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 and. color of this supposed archaic and gradually disappearing way of life. Some, Arnold J. Toynbee in particular, have held that the nomads represented a stage advanced over mere agriculturalists: nomads have developed special skills in a demanding environment; somehow animal domestication is a development to be rated higher than plant domestication, and as a result the nomad has acquired special moral and intellectual capabilities. This romanticism has resulted in a tendency which isolates the nomad from his ecology and distorts his role in society; therefore, it is necessary to examine the nature of nomadism.
Jacques Berque has written, “Nomadism is an extreme case of a human society’s adaptation to an unfriendly natural environment.” Q The classic Old World area of pastoral nomadism is in an arid zone which extends from China across Central Asia and the Iranian and Anatolian plateaus, through Mesopotamia and the Arabian peninsula, and across North Africa. This “unfriendly” environment has low rainfall, usually restricted to the winter months, and hot, dry summers.
Agriculture exists only in riverine areas or in oases or where irrigation is possible. The major exceptions to this are Anatolia and the higher elevations on the western and eastern fringes of the Iranian plateau where dry farming is possible and the Mediterranean, Black Sea, and Caspian littorals. The seasonal nature of rain in this arid zone forces man, if he is to exploit this environment as it is, into some type of cyclical movement in order to find grass for his flocks. (In the Zagros mountains this becomes vertical movement because of the increased rainfall at higher elevations.)
Nomadism dates from the paleolithic period as a way of life; however, pastoral nomadism could occur only after, or concomitantly with, the “food-producing revolution” during which animal and plant domestication took place, beginning about the tenth millennium B.C. Lawrence Krader, who
has been particularly concerned with Central Asian pastoral nomadism, has written that it began at a later date.
Certain authors consider that nomadic pasto- ralism . . . was developed in the second millennium B.C. in the arid wastes found within the arc of the fertile crescent. Others, including the present writer, have a more limited conception of nomadic pastoralism, and consider that it was developed in the steppes of interior Asia at the beginning of-,Q the first millennium B.C. by the Iranian Scyths.
However, recent archaeological investigations in the area of incipient domestication of sheep and goats and of wheat, barley, and legumes, gives support to the hypothesis that pastoral nomadism, at least the transhumant type in Southwest Asia developed concurrently with agriculture.
Robert J. Braidwood has written that Tepeh Sarab, a seventh millennium B.C. site near Kermanshah in southern Kurdistan, might ” . . . prove to have been an up-country temporary seasonal settlement of shepherds for which a site of Jarmotype [an early farming village in the Zagros foothills in Iraq] was probably the parent and ‘home-base’ in a lower intermontane valley.”
Tepe Guran, situated in a valley ca. 350 meters lower than the Kermanshah plain, seems to fit quite well into this picture as a permanent village and “home base” for a half-nomadic community of the Sarab period.
And two other prehistoric archaeologists, Prank Hole and Kent Flannery, have also reached similar conclusions following their excavations in the hills between Khuzistan and the Zagros near the Iran-Iraq border.
. . . All Kosh became primarily a “herding village” coexisting in a symbiotic framework with “farming villages” in adjacent areas. Finally, we have the occurrences of typical Khuzistan pottery at a shepherd’s camp in Kunji Cave, 1200 meters up, in the mountains of western Iran. This part of Luristan seems to have stronger cultural ties with lowland Khuzistan than with other mountain areas in the same environmental zone, suggesting that at 6000 B.C. some valleys in Luristan were summer n., grazing land for herds that wintered in Khuzistan.
Owen Lattimore analyzes and describes the process of , the development of pastoral nomadism as it possibly occurred in the area between the steppe and agricultural land in Western China in the second half of the first millennium. Here again there were people practicing a mixed agriculturalherding
economy. As these people were pushed farther to the west and into the steppe by advancing agriculturalists,
they were constrained increasingly to neglect the use of agricultural resources and to develop as an alternative the use of pastoral resources. It was only when this diverging specialization had been carried to a certain point that the marginal steppe society ceased to be marginal and committed itself definitely to the steppe. Having reached that point it was ready to take advantage of a steppe technique of horse usage in order to increase the efficiency of life within the steppe environment .
