Perhaps the earliest written reference to the Bakhtiyari dates from approximately 1330 A.D. in Hamdullah Mostaufi‘s Tarikh-e Gozideh, and possibly the earliest written reference to the divisions of the Haft Leng and Chahar Leng is in Muhammad Kazem’s Nameh-ye ‘Alam Ara-ye Naderi, ca. 1740 A.D. A In the Tarikh-e Gozideh the Bakhtiyari and the Osteraki, which is one of […]
The political grouping of the tribes below the Haft Leng and the Chahar Leng have been in a continuous state of change. Briefly, Barth writes, A “tribe” among South Persian nomads is a political concept; its unity is not ethnic, but depends on its allegiance to a chief. The processes whereby ethnic complexity persists in the tribes,
The origins of the Bakhtiyari and their division int two major groups of Haft Leng and Chahar Leng” have long puzzled historians and observers of Iran. “Who the Lurs are,” says Curzon, writing in 1890, “and whence they came is one of the unsolved and in- soluable riddles of history.” He quotes Rich, who declared the Bakhtiaris to
First, the nomads and sedentary population complement each other in their seasonal use of land and pastures. As the Kurds, Lurs, and Bakhtiyari move out of their winter pastures in the uplands of Mesopotamia, the Arabs move in with flocks of camels and goats that can subsist on these pastures which by this time are too dry for the
Brief mention has been made of the ethnic composition of the pastoral nomads who inhabit the Zagros: the Kurds in; the north, the Lurs in the center, and the Qashqa’i and Khamseh in the south. Although all of these tribes are pastoral nomadic there are significant differences and similarities between them as the result of variations in their ecology, political organization,
The migration of nomadic tribes across arid and rugged wastelands— especially the Arabs, the Turkic tribes of Central Asia, and, in Iran, the Bakhtiyari— has long captured the romantic imagination of the West. Travelers, historians, and social scientists have focused their attention upon the nomad’s mobility, his predatory and destructive relations with sedentary agriculturalists and urban centers, and upon the romance
This migratory quest for pastures indicates the central economic role of sheep and goats, the largest and most important group of animals owned by the tribesmen. Sheep and goats provide the pastoralists not only with food and wool for their own subsistence but with products for economic exchange with sedentary society. It has been suggested by Predrik Barth in his study
The Bakhtiyari (the term refers not only to the people but also to the territory they occupy) itself encompasses approximately 20,000 square miles of which 12,000 miles consist of the rugged southwestern Zagros mountains whose peaks in this area are more than ll).,000 feet above sea level. Here are the headwaters of three of Iran’s more important rivers: the Zayandeh
The Physical Geography of the Bakhtiyari trible in Fars Read More »
The Bakhtiyari are a confederation of tribes of pastoral nomads who live in the Zagros mountains in an area west of Isfahan to the plains of Khuzistan and south from Golpayegan to Ram Hormoz (31 N to 3^4- N and I4.9 E to $1 E). Their immediate neighbors to the north are the pastoral nomadic Lurs of Bala Gariveh, Pusht-e
The Social Geography of the Bakhtiyari trible in the Zagros Read More »
During the First Settlement Period 1934 – 1941 This period of history is considered by the majority of the nomadic population as one of the most difficult ever experienced by the tribal people of Iran. The forced settlement left an everlasting scar on these people, for it brought the nomadic tribes to the brink of annihilation. The Turkish nomads refer to
