safavid economy.