The information presented here was collected from a variety of sources, for there exists no definite recorded history.
There are many theories about the name Qashqa’i. Some tribal elders believe that the name came from the Turkic word Kashqa, meaning “a horse with a white spot on its forehead.” Malek Mansur Khan, one of the present leaders of the tribe, believes that this theory is based on a superstition that existed among tribesmen. This theory maintains that ancient tribal warriors believed that riding a Kashqa horse brought luck to its rider.
Through the influence of the Farsi language— language of the Persians— gradually the word took a Farsi ending and became Qashqa’i. If one is to accept this theory, the word means the owners of the horses with a white spot on their foreheads.
Another theory maintains that the name comes from the Turkic verb Kacmak (to flee). According to Naser Khan Qashqa’i, another Qashqa’i khan and the elder brother of Malek Mansur Khan, the origin of this theory is based on a belief that unknown centuries ago the Qashqa’i’s parted from the Khalaj tribe, who were and are residing in central Iran- This tribe was one of the largest Turkic tribes in the Middle East, and since ancient time it has become widely dispersed— some departed from the Khalaj tribe and migrated southward. If one is to believe this theory, the breakaway tribes earned the name Kachkinte or Kachanlar, meaning those who fled. It is important to note that there are important remnants of Khalaj among Qashqa*i’s. Some are sedentary and some are nomadic and they all consider themselves as part of the Qashqa’i tribal confederacy.
Other Qashqari leaders such as my late father, Sohrab Khan Qashqa’i, presented the following theory, yet another one of many existing theories. The assumption of this theory is that the name is connected with Kashka Darya, a river in Uzbekistan, or that of the city of Kashgar. There are, of course, names sounding similar to Qashqa’i of areas in Persian Azerbayjan region such as Qashay Village, Qashqa Dagh, meaning either “white mountain” or “bald mountain”; Qashqa Bolagh Village, and a place called Qashqa Misheh. Azerbayjan is the land of the
Azari Turkic people located in northwestern Iran. There are other theories and suppositions about the etymology of the name Qashqa’i. The ones presented above are the significant ones. It is obvious that there is need for more research to establish with some certainty the root of the name Qashqa’i.
Qashqa*is speak a dialect of Turkic language. Authorities in Turkic languages believe that this dialect is closest to that of Western Ghuz Turkic dialect. Western Ghuz is a region in Soviet Central Asia. One authority on the subject is Karl H. Menges, whose working title on this subject is “Research in Turkic Dialects of Iran” (Menges, 1951:278).
There exists some uncertainty about the exact origin of the Qashqa’is. At the present time, the Qashqa’i confederacy is made up of people of different origins. They are of Arabic, Luri, Kurdish, and Turkic ethnic backgrounds. They all speak Turki and the ethnic origin of the majority of them is Turkic. Turkic Qashqa’is seem to have incorporated some of the other ethnic groups on their way to southern Iran or when they have arrived. Most Qashqa’i elders, including those mentioned, believe that Turkic Qashqa’is prior to their arrival at their present location spent some time in the Azarbayjan region of Iran. In Qashqa’i literature also there is some poetry that points to this connection. Following are some examples:
(Poet speaks of Tabriz, provincial capital of Eastern Azarbayjan:)
Bu yol ghedder Tabriza (This road goes to Tabriz)
Ghannatu Rizzeh Rizzeh (where its water whales are small)
Tarrum biza bir yol ver (God give us a way)
Biz varag ulkeh mezza (so we can go to our homeland)
In the next line the poet speaks of Iravan, an area west of the Caspian Sea:
Irvannan Galdem Barre Jayranna Bakh Bakh
(I have come this way from Iravan, look, look at the deers)
At don uldum yorrulmajuh Jayranna Bakh Bakh
(I dismounted from the horse, I was tired; look, look at the deers)
Iravandeh bir gharyeh var jayranna Bakh, Bakh
(There are water whales in Iravan, look, look at the deers)
Shakkardan sheer in suye var jayranna Bakh Bakh
(It has a water sweeter than sugar, look, look at the deers).
In the Qashqa’i confederacy there are several branches whose origins could be traced to the Azarbayjan region. Branches such as Aq Qoyunlu (the white sheep), Qara Qoyunlu (the black sheep), Beygdeli, and Musellu are some of these branches. As was briefly pointed out, the Qashqa’is have had some form of connection with the Khalaj tribe. According to Vladimir Minorsky in “The Turkish Dislect of the Khalaj” (1939-1942), the Khalaj Turkic tribe was one of the largest Turkic tribes of the Middle East. This tribe is now dispersed from Turkey to
India. In Pars, Nameh-ye Naseri, Hayji Mirza Hasan Fasai (1895-96), whose work is considered to be one of the most reliable on the history of the state of Fars where the Qashqa’is reside now, the Qashqa’is are viewed to be part of the Khalaj tribe. He believed that they immigrated from Saveh and Araq of central Iran. Some of these people settled around Abadeh in the northern part of the state of Fars, who still speak Turki. He stated that they split into two groups, Khalaj and Qashqa’i.
