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History and Identity among the Shahsevan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Richard Tapper
Richard Tapper*
Affiliation:
School of Oriental and African Studies, London
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Extract

Until recently, a dominant approach in the history and anthropology of the Middle East has rested on the assumption that an “ethnic” or “tribal” group is, or approximates, a biologically self-perpetuating population, sharing elements of a common culture and identifying itself and being identified with others as a separate category. This fundamentally objectivist approach is a refinement of an older anthropological tradition in which “cultures” are treated as coterminous with “tribes”, “societies”, “peoples”. Even if the many current adherents of this approach do not take the biological assumptions too literally, there is still a strong tendency to conceive of populations as divided into formally bounded, clear-cut, ethnic groups or tribes, with every person belonging to one: a conception that facilitates tidy maps, neat lists of the traits associated with each group, a rigorous classification of types, and cross-cultural comparison.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 3-4 , 1988 , pp. 84 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © 1988 Association For Iranian Studies, Inc

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References

2 These issues are discussed further in Tapper, Richard “Introduction”, The Conflict of Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan (London, Croom Helm, 1983)Google Scholar; id., “Ethnicity, order and meaning in the anthropology of Iran and Afghanistan”, in Digard, J.-P. (ed.) Identité el expérience ethniques en Iran et en Afghanistan (Paris, Editions du CNRS, 1988)Google Scholar; id., “Your tribe or mine? Anthropologists, historians and tribespeople on the concept of tribe in the Middle East”, forthcoming in Kostiner, J. and Khoury, P. (eds)Tribe and State Formation in the Middle East (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press).Google Scholar

3 A year or two after the Islamic Revolution of 1978-9, the Shahsevan were renamed Ilsevan (= “those who love the tribe, or people”), but I have not managed to discover who chose this name, or why, or how widely accepted it is. This paper is confined to discussion of the Shahsevan before the Revolution.

4 See Richard Tapper, The King's Friends: a History of the Shahsevan of Iran (in preparation).

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7 Tapper, Richard “Shahsevan in Safavid Persia”, Bulletin of S.O.A.S., Vol.37 (1974), pp.321-54.Google Scholar

8 Curzon, Hon. G.N. Persia and the Persian Question (London, 1894) Vol.2, p. 270Google Scholar; Fasa'i, Hajji Mirza Hasan Fārsnāmeh-ye Nāṣerī (Tehran, 1332 HS/1896), p.143Google Scholar; SirSykes, Percy A History of Persia (London, MacMillan, 3rd ed., 1930) Vol.2, p.260Google Scholar; Browne, E.G. A Literary History of Persia. Vol. IV Modern Times (1500-1924) (Cambridge University Press, 1928), pp.106, 119Google Scholar; Wilber, Donald Iran, Past and Present (Princeton University Press, 1948), p.68, and 6th ed. (1981), p.62Google Scholar; Bosworth, C.E. The Islamic Dynasties: a Chronological and Genealogical Handbook (Edinburgh University Press, 1980), p.174.Google Scholar Another influential version, close to and possibly based on Malcolm's, is that of Shirvani, Zain al-Abedin Bostān al-Siyāhat (Tehran, 1315 HQ/1898; orig. 1831), pp.346-7.Google Scholar

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11 The different versions are given in Tapper, “Shahsevan in Safavid Persia”.

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13 Anon., “The Tribes of Azerbaijan”, FO 248/1225, no.191, 17.1.1919 (London, Public Record Office).Google Scholar

14 Zainaloghlu, Jahangir Mokhtäsär Azärbayjan tarikhi (Istanbul, 1924), p.125.Google Scholar He inserts this number into a narrative otherwise entirely based on Markov, “Shakhseveni na Mugani”, which is in turn based on a report compiled in 1879 by the Russian consul-general at Tabriz, E.Krebel.

15 Mas˓ud Kaihan, Jughrāfiya-ye mofaṣṣal-e Irān (Tehran, 1311 HS/1932), p.105.Google Scholar

16 For references, see Tapper, “Shahsevan in Safavid Persia”, p.345. The number 32 also has associations with both Sufi organizations and bazaar guilds.

17 See Tapper, The King's Friends, and “The Shahsavan of Azarbayjan: A Study of Political and Economic Change in a Middle Eastern Tribal Society” (Unpublished Thesis, University of London, 1971), pp.696-709.

