From the very beginning the Qajar central government was divided into an administrative part (divan) and the army (lashkar), both housed in the citadel (arg) of Tehran.
"New Orderly Army") introduced by crown prince Abbas Mirza in 1828, and continued by Nasser al-Din Shah during the second half of the 19th century, the government needed scribes, clerks and civil servants to write and copy lists about tax, salary, material stuff and recruiting.
Under Agha Mohammad Khan the Lashkar-nevis was responsible for the recruitment, arrangement, logistics and supply of the whole army; thus combined many of the duties of a modern war minister, paymaster-general, and quartermaster-general.
Therefore, the Lashkar-nevis supervised a staff of recruitment clerks of seven scribes and secretaries (moshref) responsible for the exact accountancy of the troops' supply unit in men and feed.
[5] Also, it was the muster-master of the area in question who set the system of recruitment clerks under his jurisdiction and to see that his regiment obtained the funds it had been allotted, as well as the rations necessary when it was on active duty.
[6] The Persian army traditionally consisted of a tribal cavalry force (rekabi) and an infantry unit mostly made of militia volunteers (cherik), which was recruited when it was necessary by the local governors.
The central government recruited soldiers for infantry and artillery (tofanghchi va toupchi) from the provinces based on the amount of taxation from each area.
Under the bonicheh-ye sarbaz system each village, district, or tribe was required to provide a number of recruits proportional to the amount of its revenue assessment.
In order to offset the resulting imbalance in the tax burden on different provinces, the government reduced the level of cash revenues required from those liable to bonicheh-ye sarbaz and correspondingly increased them for those that were exempt.
Land owned by princes, great proprietors, notables, and religious leaders was exempt from this taxation, as was that belonging to Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians, to whom different tax regulations were applied.
So, the army paid the soldier's way to the training camp (where he was drilled a couple of hours per day) and his salary and fodder (hoquq o jireh), during the six-month period in which he was under arms each year.
In order to support the recruited soldier's family in his absence, either the village as a whole or the remaining nine men of the base group had to pay an annual subvention, called khanvari ("home allowance").
In some parts of the country, when an infantry or artillery recruit had to join his regiment, the owner of his village (saheb-e bonicheh) or the local peasant proprietors (khorda mallek) had to give him or his family a bounty for support in his absence.
With this recruitment system the central government had about 100,000 infantrymen, 30,000 cavalrymen and several units of artillery under its command, including the royal guards, musketeers, footmen and the shah's private household staff.
The reports of the Lashkar-nevis documented all costs and vouchers of payment of the entire soldiery of 200,000, which amounted to one-third of the whole annual fiscal expenditure in the time of Nasser al-Din Shah.