How bazaars shape power and politics across the Middle East

The great bazaars of the Middle East have never been mere economic spaces.

Stretching across millennia from Aleppo to Tehran to Istanbul, these centres of commerce have functioned as parallel political structures, engines of influence that can threaten regimes, negotiate with power, or topple governments entirely.

Where capital concentrates, and merchant networks organise, something more than commerce emerges: an economic force capable of challenging state authority itself.

The history of Iran, Syria, and Turkey reveals a pattern that transcends borders and centuries, with the bazaar having repeatedly proven itself to be a hidden hand that reshapes the very foundations of governance.

The merchants of Aleppo

Aleppo's Grand Bazaar stretches over 13 kilometres, making it one of the world's oldest covered markets. Its political significance crystallised when merchants faced existential threats.

According to French-Syrian researcher Amro Al-Mallah, the bazaar emerged from an "organic, structural intertwining" between merchants and religious institutions.

Religious leaders simultaneously engaged in commerce to maintain economic autonomy, making them "resistant to government domestication," he told The New Arab. This interconnection created a merchant class philosophically bound to Islamic values and institutionally inseparable from the clergy.

When France severed Aleppo from Turkish and Iraqi markets, merchants mobilised around the Muslim Brotherhood in 1935, converting the dār al-'Arqam into a political headquarters.

The Brotherhood's 1980 program of demanding free trade directly reflected merchant class demands, confirming that an ideological cover masked material interests.

During Hafez Al-Assad's rule, merchants played a delicate game: publicly supporting the government through chambers of commerce while secretly financing the Muslim Brotherhood's struggle.

Researcher George Kadar notes that the government appointed prominent merchant Badr al-Din al-Shallah as head of the Syrian Chamber of Commerce specifically "to contain the merchants and reintegrate them into state power structures".

Yet al-Shallah's role in "pacifying merchant protests after the 1980s prevented strikes from transforming into direct political threats to the Assad regime," he told TNA.

Al-Mallah characterises the 1963-1968 struggle as a class conflict between rural socialists and urban merchant elites. The Aleppo bazaar became a centre of civil disobedience - shutters closed in coordinated 1980 strikes that sent political shockwaves through the capital.

Under Bashar Al-Assad, merchant power transformed fundamentally. Selected merchants like Rami Makhlouf and Muhammad Hamcho became extensions of the ruling family.

When the regime collapsed in December 2024, the new government negotiated settlements with merchant elites. According to Kadar's analysis, the Al-Sharaa government "organised patrols to protect merchants in exchange for regular monthly payments so they would not be held accountable as partners in the war crimes committed by Bashar Al-Assad".

Tehran's bazaar: Architects of revolution

Tehran's Grand Bazaar, formed during the Safavid era, has long provided an apparatus for fundamental political transformations through networks of merchants, mosques, and religious gathering places (hoseinyehs).

Iran's 20th century witnessed six revolutionary ruptures, and merchant-bazaaris were central actors in most. The 1953 coup against Mossadegh reflected this power.

"Wealthy merchant families like the Rashidians, simultaneously British intelligence assets, mobilised their networks,” according to Ghassan Hamdan, a writer and expert in Iranian affairs.

“They were not simple conspirators but organic representatives of bazaar interests unwilling to absorb the economic costs of nationalist politics. Without the bazaar's mobilisation, the coup could not have succeeded."

Yet bazaar support was never unconditional. Merchants calculated interests dynamically - some supported Mossadegh initially; others abandoned him as an economic crisis deepened. This flexibility of allegiance based on economic calculation became the bazaar's defining characteristic.

In the decades before 1979, the Shah attempted to modernise Iran by marginalising traditional merchants. "The strategy backfired catastrophically," Hamdan explained to TNA.

"By restricting the bazaar's autonomy, the regime forced merchants to seek political channels outside state structures. The mosque became that channel,” he added.

“The bazaar and clergy formed an alliance structured not by shared theology but by shared exclusion from power. This organic alliance provided the Islamic Revolution with capital and organisational networks that secular opposition lacked."

When the revolution succeeded, bazaar merchants expected integration, but discovered they had replaced one marginalising regime with another. Post-1979 Islamic governance subordinated independent bazaar networks to state-controlled structures through institutions like the Bonyad (revolutionary-religious foundations) and Revolutionary Guards.

Yet bazaar economic power persisted. When the state imposed price controls or taxes, bazaar merchants responded with strikes that created scarcity.

