Nevertheless, historical records indicate that the residents of Julfa were treated well by Shah Abbas in the hopes that their resettlement in Isfahan would benefit Iran due to their knowledge of the silk trade.

[4] Since its foundation, New Julfa was administered by the Armenian noble house of Lazaryan, which relocated to Imperial Russia after Nader Shah's death in 1747.

[5] One of its members, Ivan Lazarevich Lazarev, became a court banker to Catherine the Great and was made an Imperial Count in 1788.

Over the next few centuries, New Julfa became the hub of "one of the greatest trade networks of the early modern era,"[6] and as far west as Cádiz, London, and Amsterdam, with a few merchants traveling across the Atlantic or Pacific to Acapulco or Mexico City.

[1] However, Some scholars argue that Surat, Bengal, and Hooghly were independent nodes and that the central control of New Julfa was not as important to their thriving Indian Ocean trade.