A.L. Kroeber discusses Lattimore’s thesis and the whole problem of this nomad-agriculturalist relationship.
. . . . It is even doubtful whether the nomads outnumber the farmers [in the Asian area of nomadism]. . . .
What we really have is a dichotomized culture, one pole of which is much like that dominant in adjacent areas; the other, pastoral. The purely pastoral part of the society does make the total culture distinctive as compared with more usual cultures which contain no such nomadic-pastoral element. Nevertheless, a mere nomadic segment of society is not the same as a wholly nomadic society. The difference is of import both conceptually and in historic actuality. For instance, there is Lattimore1s view . . . Whether this was actually “the” origin of east Asiatic pastoral nomadism, or of all pastoral nomadism, I do not know; and I suspect it cannot be either proved or disproved, at least not at present. But the mere fact that the view can be reasonably entertained shows that nomadism can theoretically be construed as a special derivative form of other cultures, and is not necessarily a basic form of culture in its own right. Seen in this way, pastoralism would be a part-culture. It would be a well-marked profession within cultures, something like smithing or doctoring, say, except for being raised to include a higher fraction of the total population and being more self-sufficient.
Pastoralism as a “Part-Culture”
The concept of the nomads as a part-culture is an important one for ionderstanding the close relationship between nomadic and sedentary economy and society in the Zagros mountains and the different ways in which man has responded to and exploited the same environment. In the Zagros there
have been three major responses: the sedentary villager who practices dry or irrigated farming and who herds small flocks in pastures contiguous to his village; the transhumant nomad with a permanent village base who also farms but maintains larger herds and moves them to neighboring alpine pastures for the summer; and the long-range pastoral nomad who might have a permanent residence with sown fields in both the winter and summer pastures, but most often lives in a tent and is primarily dependent upon his relatively large flocks and moves in a cyclical sequence to maintain them. All three groups rely essentially upon agricultural products, cereal grains, for food. The first two are more dependent upon fixed sources of water and pasturage, whereas the latter is relatively free to move in search of it. The villager must limit the size of his herds by the amount of available pasturage
in the driest part of the year or provide them with fodder, but the nomad can maintain larger flocks by moving them to pastures as they mature to optimum productivity.
The sedentary agriculturalist develops a symbiotic relationship with his environment. He plows and harrows (in some cases), fertilizes, and irrigates, or rotates the planting of his fields. He plants the seed, weeds, harvests the crop, and stores the seed for the next planting. Both the agriculturalist and the pastoral nomad are dependent upon rainfall, and both have little or no control over animal epidemics or over plant diseases and pests. But unlike the agriculturalist the nomad does little to change or improve or even prepare his environment; if the pastures are poor he moves on. However, he moves his flocks to pasture and water, protects them from predators and storms, and assists them in the birth and first suckling of the newly born. The nomad makes little attempt to improve the blood lines of his flock, except perhaps in the case of horse and camel nomadism, and, other than isolation, he has no control over epizootic diseases. These poorly developed animal husbandry practices and the unreliability of rainfall limit the size of the herds and always threaten the nomad with sudden economic disaster. (As will be seen later the nomad will occasionally invest his surplus wealth in land rather than by increasing the size of his herds in order to avoid catastrophic losses.)
“Origins” of Pastoralism
Both the nomad and the agriculturalist have some of each other’s technological skills, and sometimes practice them. Although many conditions are involved in any movement of a group of people from the one occupation to the other, one may encounter generalizations such as the following:
. . . The prevailing general insecurity associated with these events [the Mongol invasion] brought about the return of a nomadic way of life, so that peasants who practised short distance migration in search of pasture were henceforth obliged to abandon their villages and thus came to form the main part of such Persian-speaking nomad confederations as that of the Bakhtiyari.
