From Rags to riches

My great-grandfather Haj Hassan came from a very humble background. His father was a traditional banker he would get money from people and you would be able to get the same money in a different city almost like a money exchange store. when he was young his father died and his family was left with debts. He left his city Isfahan to the capital of Qajar's Tehran where he could start a new life. At the age of twenty he had a small shop in tehran bazar where he met a greek merchandiser who was representing a british company called Ralli & Angelasto back then Iran or as it was called Persia was only famous for its carpet ( we are talking about pre-oil world 19th century ) Ralli company as you can read about it in Sir Dennis Wright's Englishman among Iranians would export the much needed silk and other product needed for iran's carpet industry from Manchester and again export Persian carpet to the west. This was a great start for him Haj Hassan learned all about international bussiness under this man and then later he started his own business. These are such ancient history that i dont care about much. He was a very smart man. In a way he was one of the founding memebrs of international muslim brotherhood he was the man financially supporting Seyed Jamal Al Din Assadabadi the muslim thinker. ( back then muslim brtherhood was mostly an anti-imprialist thing we are talking pre-communism days)

He branched his business to all corners of the the world he had offices in London, HongKong Marsaille Paris Moscow and even NewYork. I read a document by Hong Kong Shanghai bank ( what we know as HSBC today ) that he was the biggest exporter of Opuim to China for several years. He was also very interested in science he travled to much of Europ and tried to bring great things with him. he was a founding member of iranian Royal science academy. Ohh where did the family name come from?

He became the dominant figure of Middle eastern business people at the time he was probably one of the richest man in the world, Russian Imprial bank estimated his wealth to be close to 100s of million Robles. His influence and wealth was to the extend that he started minting iranian coins. ( you can see how things werent in order back then ) as a result he was given the unusal title of Amin Al Zarb ( the man trusted with minting ) most Qajar titles were a combination of certain words, such as Dole ( memeber of the governing body ) Saltaneh ( related to royals ) mamalek ( mostly given to land oweners ) very few however were exception mostly given to the most influential people of their time : Sepahsalar ( the greatest of the army given to Mohamd taghi khan Tonekaboni ) Farmanfarma ( given to abdulhossein mirza one of the most important figures of iranian history and the man who owned half the lands in iran) and finally Amin Al Zarb my great grandfather.

anyhow apparently he was a philanthropist too , he bought large amount of wheat and gave people of tehran for free during the 1890 famine.

His Memoire was published in English few years ago by Shirin mahdavi one of my distant relatives. much of it is about how he feels toward his country and how he wants it to advance and change. He surly tried hard to do so by brining the first Railway to iran the first suger factory . he was alsso the man who brought electircity.

he died in 1897 if i am correct and left his empire to three sons one being my father's grandfather Hossein and another his famous brother Mohammad Hussein.