ʿABD-AL-ḴĀN, an Arab tribe of Ḵūzestān. It was originally affiliated with the Banī Lām tribal confederacy and resided in the…

1. General. Since ancient times Iranians and Arabs have lived in neighboring areas. During the Sasanian period several large Arab…

BAYRĀNAVAND, a Lor tribe of the Pīš(-e)Kūh region in Lorestān. A. T. Wilson described it as “the strongest of the…

BĀYBŪRTLŪ (also Bāybūrdlū), a Turkic tribe of northwestern Iran whose only vestiges seem to be the names of a few…

BĀVĪ (or Bābūʾī), a Luri-speaking tribe of the Kohgīlūya (Kūh[-e] Gīlūye). According to Ḥasan Fasāʾī, it is an offshoot of…

BANĪ ARDALĀN, a Kurdish tribe of northwestern Iran, now dispersed in Sanandaj (Senna) and surrounding villages. V. Minorsky believed that…

BĀJALĀN, a Kurdish tribe which has settled in the dehestāns of Qūratū, Ḏohāb and Jagarlū in the šahrestān of Qaṣr-e…

BAHMAʾĪ, a Lur tribe of the Kohgīlūya (Kūh[-e] Gīlūya). Until well into the second half of the 13th/19th century, it…

BAHĀRVAND, a Lur tribe now living mostly in the dehestāns (districts) of Kargāh and Bālā Garīva, south and southwest of…

BAHĀRLŪ, a Turkic tribe of Azarbaijan, Khorasan, Kermān, and Fārs. According to J. Malcolm, it was originally a branch of…

ĀYRĪMLŪ (in Persian often Āyromlū), Turkic tribe of western Azarbaijan. Following the treaty of Torkamāṇčāy (q.v.) in 1243/1828 through which…

AYNALLŪ (or ĪNALLŪ, ĪNĀLŪ, ĪMĀNLŪ), a tribe of Ḡozz Turkic origin inhabiting Azarbaijan, central Iran and Fārs. The name of…

ʿARAB MĪŠMAST, an Arab tribe of Fārs, Tehran, and Khorasan. According to J. J. Morier, it was one of the…

ĀQ EVLĪ, a small Turkic tribe of Fārs. According to legend, the ancestors of the present-day Āq Evlīs were forced…

AMRĀNLŪ, a small Turkic tribe which has settled down in the village of Galūgāh, 27 km east of Behšahr (Ašraf),…

ʿAMMĀRLŪ, a Kurdish tribe of Gīlān and Khorasan. Needing a barrier against the Uzbeks, Shah ʿAbbās (r. 996-1038/1588-1629) moved some…

ʿAMALA (literally: workers, retainers), the retinue of a tribal chief, and the name of a number of tribes. The clan…

ĀL-E BŪ KORD, a tribe of Ḵūzestān, of uncertain origin. It formerly belonged to the Baḵtīārī tribal confederacy, but some…

AḤMADĀVAND, a small, sedentary Kurdish tribe of western Iran, inhabiting some five villages in the dehestān of Dorū Farāmān, southeast…

AḠĀČ ERĪ, a tribe of mixed ethnic origin living in eastern Ḵūzestān. The name Aḡāč Erī (“People of the Forest”…

AFŠĀR, one of the twenty-four original Ḡuz Turkic tribes (T. Houtsma, “Die Ghuzenstämme,” WZKM 2, 1888, pp. 223-24). Now widely…

ĀDĪNEVAND, a small Lur tribe of Lorestān which lives the year round in the baḵš of Ṭarhān. In the early…

ʿABD-AL-QAYS, an eastern Arabian tribe. In ancient times, it moved from what is today the province of al-ʿĀreż to the…

ʿABD-AL-MALEKĪ, a Lek tribe of Māzandarān. Long ago (possibly during the reign of Shah ʿAbbās I, when many tribes were…

JOMUR (also angl. Jumur), a small Sunnite Kurdish tribe of northern Lorestān. In all likelihood, it is related to the…

JĀKI, a group of Lor tribes in the Kuhgiluya region of eastern Khuzesan. They comprise the tribal confederations of the Čahārboniča…

JAHĀNBEGLU (or Jānbeglu), one of several Kurdish tribes transplanted from northwestern Persia to Māzandarān by Āḡā Moḥammad Khan Qajar (r….

JABBĀRA, a group of Shiʿite Arabs in Fārs province who, together with the Šaybāni. form the Arab tribe of the…

KANGARLU (variants are Kungurlu, Kengerlü), a tribe in Azarbaijan and the Qom-Verāmin region of central Iran. Kangar was the name…

KARĀʾI (QARĀʾI, QARĀ TĀTĀR), a Turkic-speaking tribe of Azarbaijan, Khorasan, Kermān, and Fārs. As Vladimir Minorsky wrote, “The name of…

Ethnically speaking, the population of modern Khorasan (i.e., northeastern Iran in the 19th and early 20 Century) is extremely varied….

KĀKĀVAND, a Lor tribe of the Delfān group. In the second half of the 20th century they had settled in…

KEYVĀNLU, a Kudish tribe of Khorasan. It was one of those Kurdish tribes that Shah ʿAbbās I (r. 1588-1629) forced…

MOKRI, a Kurdish tribe of western Iranian Azarbaijan. According to Šaraf-al-Din Bedlisi (1543-1603/4), it descended “from the princes of Baban”…

FĀRS vii. Ethnography The largest part of the population of Fārs is of Iranian stock, but since the rise of…

FEYLĪ, group of Lor tribes located mainly in Luristan. During the two centuries in which the whole of Luristan was…

FĀRSĪMADĀN, one of the most important tribes of the Qašqāʾī tribal confederacy. The popular explanation of the name is that…

ḎU’L-QADR (arabicized form of Turk. Dulgadır), a Ḡozz tribe (Taḏkerat al-molūk, ed. Minorsky, p. 194) that became established mainly in…

DOŠMANZĪĀRĪ, name of two Lor tribes in southern Persia, the Došmanzīārī-e Mamasanī and the Došmanzīārī-e Kūhgīlūya. The Došmanzīārī-e Mamasanī were…

DONBOLĪ, name of a turkicized Kurdish tribe in the Ḵoy and Salmās regions of northwestern Azarbaijan and of the leading…

DĪRAKVAND, Lor tribe belonging to the Bālā Garīva group and inhabiting a mountainous area between Ḵorramābād and Dezfūl in the Pīš-Kūh…

DELĪKĀNLŪ, tribe of the Ḵalḵāl region in eastern Persian Azarbaijan. In spite of its Turkish name (deli “young, wild, frolicsome”;…

DEH-BOKRĪ,Kurdish tribe of Kurdistan. Henry Rawlinson (p. 34 n.), who visited northwestern Persia in 1838, referred to the Deh-bokrīs as…

DARRAŠŪRĪ,one of the five major tribes of the Qašqāʾī tribal confederation (see CONFEDERATIONS, TRIBAL). According to Zīād Khan Darrašūrī, a…

ČERĀM or ČORŪM, a small tribal confederacy (īl) inhabiting the dehestān of Čerām, in the Kūhgīlūya region, in southwestern Persia….

ČEGĪNĪ or Čeganī, a tribe that originated in northwestern Persia but is now scattered in Luristan, the Qazvīn region, and…

ČALABĪĀNLŪ, a Turkicized tribe dwelling, for the most part, in the dehestān of Garmādūz in Aras­bārān (q.v., formerly Qarājadāḡ) region…

ČAHĀR DOWLĪ (Davālī), or ČĀR DOWLĪ, a tribe of western Iran. According to tribal legend the Čahār Dowlīs acquired their…

BOČĀQČĪ, a Turkic tribe of Sīrjān in Kermān province. Its name in Turkish means both “knife-maker” and “quarrelsome.” The latter…

BELBĀS, a former Kurdish tribal confederacy of northwestern Iran and northeastern Iraq. According to C. J. Edmonds, it consisted of…

JUDAKI, a small Lor tribe of the Ḵorramābād region in western Persia. It forms part of the Bālā Gariva group…

JALILAVAND, a small Laki-speaking tribe inhabiting the Kermānšāh and Lorestān regions, most of whom belong to the Ahl-e Haqq sect. Originating from Shiraz…

JALĀLI, a Kurdish tribe of eastern Anatolia and northwestern Persia. Basile Nikitine (p. 162) believed that the Jalāli were Kurdicized…

IGDIR, a Turkic tribe in Persia and Anatolia. It was one of the 24 original Oghuz tribes (Houtsma, p. 225;…