"When the bazaar rises up, it signals the depth of crisis, whether economic, political, or even social," analyst Shimaa al-Mersi explained to TNA.

Khamenei's recent speeches suggest acute awareness that regime survival depends partly on bazaar tolerance.

Istanbul's Grand Bazaar: The compliant rebel

Founded after Constantinople's 1461 conquest, Istanbul's Grand Bazaar houses approximately 5,000 shops across 61 streets, according to Mohammed Sulaiman Al Madfaa's book "Just Go and See for yourself." Yet from its inception, merchants simultaneously resisted state control.

Under Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party, bazaar merchants thrived through two decades of economic growth, rewarding the government with political support. The relationship collapsed with Turkey's economic deterioration, as the Turkish lira lost over eighty percent of its value in five years.

In 2015, merchants refused eviction notices, barricading themselves inside shops. In September 2022, they turned off their lights at midday daily in protest. These demands for recognition showed that merchants cannot be treated as passive subjects indefinitely.

Erdogan's government imposed new currency controls, forcing export companies to surrender forty percent of foreign earnings. Merchants shifted assets into gold, foreign currencies, and cryptocurrencies - removing capital from the national economy through systemic disengagement.

Economic autonomy as political influence

What these three cases reveal is a historical pattern: great markets have never been purely economic institutions. They are political structures where economic autonomy converts into political influence.

This pattern follows a consistent logic: economic autonomy generates political independence. States, therefore, have attempted two strategies to curtail such influence: co-optation (integrating merchants into power, making them regime stakeholders) or containment (restricting autonomy to prevent mobilisation). Both carry risks, according to researchers.

Merchants use "the economy itself as a media language, represented in closing markets or disrupting the movement of goods, which automatically transforms into public news that imposes itself on the political scene,” Dr Mustafa al-Hadeethe, a specialist in media security, explained to TNA.

“The historical alliance between the bazaar and religious institutions provided merchants with alternative public communication channels that performed an effective media function without needing to own newspapers or broadcast outlets.”

The media presents market movements as subsistence crises rather than organised political pressure. This discursive framework grants merchants legitimate cover while protecting a delicate state-market balance.

Al-Hadeethe cites Iran after 1979 as an example. When the state imposed price controls, bazaar merchants responded with strikes, causing scarcity. Official media framed this as an economic crisis without deconstructing its political foundations. Religious platforms connected to the bazaar played a mobilisational role, holding the state responsible.

International economics expert Iyad al-Akeeli points out that "the economic factor is among the most influential factors in states' domestic and foreign policies, and often possesses the capacity to reshape political equations through the influence of major merchants”.

The expert clarifies that "this influence is not limited to Iran but is a global phenomenon, varying in intensity depending on merchant strength, their impact on the street, their relationship with ruling systems, and shared interests".

Influential merchants frequently pressure governments during economic crises, "but they rarely push matters to the brink of chaos, fearing they would be the biggest losers, especially if they sense that crises are being managed or exploited by external forces seeking to topple states in service of political agendas that do not align with their interests," al-Akeeli adds.

The bazaar rises again: Iran's present crisis

Recent protests originating in Tehran's Grand Bazaar crystallise the way in which the power of these economic centres across the centuries continues to echo in contemporary reality.

When bazaar merchants began coordinating shutdowns and strikes in response to a currency collapse, inflation reaching triple digits, and state mismanagement of the economy, they were not merely responding to economic hardship but exercising a political weapon honed across centuries.

The bazaar's withdrawal of cooperation signalled to Khamenei's regime what al-Mersi identifies as a critical moment, with the regime's survival dependent on whether it can implement genuine economic reforms in the future or whether merchant discontent will continually metastasise into broader social instability.

The recent Iranian bazaar mobilisation represented a historical pattern in its most acute form: merchants calculating that the regime's promises have failed to materialise, that their interests are no longer protected, and that economic disruption is the language through which they communicate existential demands.

Khamenei's awareness of this dynamic, according to Al-Mersi, was evident in his attempts at political messaging early into the protests, reflecting his understanding that he is not merely managing an economic crisis but confronting the same merchant power that toppled the Shah, funded revolutions, and repeatedly reshaped Iran's political foundations.

“The Iranian regime's success in resolving the current crisis will depend upon its ability to implement genuine economic reforms that touch entrenched networks of interests, not merely palliatives and rhetoric”, al-Mersi concluded.

Shaimaa Al Youssef is a journalist specialising in Middle East affairs

This article is published in collaboration with Egab

Edited by Charlie Hoyle