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Nasser Al-Din Shah Dbq

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They treated government documents as private papers; and, since the monarch did not pay them regular salaries, they considered their positions as assets to be bought and sold to other members of the scribe families. To recognize their sense of corporate identity, Nasser al-Din Shah had decreed that “men of the pen” should wear the kolah – a round, grey-shaded bonnet hat. By the end of the century, they were easily distinguishable from the ulama (clerics), sayyeds (descendants of the Prophet), tojjars (merchants), and hajjis (those who had been on the pilgrimage to Mecca) who wore black, white, or green turbans. The kolah was also distinguishable from the red fez worn by officials in the rival Ottoman Empire. This term “men of the pen” carried

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