Or, by the same author:
. . . Dans la Perse d’aujourd’hui les nomades ainsi ne sont plus dans le desert, leur habitat normal, mais dans les montagnes, vou£e par la nature & la vie sSdentaire. La mise en place de ces grandes confederations et la bldouinization du Zagros datent essentiellement de 1*invasion mongole qui, en dStruis- ant totaleraent les bases de la vie sedentaire et en injectant des tribus turques enti&res jusque dans le Pars, oft elles creaient une terrible atmosphere d’insScuritS, a pousse les paysans et les semi-nomades des valiees montagnardes & abandonner leurs etablisse- ments fixes pour se grouper 3. leur tour en puissantes tribus menant une vie mobile et ne pratiquant que des cultures episodiques. Marco Polo fut le t§moin de ces transformations, et nous a laissS un tSmoignage prScieux sur les villages qui venaient d ’etre abandon- nSs dans les montagnes du haut pays au Sud de Kirman, dSsormais parcouru uniquement par des bergers, comme il l’est encore aujourd’hui.
Or even more sweeping generalizations are made, which state that in the absence of stability and central control there is depopulation of the sedentary agricultural villages and a “reversion” to nomadism. The first of two quotations above tends to corroborate the close relationship between nomadism and sedentary agriculture; however, there is no documentary or other evidence that the Mongol invasion brought about this transformation in the Zagros. (Nor regarding the second quotation, have the long-range nomads in the Zagros, except for the Qashqa’i and the few Arabs, lived in the desert or steppe.)
The invasion of foreign nomads has had an impact on both sedentary agriculture and indigenous nomadism, but this movement from agriculture to nomadism and vice versa is far more complex than indicated above, and many interrelated factors are involved.
Flock Size as a Factor in Nomadism
Let us examine part of the economic factor alone. There are economically marginal nomads who become sedentary or transhumant villagers, but only some of the transhumant villagers and only a very few of the sedentary villagers have large enough flocks to maintain themselves as pastoral nomads. Barth states that the average size flock necessary to maintain a Basseri household consists of approximately 100 sheep and goats, and that it is impossible for a Basseri household to subsist on less than 60. 20 Barth’s recent research thus corroborates Sir James Morier’s observations of the early nineteenth century.
An I’liyAt [nomad] of middling fortune possesses about a hundred sheep, three or four camels, three or four mares, ten asses, etc., which may yield him a revenue of forty to fifty tumans. A man who possesses a thousand sheep, thirty camels, twenty mares, etc., is reckoned a rich man.
In Hasanabad, a sedentary agricultural village in the Zagros near Kermanshah, the average number of animals per household is considerably less. “Most families in Hasanabad had no more than four or five of these animals [sheep/goats], but they are important because they belong solely to the villagers . . . ” In this same village seven out of forty-one households had sixty or more sheep/goats, and seven households had none. And in a transhumant village, also near Kermanshah, there were thirty-three households and ten of these had sixty or more sheep/goats, eight had forty or more, p-3 and three had none. In this latter village a few families practice a form of long-range nomadism by hiring shepherds and sending their flocks to the Iran-Iraq border area for the winter. In mid-May most of this village moves in stages up to alpine pastures farther up the mountain upon which their village is located and then return, also in stages, beginning in late August, to their permanent stone houses.
The families with large flocks in Hasanabad occasionally move to pastures at a higher elevation for a few weeks in the summer when their local pastures are over-grazed. Except for these few families, it would appear that the sedentary and transhumant villagers do not have the minimum economic basis to maintain themselves if they decide to become nomadic.
The evidence cited here for comparative flock sizes is based on contemporary observations, and the question might well be raised as to the possibility that in earlier periods sedentary villagers had larger herds and that in times of stress they would have had the basic economic requirements to maintain a nomadic way of life. Although it is not certain that Barth’s conclusions or Watson’s contemporary figures for village flock size are totally applicable to the past, one should be cautious before assuming any large-scale conversion of sedentary people into nomads. A rise in the relative number of nomads might more plausibly be explained by a combination of nomadic invasions with a higher rate of population increase among nomads than among the settled population.
It is also possible that the pastoral nomadic tribes in earlier periods had a greater ability to absorb ex-villagers but answers to this and the other questions await additional research and analysis.