Dehqan

a term known since the time of the Sassanids in Iran and Middle Asia. Originally, the term referred to landholders who had left their communes and sometimes had become feudal lords; it also referred to village elders. In the seventh through 12th centuries the dehqans were feudal landholders of the old Iranian aristocracy, controlling the land with the rights of mulk (temporal sovereignty). Sometimes a peasant landowner was also referred to as a dehqan. Between the 11th and 13th centuries, as the local landholders in Iran and Middle Asia gave way to Turkic and Mongol military vassals (iktadars), the significance of the dehqans as feudal lords gradually vanished. After the 13th century, the term “dehqan” came to mean “peasant” (of all categories).