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
- 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
PART II - The rise of the Shahsevan confederacy
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
- 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 Kurds and Shaysevans nomadizing on the Moghan steppe, who make a habit of coming in winter to the Salyan district with their flocks, became Russian subjects in 1728 and remained such until 1732, when Gilan was abandoned to Shah Tahmasp. The Kurds live on the River Aras on the Moghan steppe, after which they also are called Muganis. The Shaysevans have their residence mainly on the River Kura. Both peoples were at that time peaceful, supported themselves by stockraising, and lived a nomadic life in tents.
Butkov, Materiali dlya Novoy Istorii Kavkaza.The beginning of the eighteenth century found Iran in a condition of steadily worsening administrative and military decay under the weak and misguided Shah Soltan Hosein. The death throes of the Safavid dynasty began with the Afghan invasions in the south and east, culminating in 1722 in the siege and capture of Esfahan by Mahmud Ghilji, while the west and northwest soon fell carrion to the voracious Ottomans and Russians, both newly freed from military commitments elsewhere to expand in the direction of Iran.
The frontiers of Iran in Shah Soltan Hosein's time were almost as they had been left by Shah ʿAbbas I: they included much of Georgia and Daghestan in the northwest, while Khorasan and large areas of presentday Afghanistan and Pakistan lay within Iran's eastern frontier. Some territory in the west had been lost to the Turks in the 1630s, but since the Treaty of Zohab in 1639 the frontier province of Azarbaijan had been so secure from invasion that it had for much of the time been counted as an internal province and ruled directly from the capital.
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- Frontier Nomads of IranA Political and Social History of the Shahsevan, pp. 93 - 94Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997