18 Pere Tadeusz Juda Krusinski, S.J. Histoire de la Dernière Revolution de Perse (Paris, 1728), pp.160-2.Google Scholar

19 See Tapper, “Shahsevan in Safavid Persia”, p.329.

20 Malcolm, History of Persia, p. 637; Sykes, History of Persia, Vol. 2, p.318Google Scholar; Gazetteer of Persia, Vol.2, Northwest Persia (Simla, General Staff India, 1914), p.554.Google Scholar

21 Lockhart, Fall, pp.160-1.

22 Full account in Tapper, The King's Friends.

23 Safari, Baba Ardabīl dar Gozargāh-e Tārīkh , Vol.1 (Tehran, private, 1350 HS/1971), p.280Google Scholar, and passim, esp. p.160; Vol.2 (1353 HS/1974), esp. pp.2-7. Safari is explicit in both his urban perspective on the barbarity and ignorance of the tribespeople and his eagerness to absolve his fellow-townspeople of any blame for the events of 1909. For Meshkin see Gholam Hosain Sa˓edi, Khiou ya Meshkinshahr: Ka˓beh-ye yaylaqat-e Shahsevan, (Tehran, 1344 HS/1965), esp. pp.79f.Google Scholar For Qarabagh see Bayburdi, Hosain Tārīkh-e Arasbaran (Tehran, Ibn Sina, 1341 HS/1962).Google Scholar For Khalkhal see Khāterāt va asnād-e Nāṣer-e Daftar Ravā˓l, (ed.) Afshar, Iraj and Razzaqi, Behzad (Tehran, Ferdousi, 1363 HS/1984), esp. p.146.Google Scholar Though I know of no history written by a Shahsevan, a number of dissertations on agricultural and other topics concerning them have been written by Shahsevan students since the 1950s at the University of Tabriz and elsewhere.

24 Cottam, Richard W. Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh University Press, 1964), pp.56-7.Google Scholar

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26 Arfa, Hassan Under Five Shahs (London, John Murray, 1964), pp.54-5.Google Scholar

27 Tapper, Richard “Raiding, reaction and rivalry: the Shahsevan tribes in the Constitutional period”, Bulletin of S.O.A.S., Vol.49 (1986), pp.508-31..Google Scholar

28 An exception, again, is Arfa, Under Five Shahs, pp.340, 342.

29 Balayan, B.P. “K voprosu ob obshchnosti ctnogeneza Shakhseven i Kashkaytsev”, Vostokovedcheskiy Sbornik, Vol.1 (1960), pp.331-77.Google Scholar I have discussed some of Balayan's eccentricities elsewhere, “Shahsevan in Safavid Persia”, pp.343f.

30 Dälili, Hüseyin Älioghlu “Shahsevän tayfasï vä onun Azärbayjanïn siyasi häyatïndaki möuqeyi haqqïnda”, Tarikh, Fälsäfä, Iluquq, Vol.4 (1974), pt.3, pp.23-30Google Scholar; see also id., Azärbayjanïn jänub khanlïqlarï XVIII äsrin ikinji yarïsïnda, (Baku, Akad. Nauk Azerb. S.S.R.., Inst. Ist., 1979).

31 Tigranov, Iz Obshchestvenno …, pp.104-9. An earlier writer, Artamonov, Severniy Azerbaydzhan, who travelled in Shahsevan lands in 1889 collecting geographical information for military purposes, recorded with some sympathy the plight of the Shahsevan after the border closure of 1884, though he refrained from any historical or theoretical analysis of the situation.

32 F.B.Rostopchin, “Zametki o Shakhsevenakh”, Sovetskaya Etnografiya, (1933), pts 3-4, pp. 88-97.

33 Cf. Haaland, Gunnar “Economic determinants in ethnic processes”, in Barth, Fredrik (ed.), Ethnic Groups and Boundaries (London, Allen and Unwin, 1969).Google Scholar

34 Paradoxically, the tent-frames arc manufactured by Tat carpenters. There are other, social structural reasons for the increasing symbolic importance of nomadism, see Tapper, Richard Pasture and Politics: Economics, Conflict and Ritual among Shahsevan Nomads of Northwestern Iran (London, etc., Academic Press, 1979)Google Scholar, passim.

35 This was “false consciousness” since several of the chiefs, though officially deposed, and with much of their resources threatened by Land Reform, nevertheless retained considerable economic power and political influence over the tribespeople. Cf. Black, Jacob “Tyranny as a strategy for survival: Luri facts versus an anthropological mystique”, Man (N.S.), Vol.7 (1972), pp.614-34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Tapper, “Ethnicity, order and meaning”. See Leach, E.R. Political Systems of Highland Burma (London, Athlone, 1954)Google Scholar; Moerman, Michael “Who are the Lue?”, American Anthropologist, Vol.67 (1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; id., “Who the Lue are”, in Helm, June (ed.) Essays on the Problem of Tribe (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Southall, Aidan “Nuer and Dinka are people: ecology, ethnicity and logical possibility”, Man (N.S.), Vol.11 (1976), pp.463-95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar