The Basseri of Iran

The Basseri of Iran

Introduction

The Basseri tribe of Iran is one of the most famous, as well as, one of the oldest tribes of Iran. They are a group or a tribe of traditional pastoral nomads. The Basseri has inhabited Fars, a province of Iran. They also have migrated to the town of Shiraz using mountains and steppes. Most of the groups and tribes in Iran are defined using political, geographic or ethnic criteria, and the tribe of Basseri is no exception to this. This assignment will focus on the culture of the Basseri tribe as it existed in the 1950s. This is because of the fact that more recent situations of the culture of the tribe are not recently known to a greater extent (Barth, 1986).

Discussion

The number of people of the tribe of Basseri was estimated to be around 16,000 in the decade of 1950s. However, the number of people of Basseri tribe living in Iran now is not being published widely. The Basseri tribe has a strong political background in the country of Iran. This assignment will talk about the culture of the Basseri tribe, which is very traditional. The political situation of Iran, as well as, circumstances have made the current situation of the Basseri tribe unknown. The people of the Basseri tribe, along with the members of other close tribes come in direct contact with each other. They also come in contact with mutual languages like Turkish, Farsi and Arabic (Levinson et al. 1996). There are some groups of the Basseri tribe who claim to be the direct descendants of Basseri, or having a common ancestral origin with Basseri. The people of Basseri tribe living in Iran, especially southern Iran claim to have close contact with Basseri or are having Basseri origins. There are other groups also, which include the Basseri of east Tehran, the Yazd-e-Khast and the Bugard Basseri. These tribes claim to be genetically connected to the Basseri living in Fars. The Basseri were one of the important elements of the Khamesh confederacy. The Khamesh confederacy was founded in the nineteenth century. The Basseri tribe was not a big political force in the early days of the confederacy, however, the importance of the Basseri tribe grew its popularity, as well as, powers and importance. The confederacy of Khamesh also lost its importance as a social, as well as a political unit. The area of Basseri is characterized by arid and hot climate. There are mostly deserts in the area, especially in the southern region. There are mountains in the northern regions of the area of Basseri (Barth, 1986).

The primary subsistence mode of the Basseri of Iran is pastoralism. Pastoralism is one of the oldest forms of farming practiced by the majority of domestic animal species by income: mainly sheep, goats, cattle, but also pigs and horses. Pastoral communities have always played an important role in Iran. The Basseri of Iran uses opportunistic management system that has evolved over centuries of dependence varied ...