The Qashqai

Abstract

The total tribal population of Iran was estimated in 1963 at between three and four million, that of the Fars of Ostan at something less than half a million. Even the best figures from the later census can only be rough, partly because of the almost insuperable difficulties of counting a so widely dispersed and mobile population, partly because the very definition of “tribal” or “nomad” presents great problems when extensively applied, even though members of a tribe will unhesitatingly declare whether a given person belongs to it or does not. The tribal structure is closely knit. Barth’s [14] careful description of the relatively small Basseri tribe (ca. 20000 people) holds in its major features for the much larger Qashqai tribe also, which constitutes about half the tribal population of Fars and which Barth calls a confederacy rather than a single tribe. Unlike the Basseri and the Khamseh Confederacy to which they belong, the Qashqai are Turkish, not Persian-speaking. Oberling has written their history.