Shahsevan

ETHNONYMS: none

Orientation

In various parts of Iran live the remnants of several tribal groups called "Shahsevan," numbering perhaps 300,000 people. Most are now settled villagers or town dwellers who preserve little of their former tribal organization or pastoral nomadic culture, but some 50,000 Shahsevan still live a nomadic or seminomadic life in the province of East Azerbaijan, close to the former Soviet frontier. They winter near sea level on the Moghan steppe and spend the summer months 160 kilometers or so to the south in the high pastures of the Savalan range, in the districts of Ardabīl, Meshkin, and Sarab. Shahsevan nomads form a minority of the population in this region, although, like the settled majority, whom they know as "Tat," they are Shia Muslims and speak Azerbaijani Turkish. A century ago, Shahsevan identity in this region implied membership in any one of a number of recognized tribes, through political allegiance to its chief (beg); most tribespeople were pastoral nomads, but large numbers were settled farmers. Today, after decades of government suppression of the tribal political structure, "Shahsevan" signifies nomadic, tent-dwelling pastoralists, and most settled nomads soon lose their tribal identity.

History and Cultural Relations

Shahsevan means "those who love the Shah." Shahsevan ancestors are said to have been formed into a special tribe in about a.d. 1600 by Shah Abbas of the Safavid dynasty. There is no historical evidence to support this story, however, and it is unlikely that there was a single unified tribal group of this name until the early eighteenth century, when Shahsevan tribal warriors are recorded as resisting invading Ottoman forces in the Ardabïl-Moghan region. Soon afterward, several Shahsevan groups were moved to other parts of northern and western Iran, leaving the ancestors of the present Shahsevan tribes of Ardabīl and Moghan unified under a paramount chief who was appointed by the famous Iranian conqueror Nader Shah Afshar. The constituent tribes are mainly of Turkish descent, tracing their origins to Central Asia, although the ancestors of several were probably Kurdish. In the last 250 years, Azerbaijan has often been a battleground between Iran and her neighbors, and the Shahsevan figured prominently in the history of the period. Early in the nineteenth century, Russian invaders established their present frontier with Iran. The Shahsevan, deprived of the greater part of their traditional winter quarters in the Moghan steppe, became increasingly lawless. The raids sometimes disrupted trade and settlement far into both Russia and Iran and caused friction between the two countries, although neither government hesitated to exaggerate the extent of Shahsevan raiding. In 1909, after the constitutional revolution in Iran, most Shahsevan chiefs and their followers joined a Tribal Union with the neighboring tribes of Waradagh and Khalkhal, sacked the city of Ardabīl, and threatened, with secret Russian encouragement, to march on Tehran in the name of Islam to restore the deposed Mohammed 'Ali Shah. In 1910 Tehran government forces defeated them, but from 1911 until they were disarmed by Reza Shah in 1923, they maintained their independence of the government. Old men today preserve vivid memories of those times and of their victories over the Cossacks sent against them by Russia. From 1923 to 1978, they remained loyal to the rulers in Tehran, in conformity with their name. Soon after the Islamic Revolution, their name, with its Royalist connotation, was changed to "Elsevan" (lit., "those who love the people or tribe"). During the 1960s and 1970s, massive government-backed irrigation schemes were put into effect in Moghan, removing much of the remaining winter pastureland and forcing many more nomads to settle. After the Revolution, there was a brief revival of tribalism and pastoral nomadism, but it seems likely that the direction of change is irreversible. (The "ethnographic present" in this article, except where indicated, is the 1960s.)

Settlements

Shahsevan nomads commonly join forces in cooperative herding and camping groups of three to five households. Such a herding unit usually camps on its own in the mountain pastures between June and early September but joins with one or two others to form a winter camp of ten to fifteen households during the period from November to April. Two to three such winter camps comprise the basic nomadic community (tireh ), which moves and camps as a unit during the autumn migration in October and the spring migration in May. Apart from their distinctive frontier location and history, the most obvious distinguishing characteristic of the Shahsevan with respect to other nomads is the type of tent they erect. Most nomads in Iran live in rectangular goat-hair tents, similar to those of Arab Bedouin. The Shahsevan tent (alaçigh ) resembles an upturned saucer and is related to the Central Asian yurt. A wooden framework of curved struts, held together by long girths, radiates out and down to the ground from a central roof ring, which is itself anchored to the ground by a massive peg. A covering of thick felt mats keeps out both heat and cold. The hearth, focus of all domestic life, lies between the doorway and the central peg. The wooden parts, which are bought in the bazaar, are expected to last two years, and the felts, which need replacing every three years, are made in camp from the wool of the flocks. Such a tent or hut, heavier and sturdier than other types, is very expensive to maintain, and only two out of three families can afford one: poorer families use a much smaller, simpler, and cheaper construction ( kümeh ) .

Economy

Subsistence, Commercial Activities, and Trade. Shahsevan nomads raise flocks of sheep and goats—the former for milk and milk products, wool, and meat, the latter only in small numbers, mainly as flock leaders. Camels, donkeys, and horses are used for transport. Most families raise chickens for eggs and meat, and a few keep cows. Every family has several fierce dogs to guard the home and the animals against thieves and predators. Bread is the staple food. Some nomads have relatives in villages, with whom they cooperate in a dual economy, sharing or exchanging pastoral for agricultural produce. Most, however, must sell milk, wool, and surplus animals to traders in order to obtain wheat flour and other supplies. Some work as hired shepherds and are paid with 5 percent of the animals they tend for every six-month contract period. Others go to towns and villages seasonally for casual wage labor. Every camp is visited almost every day by itinerant peddlers, but householders go on shopping expeditions to town at least twice a year (e.g., during the seasonal migrations). Most purchases are made on credit, against the next season's pastoral produce. The wealthiest nomads raise flocks of sheep commercially and may own shares in village lands as absentee landlords.

Industrial Arts. Shahsevan women produce a variety of colorful and intricate flat-woven rugs, storage bags, and blankets, and some produce knotted pile carpets, but these are all for domestic use and figure prominently in girls1 trousseaux. Since about 1970, however, these Shahsevan artifacts have been recognized by the international Oriental-carpet trade, and hard times and escalating prices have forced many nomads to sell items that were never intended for the market.

Division of Labor. Herding, milking, shearing, and the marketing of produce are the work of men, who also see to the erection and maintenance of tents. The household head is rarely at home during the day unless he has guests. Younger men and boys help with the herding and fetch fuel. Women and girls may fetch water, but they normally stay in camp to run their households. Their main regular chore, at least once a day, is baking flat bread over the hearth; for home consumption, they also turn milk into cheese, yogurt, and butter, as well as cooking both regular and ceremonial meals, weaving, and keeping the insides of the tents clean.

Land Tenure. Although the pasturelands are legally owned by the state, each tireh has rights to defined areas in summer and winter quarters. Each full member usually has rights to a specific share of these pastures, rights that, with consent of fellow members, may be rented or sold for cash. Similarly, nomads who have sold or lost their grazing rights, as well as outsiders from the villages or towns, may rent grazing land for their animals from owners who have surplus land to dispose of. They may join the camp of the owner as "client" members of the community or set up separate camps of their own.

Kinship

Kin Groups and Descent. The male householders of a herding camp are usually brothers or paternal cousins, but often they also include hired shepherds and clients, who may be related to "core" members by marriage. Men of the twenty to thirty households of a community are most often from a single lineage, tracing their descent patrilineally from an ancestor some four generations back, whose name they usually bear. A woman married out of the community never loses her original lineage identity, although jurally and morally she is strongly assimilated into the community of her husband and children.

Kinship Terminology. Like that of most people in the region, Shahsevan kinship terminology is "Sudanese": paternal and maternal uncles and aunts are differentiated, as are all four types of first cousin, who are distinguished again from siblings. All members of the lineage regard each other as father's brother's cousins, whereas members of one's mother's community (if she is an outsider) are all mother's brothers or mother's brother's cousins. There is considerable depth in the terminology, with separate terms existing for father's father's father and sister's sister's sister's sister's sister, as well as for all generations between.

