Preferred Citation: Beck, Lois. Nomad: a Year in the Life of a Qashqa'i Tribesman in Iran
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Preferred Citation: Beck, Lois. Nomad: A Year In the Life of a Qashqa'i Tribesman in Iran. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1991 1991. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8r29p2p7/ Nomad A Year in the Life of a Qashqa'i Tribesman in Iran Lois Beck UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford © 1991 The Regents of the University of California Preferred Citation: Beck, Lois. Nomad: A Year In the Life of a Qashqa'i Tribesman in Iran. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1991 1991. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8r29p2p7/ Acknowledgments This book was made possible by the warm and generous hospitality of Borzu Qermezi, Jehangir Khan Darrehshuri, and their extended families. Manucher Dareshuri, son of Jehangir Khan Darrehshuri, has known Borzu Qermezi and other Qermezi people all his life. He read two drafts of the manuscript, helped to clarify the historical and political context, and answered many questions. He drew sketches of Darrehshuri territory that enabled me to see more dearly the spatial components of political organization. The final version reflects his knowledge and insight. Naheed Dareshuri, daughter of Amiramanollah Khan Darrehshuri and granddaughter of Ziad Khan Darrehshuri, offered many perceptive explanations about Qashqa'i culture and society. An expert weaver, she drew the textile design that appears on the book jacket. Manucher and Naheed have been dear friends for over twenty years, and I am deeply indebted to them. The final version of this book remains true to my conception of it from the time I first reread the journals I kept in 1970 and 1971. Still, many people who read the manuscript have helped me to elaborate and clarify. I appreciate the comments of David Edwards, John Bowen, Steven Caton, Julie Katz, Patty Jo Watson, and Richard Watson, all of whom read an early draft. Richard Tapper, Gene Garthwaite, William Beeman, and Edmund Burke III offered useful suggestions on a later draft. Leonard Hellgott, Jane Bestor, Mary Martin, and Erika Friedl provided pertinent remarks on the next- to-final draft. Mohammad Shahbazi, an Igdir Qashqa'i man who was born and raised a nomadic 1 pastoralist, also read and commented on the manuscript. He helped me to understand more dearly which features of Qashqa'i culture and society were general and which were more specific to the Darrehshuri tribe and the Qermezi subtribe. A Fulbright-Hays fellowship aided the initial research on which this ― xii ― book is based. The Department of Anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis provided some financial support for the production of the manuscript. Ernest Thomas Greene generously allowed me to include four photographs he took of Borzu Qermezi and his family in 1966. Maps 1-3 are based in part on an excellent map of Qashqa'i territory published by Gerhard Kortum in 1980, and I thank him for permitting me once again to use it. James Opie graciously offered me the designs used at the chapter openings. Mary Kennedy typed the tables and drew the maps. Mahmoud Amin helped me with Persian and Turkish terms. Rebecca Torstrick ably assisted me in St. Louis during my research in Iran in 1991. Lynne Withey, assistant director of the University of California Press, offered encouragement from the beginning of this project, and her enthusiastic support contributed to my peace of mind during subsequent drafts. Finally, I cannot imagine this book without also thinking about my daughter Julia. This book was the first major project I began after Julia's birth, and I saw that it was indeed possible to care for a child, do creative and fruitful scholarship, and teach full-time, all simultaneously. Julia sat in my lap and played in my study while I wrote the first draft and has been fascinated with each stage of the process since then. As this book goes to press, she and I will be living with Borzu Qermezi and his family, and I eagerly anticipate her reactions to them and their reactions to her. Hanalishah, Qashqa'i territory, Iran—Spring 1991: Borzu and I sit together in his tent in summer pastures and watch Julia chase after (and successfully retrieve) a lamb trying to follow its mother when she rejoined the herd. Although seriously ill, Borzu is as spirited and full of plans for the future as he was twenty years ago. He knows I have written a book about him. I dedicate this book to Borzu Qermezi, to the memory of Khalifeh Qermezi, and to the memory of the seventeen young Qermezi men who were killed in the 1980s in the Iraq-Iran war. ― xiii ― Preface I use actual names of people, tribal groups, and places in this account. If Mohammad Reza Shah and his regime had still been in power when I wrote this book, I would have used pseudonyms for the Qermezi subtribe and its members. Because this regime and its key officials were no longer in place in the late 1980s, I could describe their impact on this Qashqa'i group. A very different regime and a new set of officials emerged in 1979 along with some different policies and attitudes toward the Qashqa'i. Whatever the regime in power, Borzu Qermezi, for one, would have been disappointed had he become some imaginary figure in this account. The language spoken by Qermezi and other Qashqa'i people has been influenced by the different linguistic backgrounds of their ancestors and neighbors and by the dialects of Persian and Luri spoken in the regions they frequented. The Qashqa'i used Turkish, Persian, and Arabic terms for people, tribal groups, and places. They sometimes Persianized Turkish terms, and they Turkicized many Persian terms. In this book I render these terms as they were spoken by most Qermezi Qashqa'i people. Literate 2 Qermezi men wrote words for me in Persian/Arabic script, for Qashqa'i Turkish is not a written language, and I base my transliteration on the style suggested by the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies and followed by many Middle Eastern scholars. I use "e" and "o" for short vowels and omit diacritical marks. It is difficult to represent Persianized Turkish and Turkicized Persian words first in Persian/Arabic script and then in Latin. Other than personal, tribal, and some place names, I use few Turkish, Persian, and Arabic terms and phrases in this text in order to render it accessible to a wide audience. Such terms and phrases, when they do appear, are italicized on first use. Whenever possible, I rely on English ― xiv ― equivalents. I apologize to Qermezi and other Qashqa'i people for converting their hundreds of terms and defining traits into such nondescriptive terms as "sheep" and "grazing land." I translate some place names into English. Other names of locations important in Iranian history, such as Arzhan Plain (Plain of Wild Almond Trees), remain partly or fully in the original. Figures B-5 and B-6 contain the Turkish/Persian and English equivalents of many places mentioned in the text. The chapters Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer contain background and explanatory material and are self-contained. Almost all people mentioned in the text are listed alphabetically and identified in appendix A. Figures (including genealogies) and tables appear in appendixes B and C. A bibliographical essay contains a brief discussion of the book's most pertinent topics. The central people in this account are Borzu Qermezi, his wife Falak, and their six children (Zolaikha, Mohammad Karim, Zohreh, Farideh, Dariush, Bizhan) still at home. His daughter Samarrokh was married to her cousin Asadollah. Borzu's two full brothers (Gholam Hosain, Abdol Hosain) and three half-brothers (Khalifeh, Ali, Jehangir) and their families are also prominent. Borzu's three hired shepherds (Aqaboa, Khodabakhsh, Mohammad Hosain) and his camel herder (Yadollah) and their families lived with or alongside him. Borzu's rivals Sohrab and Hajji Boa are mentioned frequently. Morad, Borzu's cousin and brother-in-law, was his closest supporter. Ali's son Akbar and Aqaboa's wife Katayun were particularly helpful to me and play important roles in the text. I recognize that most readers will have difficulty remembering all the names and identities of this book's large cast. At times it may not be essential to know exactly who a particular person is. I suggest that readers remember the names mentioned above, rely on contextual clues for the identities of others, and, as desired, consult appendix A. ― 1 ― Introduction Borzu Qermezi was the headman and political leader of a group of tribally organized nomadic pastoralists who were part of the Qashqa'i confederacy of southwest Iran. Members of this group accepted him as their representative, and outside authorities including Qashqa'i khans and Iranian government officials verified his position and supported him in it. This book contains an account of a year in the life of Borzu, his extended family, and his political group. I describe the day-to-day activities of this tribal leader interacting with his family and group on different occasions and in varying situations, from the most mundane to the sublime, from the most private and local to the national. Nomadic pastoralism, it will be seen, is a complex and demanding enterprise full of decisions that must be made quickly, and a wrong choice can have serious long-term consequences. I provide a historical account of a way of life at a particular time and describe how it was affected by broad 3 political and economic forces, as mediated through the specific constellation of local social relationships, themselves shaped by a variety of social and cultural factors. The lives I describe have an implicit narrative form embodied in the frame of time and the social structure.