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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Iran
Index
A nomadic Qashqai family moving to new grazing ground
Courtesy United Nations (S. Jackson)
The Qashqais are the second largest Turkic group in Iran. The
Qashqais are a confederation of several Turkic-speaking tribes in
Fars Province numbering about 250,000 people. They are pastoral
nomads who move with their herds of sheep and goats between summer
pastures in the higher elevations of the Zagros south of Shiraz and
winter pastures at low elevations north of Shiraz. Their migration
routes are considered to be among the longest and most difficult of
all of Iran's pastoral tribes. The majority of Qashqais are Shias.
The Qashqai confederation emerged in the eighteenth century
when Shiraz was the capital of the Zand dynasty. During the
nineteenth century, the Qashqai confederation became one of the
best organized and most powerful tribal confederations in Iran,
including among its clients hundreds of villages and some
non-Turkic-speaking tribes. Under the Qashqais' most notable
leader, Khan Solat ad Doleh, their strength was great enough to
defeat the British-led South Persia Rifles in 1918. Reza Shah's
campaigns against them in the early 1930s were successful because
the narrow pass on the route from their summer to winter pastures
was blocked, and the tribe was starved into submission. Solat and
his son were imprisoned in Tehran, where Solat was subsequently
murdered. Many Qashqais were then settled on land in their summer
pastures, which averages 2,500 meters above sea level.
The Qashqais, like the Bakhtiaris and other forcibly settled
tribes, returned to nomadic life upon Reza Shah's exile in 1941.
Army and government officials were driven out of the area, but the
Qashqais, reduced in numbers and disorganized after their
settlement, were unable to regain their previous strength and
independence. In the post-World War II period, the Qashqai khans
supported the National Front of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadeq.
Following the 1953 royalist coup d'état against Mossadeq, the
Qashqai khans were exiled, and army officers were appointed to
supervise tribal affairs. The Qashqais revolted again in the period
1962 to 1964, when the government attempted to take away their
pastures under the land reform program. A full-fledged military
campaign was launched against them, and the area was eventually
pacified. Since the mid-1960s, many Qashqais have settled in
villages and towns. According to some estimates, as many as 100,000
Qashqais may have been settled by 1986. This change from pastoral
nomadism to settled agriculture and urban occupations proved to be
an important factor hindering the Qashqai tribes from organizing
effectively against the central government after the Revolution in
1979 when exiled tribal leaders returned to Iran hoping to rebuild
the confederation.
By the 1980s, the terms Qashqai and Turk tended
to be used interchangeably in Fars, especially by non-Turkic
speakers. Many Turkic groups, however, such as the urban Abivardis
of Shiraz and their related village kin in nearby rural areas and
the Baharlu, the Inalu, and other tribes, were never part of the
Qashqai confederation. The Baharlu and Inalu tribes actually were
part of the Khamseh confederacy created to counterbalance the
Qashqais. Nevertheless, both Qashqai and non-Qashqai Turks in Fars
recognize a common ethnic identity in relation to non- Turks. All
of these Turks speak mutually intelligible dialects that are
closely related to Azarbaijani. The total Turkic-speaking
population of Fars was estimated to be about 500,000 in 1986.
Data as of December 1987
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