There are different theories about the arrival time of the Turkic Qashqa’is to Iran. Peyman, in his book, Ille Qashqa1i (1967), wrote that the Qashqa’is are Turkic speaking tribes who moved to southern Iran throughout different centuries. Rajab Nya (1962) stated that Turks do not belong to one race; perhaps they belong to various races all of whom speak the Turkic language. Their land of origin is assumed to be Sinkiang province of the People’s Republic of China. Migration westward has begun from there.
At the start of the seventh century the Turks of Sinkiang split into two groups of East and West. The territory of the Eastern Turks stretched from Mongolia to the Ural Mountains. The territory of the Western Turks extended from the Altai Mountains in the east up to the Darya Mountains in the west. The Turkic Empire simply began from Mongolia in the east and in the west bordered the Black Sea. In the eighth century the territory of the Eastern Turks was conquered by the Western Turks. Westward and southward immigration of Turks began in the eighth and ninth century.
In the fourteenth century a major immigration of Seljuged and Khalaj took place. Other literature shows that the Ghuz Turkic tribe moved to Iran prior to the migration of Seljuged and Khalaj (Peyman, 1967).
Some Qashqa*i believe that their ancestors were sent to Fars, from Azarbayjan, at the start of the sixteenth century by Shah Esmail Sofavi to protect that area from the Portuguese incursion. The Portuguese were active along the Persian Gulf at that time (Oberling, 1974). It is known that the whole of the Qashqa*i tribe were moved to the Khorasan region in eastern Persia from the Fars province in the early eighteenth century by the order of Nader Shah Afshar, the King of Persia at that time (Oberling, 1974).
In addition to the branches previously mentioned, there are those others in the Qashqa’i confederacy that belong to other well known Turkic tribes. The Afshars, the Qajars, the Bayats, the Qaraguzlus, the Shanlus, and the Igders are six of these tribes. The main parts of those famous tribes live in various parts of Iran. For instance, the Afshar Turkic Tribe, whose leader, Nader Shah, was founder of the Afshar dynasty in Iran and conqueror of India in the early eighteenth century, reside in Upmiyah in northwestern Iran, and another part of this tribe lives in the Kerman province in southeastern Iran.
It is known that Afshar tribal people can be found in practically all points of Iran from Khorasan in the northeast to Khuzestan in the southwest, and from Tehran and Mazandaran in the north to Hamadan in the west. Clans of Bayat Turkic tribes can be found from the northern city of Maku to the southern province of Fars.
As it becomes apparent from accounts presented above, the Qashqa’i tribe is a confederacy. Clans that form the confederacy have different ethnic backgrounds. However, it is essential to point out that over centuries this confederacy has evolved to become a solid unified entity. All branches strongly identify themselves as members of the Qashqa’i tribe. Of course, most branches maintain their original names. A member of the Bayat Tireh (clan) identifies him/herself as Bayat to another Qashqa’i and Qashqa’i to a nontribal individual.
The Qashqa’is, after their arrival in Fars, began to expand by absorbing many of the smaller tribes and rapidly developed into a strong political entity. They prospered in this land of lush pastures and green valleys. The significance of other indigenous tribes never increased because of factors such as poor leadership. The oldest record of involvement of Qashqa’is in national political affairs is the one presented by Fasai (1895-96) in Fars Nameh-ye Naseri.
According to this account, in 1590 Abu-l-Qasem Beyg Farsimadan, a leader of the Qashqa’i tribe of Farsimadan, sided with the governor of Fars in a revolt against Shah Abbas I, a king from the Safavi dynasty. Later, in the early eighteenth century, Jan Mohammed Aqa–known as Jani Aqa—a noted leader of the Qashqa’i tribe, fought in behalf of Safavi rulers of that time. His sons, Esmail Khan and Hassan Khan, led the tribe in 1724 against invading Afghans in Fars province {Oberling, 1974).
In 1739 when Nader Shah Afshar— founder of the Afshar dynasty which succeeded Safavi’s–conquered India, the Qashqa’is allegedly took an active part. Esmail Khan and Hassan Khan later developed differences with the Afshar Shah. Esmail Khan was blinded, Hassan Khan tortured. Hassan died later, and most important of all, Nader moved the entire Qashqa’i tribe to border areas along the eastern region of Khorasan. They were confined to areas of Darrehgaz, Sarakhs, and Kalat-e-Naderi (Fasai, 1895-96).
After Nader’s murder and disintegration of his empire in 1749, a Kurdish tribal leader, Karim Khan Zend, took control of the Fars region. Esmail Khan Qashqa’i, on behalf of Qashqa’i people, sought Karim Khan’s permission to return to Fars, and reclaim their ancestral lands.
Permission was granted and the Qashqa’is returned and reclaimed their lands (Oberling, 1974).
Esmail, the Qashqa’i khan, gained much influence in Karim Khan’s court in Shiraz, then the capital of Zend King (Fasai, 1895-96). After the death of Karim Khan (1779), a period of instability and disintegration followed. Finally a new dynasty, Qajar, imposed its rule over most of Persia. The exact details of the Qashqa’is’ involvement in political offenses of the last years of the Zend dynasty are not known. It appears that after Karim Khan’s death, the Qashqa’is supported various Zend princesses. They were on the side of the losers. In 1791, Hajji Ibrahim Kalantar of Shiraz (provincial capital of Fars) seized the city in the name of the new Qajar king, Aqa Mohammed Khan.
It is believed that Aqa Mohammed Khan, after imposing his rule over Fars province, for revenge moved some 2,000 Qashqa’i households to the Mazanderan region in northern Persia, Henry Field (1939) found that there are Turkic people in Mazanderan who consider themselves Qashqa’i and believe that they were moved north by Aqa Mohammed Shah.
Aqa Mohammed Shah moved the capital to Tehran. This decreased the political significance of Fars and eventually the Qashqa’is. Many tribes of Fars were scattered.
Many of the Zend tribe joined the Qashqa’i tribe. The Lak, Kurunies, Sheykh Alivands Ahahrands, and Jame’eh Bozorgis are a few of these. All these tribes speak Qashqa’i Turkish.
After Aqa Mohammed Shah, Fath Ali Shah Qajar ruled Persia from 1797 to 1834. He did his very best to subdue the tribe. Tribes were dispersed and their chiefs killed, imprisoned or exiled. With the exception of the Qashqa’is and Zaferanlooi in Khorasan, no other tribe in this period was able to exercise much influence on national politics (Sheil, 1856). The Qashqa1i, despite all the efforts of Fath Ali Shah, gained much of its lost strength.
In 1832-33, another stormy period for the Qashqa*is began. In these years, differences between Farman Farina, the governor-general of Fars (and a son of Fath Ali Shah), and Mohammed Ali Khan (grandson of Esmail Khan and son of Jani Khan), the leader of the Qashqa’is, grew sharper.
Farman Farma, suspicious of a conspiracy against himself planned by Qashqa’is, arrested the ilkhan (Mohammed Ali Khan) and confiscated Bagh Eram (the home and the headquarters of the Qashqa’is in the city of Shiraz. The ilkhani’s brother, Morteza Qoli Khan, ilbagi (second highest title in il-tribe), ordered the Qashqa’i tribes to move to Kerman province, in southeastern Persia, to escape from the territorial authority of the governor-general. With the Qashqa’is, many tribes of eastern Fars— Nafar, Baharlu, and Eynallu— also moved to Kerman (Fasai, 1895-96). The Qashqa’is, after the release of the ilkhan, personal assurance from Farman Farina, and negotiation sessions, returned to Fars in the middle of 1833. The eminent historian, Fasai, wrote that after the return of the Qashqa’is in 1833, Farman Farma, the governor-general, launched a new wave of repression against them (Fasai, 1895-96). After the death of Fath Ali Shah in 1834, the Qashqa’is again became involved in national politics by siding with one contender for the throne against others. This time, by siding with the winner, Mohammed Mirza Qajar, later Mohammed Shah, the Qashqa’is reduced their distance from the central government. Their arch enemy Farman Farma was captured by forces loyal to Mohammed Shah and later died in Ardebil on the way to prison in Tabriz. The ilkhani, Mohammed Ali Khan, later as a result of the new Shah’s suspicions, was arrested and sent into exile in Tehran for thirteen years (Fasai, 1895-96).
After the death of Mohammed Shah, his eldest son, Naser-ed-Din, became Shah in 1848. During the rule of this Shah, the Qashqa’is also experienced much turmoil. Nassered-Din Shah ruled 46 years, from 1848 to 1896. It was during the time of this ruler (1857) that the Qashqa’is tribal confederacy, in defense of the nation, confronted British forces in the southern part of Fars, Borazjan (Ballard, 1861). In the 1870’s, the Qashqa’i tribe and other tribes of southern Persia suffered much loss as a result of a great famine. These people, depending solely on their cattle and sheep for their livelihood, reached a high degree of desperation. In this era many British employees of the Indo-European Telegraph Department in Persia were attacked by tribesmen in Fars. The London Times reported this as banditry and robbery, and the motive of these acts as economic (The Times, September 20, 1872). This assumption could be contended. Robbery might have been the motive, but it is a matter of record that most of the tribes in Iran have regularly opposed foreign intervention and foreign influence.
In 1872, the Qashqa’i tribe, partly due to the lack of strong leadership, stood on the brink of disintegration. Fasai (1895-96), quoting Curzon, wrote:
The tribal affairs fell into the hands of smaller khans, which resulted in internal dissension; owing to this about 5,000 families went over to the Bakhtiaries, and an equal number to the H a t Khamseh, and 4,000 families dispersed themselves to different villages.
In 1874, the Lashani clan became independent by separating itself from the Qashqa’i confederacy. Sohrab Khan, a Qashqa*i khan who displayed much bravery against the British forces in the south, was put to death, allegedly for organizing a rebellion against the central government in 1874-75 (Fasai, 1895-96).
From 1895-1896 to 1905-1906 (Persian Constitutional Revolution) nothing of significance occurred to the Qashqa’i tribe. In this period leadership changed hands more than once. In 1902, the Governor-General of Fars deposed Abdollah Khan Zargham-ed-Dowleh (son of Darab Khan and grandson of Mostafa Qoli Khan–brother of Sohrab Khan) as ilkhani of the Qashqa’i. Zargham-ed-Dowleh once more regained his ilkhani position but was deposed again in 1904. Sowlat-ed-Dowleh remained ilkhani for the remainder of his life. When constitutional revolutionary fervor was sweeping Iran, Sowlat-ed-Dowleh found an opportunity to construct a great tribal empire (Oberling, 1974). Sowlat-ed- Dowleh supported the revolution of 1906; however, the extent of that is unclear and the motive seemed to be traditional hostility of the Qashqa’is toward old regimes and their supporters, such as the powerful Qawam families in Shiraz, the provincial capital.
Throughout the khanate of Sowlat-ed-Dowleh, the Qashqa*i were beset by many internal rivalries. In the early part of 1906 when his half brother, Ahmad Khan Zeygham-ed- Dowleh, was appointed by Qawam-ol-Molk as ilkhan, an intense confrontation took place among the supporters of the two.
In Kudyan, near Ardekan of Fars, where a struggle took place, 500 or 600 Qashqa’is were killed. Zeygham-ed-Dowleh was defeated and fled to Buyr Ahmadi tribal territory, then the southwestern corner of Pars province, now a state called Boyer Ahmadi-Kuh Gilluyeh. Later in May of 1906, the new governor-general of Fars, Abu-l-Fath Mirza Muayyeded- Dowleh, appointed a cousin of Sowlat-ed-Dowleh, Soltan Ebrahim Khan, ilkhani. This scheme failed. In June of the same year, the governor-general resigned, and Qawamol- Molk— major enemy of the constitutionalists and Qashqa’i ilkhan— and his sons were forced to leave Shiraz for Tehran.
Sowlat-ed-Dowleh consolidated his hold from 1907 to 1910 on the Qashqa’i tribe and through despotic practices accumulated much wealth and property through taxation of tribal people (Oberling, 1974) .
Sowlat-ed-Dowleh, later elected to the Parliament (Majlis), died in the prison of Reza Shah, 1925-1941, founder of the Pahlavi Dynasty, in 1933. His son, Naser Khan, became ilkhan after Reza Shah abdicated in 1941. Naser Khan and his brothers were sent to exile in 1954 on the charge of opposing Mohammed Reza Shah. Mohammed Reza Shah had returned to the throne by the help of the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency in 1953.
Kermit Roosevelt, the leader of the CIA operation of 1953 in Iran, has published a book, Counter Coup, that spells out some details of this undertaking (Roosevelt, 1979). Two of the Qashqa’i brothers, Mohammed Hoseyn Khan and Malek Mansur Khan, returned to Iran a few years after the 1953 coup d’etat, and have resided in Tehran since -then.
They were not permitted to spend time with the tribe. Naser Khan, the oldest brother, and Khosrow Khan, the youngest, returned to Iran after the 1979 revolution. At the present time, except for Mohammed Hoseyn Khan, the others are staying in the tribe.
At this point it is proper to note the intention of the last few pages has not been to convert the history of the Qashqa’i tribe to the history of its ilkhans.
However, the unescapable fact is that the destiny of the tribe has been greatly influenced by the destiny of its ilkhans. Due to the traditional political structure of the Qashqa1i confederacy, and due to the traditional social structure, the tribe most often has chosen to follow its traditional leaders. The policies of ilkhans in the past have brought disaster for the tribe at times and power and prestige at other times. Much of the sacrifice, no doubt, has been made by tribal members themselves.