ḤAYĀT-DĀWUDI, a sedentary Lor tribe dwelling in the dehestān of Ḥayāt-dāwūd, stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Māhur-e Mīlāti…

ḤASANVAND (or ḤASANAVAND), a Lor tribe of the Piškuh region in Lorestān. In the 1870s it numbered some 2,500 families…

HARKI (Herki), a Kurdish tribe of western Azarbaijan, eastern Anatolia, and northeastern Iraq. As of 1963, the Harki of Persia…

ḤAMAYD, an Arab tribe of Ḵuzestān, which claims descent from the large Bani Rabiʿa tribe (Bani Ṭoraf, p. 47). In…

ḤAMĀVAND (from MOḤAMMADVAND), a Kurdish tribe of northeastern Iraq which has been described as “the most celebrated fighting tribe of…

ḤĀJI ʿALILU, a Turkic tribe of Persian Azarbaijan. Its main branch lives north of Varzaqān and Ahar, in Qarājadāḡ (Arasbārān);…

GURĀN, a tribe dwelling in the dehestān of Gurān, between QasÂr-e Širin and Kermānšāh (Bāḵtarān), in Kurdistan. Šaraf-al-Din Bedlisi mentioned…

GUKLĀN (Turk. Göklen), a Turkmen tribal confederacy of the Gorgān region in northeastern Persia, the district of Qara Qalʿa in…

GOWRAK, a Kurdish tribe in northwestern Persia. It is an offshoot of the Mokri tribe (Tābāni, p. 74) and is…

ḠĪĀṮVAND, a Kurdish tribe of the Qazvīn region. According to Parvīz Varjāvand (pp. 456-57), the Ḡīāṯvand were moved from western…

GERĀYLĪ, a Turkic tribe of Khorasan, Gorgān, and Māzandarān. According to Eʿtemād-al-Salṭana (pp. 157-58), the Gerāylī are descendents of the…

GEORGIA viii. GEORGIAN COMMUNITIES IN PERSIA Many thousands of Georgians, Armenians, and Circassians who were transplanted to Persia by Shah…

KORA-SONNI, a tribe in western Persian Azarbaijan. Basile Nikitine, who spells the tribe’s name “Kuresinli,” describes it as an only…

NAFAR, a tribe of Fārs and the Tehran region. Although of Turkic origin, the Nafar of Fārs have become a…

MILĀN, a Kurdish tribe in western Persian Azarbaijan. Its territory borders that of the Jalāli tribe. Its winter quarters are…

LAŠANI, a Turkicized Kurdish tribe in Fārs. The Lašani accompanied Karim Khan Zand to the province in the mid-18th century….

KURUNI(KORĀNI), a Kurdish tribe of Kurdistan and Fārs. Most of the tribe was transplanted from Kurdistan to Fārs by Karim…

KURDISH TRIBES. Kurdish tribes are found throughout Persia, eastern Anatolia and northern Iraq, but very few comprehensive lists of them…

ḴAMSA, a tribal confederacy in Fārs province. As Vladimir Minorsky pointed out, the leadership of a tribal confederacy is “either…

ḴᵛĀJAVAND,a Kurdish tribe in the Caspian province of Māzandarān. According to L. S. Fortescue, the tribe “was originally brought from…

KAŠKULI BOZORG, one of the five major tribes of the Qashqāʾi (Qašqāʾi) tribal confederacy of Fārs province. Its name is…

QAŠQĀʾI TRIBAL CONFEDERACY i. History Like most present-day tribal confederacies in Persia, the Il-e Qašqāʾi is a conglomeration of clans…

ḴĀLU, a small Turkic tribe of Kermān province. According to the Iranian Army files (1957), this tribe once lived in…

KOLUKJĀNLU, a Kurdish tribe in the Ḵalḵāl region of eastern Azarbaijan. According to Ḥosayn-ʿAli Razmārā, this tribe, as well as…

ḴALAJ  i. TRIBE The Ḵalaj/Khalaj are usually referred to as Turks, but Josef Marquart (pp. 251-54) claimed that they were…

KHORASAN i. ETHNIC GROUPS Ethnically speaking, the population of Khorasan is extremely varied. It consists principally of Persians, Arabs, Turks,…

KALHOR, a Kurdish tribe in the southernmost part of Persian Kurdistan. Ely Soans (p. 386) and Hyacinth Louis Rabino (p….