Marriage and Family

Marriage. About four marriages in ten involve couples from the same community, but, unlike many Muslims, Shahsevan rarely marry their first paternal cousins; mother's brother's daughter/father's sister's son is a more common link. Marriages are most often made between distant relatives of the same community, or between members of neighboring communities. Many boys and girls are able to choose their own partners, and many say that they marry for love. The ceremonies associated with marriage provide the most elaborate and colorful occasions among the Shahsevan. Several years of visits, exchanges, and several large feasts culminate in a week or more of festivities, leading to the fetching of the bride to join her husband's family. There is virtually no divorce or separation. Perhaps three men in a community have second wives, who are usually remarried widows.

Domestic Unit. In each tent lives a household of seven or eight people, on average. The Shahsevan prefer larger households, and often brothers and their wives and children, or an older couple and their married sons, all stay together. There are no partitions in the tent, with the exception of the curtain behind which a son and his bride sleep during the first years of their marriage.

Inheritance. Livestock and other movable property are usually inherited by males only. Following Islamic law, a daughter nominally inherits half a son's share in pastures or farmland, although in practice she almost always transfers her inheritance to one or all of her brothers. Women do own certain items of household property, however, and may be able to accumulate cash and valuables, the existence of which is often kept secret until they die.

Socialization. A father participates indulgently in the socializing of his daughters and young sons, often leaving normal discipline to their mother. As a boy approaches the age when he can help with the herding, however, he is liable to severe discipline by his father. Boys are taught the qualities of bravery and stamina that are associated with their warrior tradition, as well as moderation, respect for elders, and jealousy of community honor. Girls should be modest but also responsible, strong, and hardy. Many stories are told of women managing nomadic households of their own or berating warriors who returned home defeated.

Sociopolitical Organization

No trace is left of the eighteenth-century organization of the Moghan Shahsevan as a centralized tribal confederacy of some ten thousand families under a single family of paramount chiefs. The family split in two before 1800, dividing the confederacy into the Ardabïl branch and the Meshkin branch. The former branch soon settled and dispersed in and around the city of Ardabīl and in some other parts of Iran. In the mid-nineteenth century, the Meshkin branch of the chiefly family also settled, and the powerful tribes of the region, mostly of the Meshkin branch, were organized into a shifting series of clusters and coalitions under rival chiefs. The chiefs were very much weakened under the Pahlavi dynasty (1925-1978), and the tribes they led lost much of their cohesion. The authorities now attempt to deal directly with the communities and their elders. The thirty-odd Shahsevan tribes today vary in size from two to three communities (fifty families) to twenty-five or more (nearly a thousand). Few contacts, and less than one in ten marriages, are made between tribes, each of which feels itself different in subtle ways from the others. The chiefs no longer have the arbitrary power over their followers that they once enjoyed, but several of them and their families remain a privileged class, distinct from ordinary nomad society.

Social Organization. Community activities are directed by the elder, who has the difficult job of dealing with the authorities. Either he or his son is expected to be literate. Members of the community look to his life-style as a source and symbol of their honor, and he should be wealthy enough not only to entertain important visitors but also to provide lavish entertainment at feasts. There are wide differences of wealth among the Shahsevan. An elder may own several hundred sheep, five to ten camels, and some donkeys and horses, whereas a poor kinsman may own only fifteen sheep and two camels and have to work as a shepherd or supplement his income by casual labor or petty trading. The elder will ensure that all members contribute to the welfare of a family that has fallen on particularly hard times.

Political Organization, Social Control, and Conflict. An elder rarely displays his authority. Instead, with most members of the community, he uses skillful persuasion. Disputes, especially those involving women, are not discussed openly but are resolved if possible by private communications between elders and participants. Women have their own leaders, who act somewhat differently. Shahsevan women do not wear veils; they do, however, cover the lower part of the face in the presence of unrelated men. This rule is strictly observed by newly married women; young girls and older women are more casual. Women past childbearing age may reach positions of considerable respect, and a few become influential leaders, comparable to the male elders. Women leaders are consulted privately by the male elders, but among the women they exercise their influence in public, at feasts attended by guests from a wide range of communities. At feasts, men and women are segregated. While the men are enjoying music and other entertainment, the leaders in the women's tent are likely to be discussing matters of importance both to men and women, such as marriage arrangements, disputes, irregular behavior among community members, or broader subjects bearing on economic and political affairs. Opinions are formed and decisions made, which are then disseminated as the women return home and tell their menfolk and friends. This information network among the women serves a most important function for the society as a whole.

