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 of the Basseri (one of the component tribes of the Khamseh confederation) that the migration is necessary for the survival of these animals.
There are several common strains of sheep in Pars, of different productivity and resistance. Of these the nomad strain tend to be larger and more productive. But its resistance to extremes of temperature, particularly to frost, is less than that of the sheep found in the mountain villages, and its tolerance to heat and parched fodder and drought is less than that of the strains found in the south. It has thus been the experience of nomads who become sedentary, and of an occasional sedentary buyer of nomad livestock, that 70-80$ of the animals die if they are kept throughout the year in the northern or southern areas. The migratory cycle is thus necessary to maintain the health of the…nomad herds, quite apart from their i requirements for pasture.
Other Bakhtiyari domestic animals include the horse, for riding by the men and by the wives of the khans in the migration, and for export; the donkey, for transport; the mule, for transport and export; the dog, for guarding the camp; the chicken, for food, and the cow and ox for food, transport, and as a draft animal. The products of the sheep and goat utilized by the Bakhtiyari are milk and its derivatives, i.e., cheese, dugh (“buttermilk” from churning), mast (yogurt), and kashk (dried yogurt), butter; wool, hides, meat, and dung (for fuel). G-oat hair is spun and woven into strips of cloth to be used as the walls and roof of the tent and twisted into rope. Sheep wool is carded and spun to be used locally for carpets, but most of it is sold in the
urban bazaars. Some of it is also used in its raw form for felt.
Most of the milk products are consumed by the Bakhtiyari, but some is exported along with the wool, hides, mules and food animals, charcoal, gallnuts, tobacco, cherry wood for pipestems, gum tragacanth, and wild animal skins. These are exchanged for wheat and barley, tea, sugar, metal products, cloth, and tanned leather goods. Tea, sugar, and wheat-barley bread (usually a mixture of these two cereals but those who are wealthier will use wheat) are the staples of the Bakhtiyari diet. In dry years the wheat-barley flour is supplemented by that made from acorns (balut).
The Bakhtiyari migration, graphically depicted in the documentary film Grass, is made with great difficulty and hardship and with the loss of animal and, occasionally, human life. The tribesmen and their flocks must cross cold, swollen, and bridgeless rivers by swimming or floating across on inflated skin rafts (kalak). (The women and children and the young animals as well as all of the goats ride the kalaks.) They must then travel over a number of lower mountain passes, 7,000-8,000 feet above sea level, until the central barrier, the Zardeh Kuh, is reached where there are only five passes through which the tribes may travel, and three of these passes are over 11,000 feet. Unless the tribes push on through these bottlenecks the resulting congestion exacerbates rivalries and invites raiding. Not the least of their problems are the rugged terrain and poorly prepared trails, landslides, and the possibility of sudden storms and cold. On the higher passes there is frequently snow through which the Bakhityari must shovel a path and over which they cross in their cotton clothing and without shoes (the giveh, their traditional shoe, has a cotton-rag sole which would lose its
shape if it were to become wet). Also, there is no fodder for the animals in the areas of the high passes. The significance of the logistic problem alone may be imagined when, in I92I4-, approximately 50,000 Bakhtiyari migrated with some 500000 animals.