KHANS AND SHAHS: A DOCUMENTARY ANALYSIS OF THE BAKHTIYARI IN IRAN

by Prof. Gene R. GarthwaiteCambridge University Press, 1984.213 pp., $49.50

"Bakhtiyari," Gene Garthwaite notes, means bearer of good fortune. The term designates a tribe made up primarily of long-range pastoral nomads, but also including agricultural-pastoralists and sedentary villagers, and identifies a region in Iran that occupies the midpoint of the Zagros mountain chain. His thoughtful, judicious analysis (modestly characterized as a sketch) of the Bakhtiyari traces their evolution from obscure origins to national power, and then to lesser prominence within the national elite. In the course of his narrative, he shows how their economy and society adapted to the climate and requirements of survival in the central Zagros, where limited vegetation and other factors such as flock size profoundly influenced not only their biannual migration between pastures and agricultural fields, but ultimately (in conjunction with an ambivalent relationship with the central government) their political organization as well.

Following the emergence of a Bakhtiyari confederation in the late 19th century under the leadership of Husain Quli Khan I lkhani (who was strangled in 1882, probably under orders from the shah), the Bakhtiyari rose to national power, only to see their influence decline in the face of Riza Shah's creation of a national, unified, centralized state. Shahpour Bakhtiar, whose father was one of the khans executed by Riza Shah in 1934, is the most notable recent example of Bakhtiyari who sought to maintain their status not from a tribal base, but through wealth, social standing, and service. As Garthwaite notes, when rejected by Khomeini as a collaborator and Western liberal, Bakhtiar "was probably more at home in the liberal West than in 1979 Teheran- certainly more so than in the Bakhtiyari."

Professor Garthwaite's work serves as a careful corrective to analyses which, because of the cultural baggage their authors bring to the complex relationships among the Bakhtiyari khans and their tribesmen, have misperceived and romanticized the social and political structure of tribal society. The relationships in question, Garthwaite argues, far from being autocratic in nature, were dependent on reciprocal undertakings and mutual benefit. Such understandings were subject to constant change, however, because at virtually every level of tribal relations, from the family and camp, to subtribes, tribes, divisions, moieties, and the confederation itself, there were complex centrifugal and centripetal forces at work. These forces involved, on the one hand, competition for limited resources, and on the other, cooperation in order to survive. Thus, while the family served as the basis for group formation, it also carried the seeds of destruction because lack of a principle of primogeniture led to differences over inheritance and one's position within the family. Camps competed with each other for access to pastures and water resouces, but cooperated at the tribal level to ensure pasture rights. While tribes cooperated with each other in the face of external threats, they also competed for grants and favors from a central government that retained hostages, resettled tribal populations, and sought to divide tribal leaders. The Khans themselves, ever mindful of their reciprocal obligations, established networks of relations (economic, political, and blood) to assure support, mediated among and between tribes, collected various dues and taxes, maintained order, provided cavalry forces to central and provincial governments, adjudicated disputes and coordinated migration. Garthwaite's point is that, however constantly the Bakhtiyari redefined themselves, they did so within the parameters of persisting structures that can be understood.

Garthwaite's forte, in sifting through the sparse documentary sources almost 300 microfilmed pages of which are included in three microfiches attached to the end of the book-is a combination of imagination and common sense. He is very good at piecing together fragments of conflicting evidence, laying out interpretive problems, and making sound judgments about the most plausible explanations. He looks carefully at alternative possibilities, at what they may suggest or confirm, and in presenting what he calls an approximation of reality, provides a fascinating insight into the Bakhtiyari. This analysis of one of Iran's significant minorities is a valuable, original contribution to scholarship, and it is our good fortune that Gene Garthwaite has accomplished it with brevity and clarity.

BRUCE KUNIHOLM

Bruce Kuniholm '64 is Associate Professor ofHistory and Public Policy Studies at Duke University.