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The Qashqa'i of Southern Iran
| Article
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11367 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
11 / 1986 |
6,961 Words |
| Author
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Lois Beck
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The Qashqa'i are Turkic-speakers of Central Asian origin who have been settled in the mountains of southwest Iran since the fifteenth century. Most are sheep- and goat-herders and migrate long distances between winter and summer pastures in the lowlands and highlands of the Zagros Mountains. Numbering over a quarter of a million individuals, the Qashqa'i are divided into five large tribes - Amaleh, Darrehshuri, Kashkuli Bozorg, Farsi Madan, and Shish Boluki - and many small tribes, which were unified in a political confederacy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
From 1954 to 1956, the Iranian government removed the leaders of this confederacy from office and exiled them from Iran; in 1960 the leaders of the component tribes were also stripped of their authority. Most tribes people still considered themselves politically affiliated with the exiled leaders and, during Iran's 1978-1979 revolution, the exiled and deposed tribal leaders returned to the population.
In the Islamic Republic of Iran's uneasy first year, ambiguous relationships between Qashqa'i leaders and the new regime's authorities existed, but military confrontations in 1980 drove an antagonistic wedge between them. The Qashqa'i, like many of Iran's other national minorities, continued to resist the re-establishment of state rule in their territories and attempted to establish regional self-rule.
The Qashqa'i are the largest tribal group and national minority in southwest Iran. They are "Turks," a word that refers to the language and culture of the tribal founders, leaders, and most members. An ethnic appellation, 'Turk' is virtually synonymous with 'Qashqa'i' in southwest Iran; it is also a sociopolitical label that sets them apart from the "Tajik," their primarily Persian-speaking, non-Qashqa'i neighbors.
Other Turkic-speakers besides the Qashqa'i are found in rural southwest Iran, but they are dispersed and assimilated into Persian society. The Qashqa'i live in an environment dominated numerically, economically, and politically by sedentary Persian-speakers. Persian, the mother tongue of less than 45 percent of Iran's population of thirty-five million, is the nation's dominant political, economic, religious, and cultural force.
Persians dominate all urban areas of central Iran and most of the plateau. Wealth and power are concentrated in Persian hands, and the majority of the upper class is Persian. Persians fill most government posts, are the best educated and professionally trained, and are the most subject to Western influence. Most high religious figures are Persians. Many of Iran's regional populations do not speak Persian as a first language and are regarded as national minorities.
The development of the Iranian nation-state in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries coincided with foreign involvement in Iran and with the integration of Iran into the world economy. One result of this contact was the development of national consciousness and patriotism-a nationalism that predictably took a Persian form. The new nationalism ignored cultural differences, and the gap between the Persian and non-Persian sectors of the population increased.
Another result of foreign involvement and integration into the world economy was the Iranian
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