1837 - 1898
Custodian of the state mint under Naser al-Din Shah and the most prominent entrepreneur in late nineteenth-century Persia.
Born in Isfahan, Persia, to a family of modest traders, Mohammad Hasan Amin al-Zarb had only an elementary education. He moved to Tehran in the 1860s and within two decades had achieved great success as a banker and as a leading trader with Western Europe.
In 1879, as master of the mint for the Qajar dynasty, he instituted currency reforms. In the 1880s and 1890s, he was widely, and probably erroneously, believed to have enriched himself while debasing the Persian currency. After a rapid drop in the value of copper coinage used in local transactions, he was arrested in 1896, imprisoned, and given a large fine. He later regained government favor. Mohammad Hasan was an advocate of reform and was closely associated with Ali-Asghar Amin al-Soltan.
Bibliography
Amin al-Zarb II, Haj Muhammad Husayn. "Memento of a Life." Iran 30 (1992): 107 - 121.
— LAWRENCE G. POTTER