Religion and Expressive Culture

Religious Beliefs, Religious Practitioners, and Ceremonies. Shahsevan are Shia Muslims, who believe in Allah, respect Mohammed his Prophet, and regard Mohammed's cousin and son-in-law Ali as God's deputy. They are strongly attached to ʿAli's family, especially his son Hoseyn, who was martyred at the battle of Karbala in a.d. 680. This martyrdom is commemorated in the first ten days of the Islamic month of Moharram, the most important event of the Shahsevan religious calendar. Ceremonies in Moharram and during the fasting month of Ramazan are a community affair, directed by the elder, but with everybody contributing to the expenses of feasting and the hire of a mullah, who is brought from a nearby village or town to officiate. Every family observes the feast of Sacrifice, coinciding with annual pilgrimages to Mecca. Great respect is paid to those who have made pilgrimages to Mecca and to the Shiite shrines at Karbala and An Najaf in Iraq and at Mashhad in northeastern Iran. The departure and return of Mecca pilgrims are occasions for large gatherings of friends and relatives.

Circumcision for boys is seen as a religious duty, but religion plays little part in the ceremonies, which resemble weddings. Guests at major life-cycle ceremonies—weddings, circumcisions, pilgrimage departures, funeral feasts—are from the sponsor's circle of kheyrüshärr (lit., "good-and-bad"), those whose feasts he (or she) attends and who attend his (or hers); such guests contribute money toward the expenses of the feasting and often bring food or lend equipment.

Medicine. Shahsevan women and some men believe in the malicious power of spirits of various kinds to harm the weak, especially childbearing women, children, and animals. Beliefs in the evil eye are also common, but vague. Such beliefs are invoked only on the occasion of some malignant or unexpected illness or sudden death. In both summer and winter quarters, nomads are within a day's travel from towns and cities with modern medical facilities. These facilities are basic, however. They can be costly, and they are resorted to only in severe emergencies. Each community has at least one man and one woman with a knowledge of charms and countermeasures against evil forces and of traditional herbal and magico-religious remedies for common ailments. More powerful experts are found in the towns and villages.

Arts. In addition to the artistic textiles that are produced by the women, there is a lively tradition among both men and women of storytelling and of performing tribal songs and dances; most music at festivities today, however, is rendered by hired musicians from the villages and cities. Favorites are the minstrels who travel throughout the region to perform at wedding and circumcision feasts.

Death and Afterlife. After a death, the body is washed and buried in a nearby village graveyard, under the supervision of a mullah. Commemorative feasts follow on the third, seventh, and fortieth days, and on the anniversary of the death. As with other Shiites, there are few elaborations of standard conceptions, based on Quranic and Islamic traditions, concerning the nature of paradise and hell.

Bibliography

Housego, Jenny (1978). Tribal Rugs: An Introduction to the Weaving of the Tribes of Iran. London: Scorpion Publications.

Parviz, Tanvoli (1985). Shahsevan: Iranian Rugs and Textiles. New York: Rizzoli.

Safizadeh, Fereydoun (1984). "Shahsevan in the Grip of Development." Cultural Survival Quarterly 8(1): 14-18.

Siyawosch, Azadi, and Peter Andrews (1985). Mafrash. Berlin: Reimer.

Tapper, Nancy (1978). "The Women's Sub-Society among the Shahsevan Nomads." In Women in the Muslim World, edited by Lois Beck and Nikki Keddie. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Tapper, Richard (1979). Pasture and Politics: Economics, Conflict and Ritual among Shahsevan Nomads of Northwestern Iran. London: Academic Press.

RICHARD TAPPER