Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on transliteration
- Glossary
- 1 Writing tribal history
- PART I The Safavid state and the origins of the Shahsevan
- PART II The rise of the Shahsevan confederacy
- PART III The Shahsevan tribes in the Great Game
- 8 The Russian wars and the loss of Moghan
- 9 The Shahsevan nomads in the mid-nineteenth century
- 10 Nomads and commissars in Moghan
- PART IV The end of the tribal confederacy
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index of topics
- Index of places, peoples, persons, dynasties, parties, companies
- Index of authors quoted or discussed
- Index of tribal names
- Plate section
10 - Nomads and commissars in Moghan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Note on transliteration
- Glossary
- 1 Writing tribal history
- PART I The Safavid state and the origins of the Shahsevan
- PART II The rise of the Shahsevan confederacy
- PART III The Shahsevan tribes in the Great Game
- 8 The Russian wars and the loss of Moghan
- 9 The Shahsevan nomads in the mid-nineteenth century
- 10 Nomads and commissars in Moghan
- PART IV The end of the tribal confederacy
- Appendices
- Bibliography
- Index of topics
- Index of places, peoples, persons, dynasties, parties, companies
- Index of authors quoted or discussed
- Index of tribal names
- Plate section
Summary
The troubles begin
After the end of the wars, the Russians colonized and settled their new Transcaucasian territories, and dealt with local uprisings. They were not interested in the annexation of Iranian Azarbaijan. They put pressure on the Iranians to settle their frontier tribes, but both sides had much to gain from keeping groups like the Shahsevan nomadic. Iran relied on the nomads' pastoral produce and on their role as frontier guards, while the Russians not only gained considerably themselves from the Shahsevan contribution to the economy of the Moghan settlers, but also were able to put to good political use their tally of the latter's complaints of Shahsevan raiding. The officials and diplomats concerned were well aware of these factors in the situation. Though the Russians pressed for settlement of the nomads, they knew the Iranians would not be keen, and anyway the British agents advised the Iranians against such a policy. So the Iranian officials took half-measures, succeeding only in lining their pockets and further antagonizing the nomads.
According to Radde and Markov, it was in response to Russian complaints concerning Shahsevan raids and disturbances that the Iranian authorities in 1839 created the offices of elbey for the two sections of the Moghan Shahsevan tribes. The only other Iranian move concerning the Shahsevan that I know to have been carried out before 1849 was the visit of Mohammad Shah's brother Bahman Mirza, governor-general of Azarbaijan, to Ardabil, Meshkin and possibly Moghan, in November 1843, when he ‘arranged the frontier’.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Frontier Nomads of IranA Political and Social History of the Shahsevan, pp. 190 - 216Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997