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SHAHSEVAN<\/strong> (\u0160\u0101hsevan), name of a number of tribal groups in various parts of northwestern Iran, notably in the Mo\u1e21\u0101n and Ardabil districts of eastern Azerbaijan and in the \u1e34araq\u0101n and \u1e34amsa districts between Zanj\u0101n and Qazvin. Most of the latter groups also originated in Mo\u1e21\u0101n (see DA\u0160T-e MO\u1e20\u0100N<\/a>), where Shahsevan ancestors were located during Safavid times.<\/p>\n The Shahsevan traditionally pursued a nomadic pastoral way of life, migrating between winter pastures near sea-level in Mo\u1e21\u0101n and summer quarters 100-200 km to the south on the Sabal\u0101n (or Savalan) and neighboring ranges, in the districts of Ardabil, Me\u0161kin, and Sar\u0101b. The nomads formed a minority of the population in this region, though, like the settled majority, whom they knew as T\u0101t, they were Shi\u02bfi Muslims, and spoke Turkish.<\/p>\n Unlike the Ba\u1e35ti\u0101ri<\/a> and the Qa\u0161q\u0101\u02bei<\/a> of the Zagros, the Shahsevan lived in an accessible and much-frequented frontier zone. The fertile Mo\u1e21\u0101n steppe, extensively irrigated in mediaeval times, was the site chosen by N\u0101der Shah Af\u0161\u0101r (in 1736) and \u0100\u1e21\u0101 Mo\u1e25ammad Khan Qajar (in 1796) for their coronations. Shahsevan summer pastures, surrounded by rich farmlands, lay between Ardabil, a historically important shrine city and trade centre, and Tabriz, capital of several past rulers. Grain, fruit, wool and meat from the region have long been widely marketed. Raw silk produced in the neighboring provinces of Gil\u0101n and Shirvan figured prominently in international trade passing through or near Shahsevan territory. Control of these resources was a major motivation for conquest: since the 16th century, Persian, Ottoman, and Russian and Soviet forces claimed or occupied Shahsevan territory on several occasions each. In such a location, Shahsevan relations with governments have taken a different course from those of the Zagros tribes.<\/p>\n Origins and history<\/em>. Shahsevan history since the early 18th century is fairly well documented, but their origins remain obscure. Turkic identity and culture are overwhelmingly dominant among them, though the ancestors of several component tribes were of Kurdish or other origins. Apart from their frontier location and history, they differ from other nomadic tribal groups in Iran in various aspects of their culture and social and economic organization. Most distinctive is their tent-hut, the hemispherical, felt-covered ala\u010d<\/em>\u0131<\/em>q<\/em>. This dwelling and other cultural features can be traced to the \u1e20ozz Turkic tribes of Central Asia that invaded Southwest Asia in the 11th century C.E.<\/p>\n The Shahsevan were a collection of tribal groups brought together in a confederacy some time between the 16th and the 18th centuries. Most discussions of the term Shahsevan refer to its original meaning as extreme personal loyalty and religious devotion to the Safavid kings.<\/p>\n By the 20th century, the Shahsevan had acquired three rather different versions of their origins. The best known is that they were a new tribe formed as part of the military and tribal policies of the Safavid rulers. This is based on a passage in Sir John Malcolm\u2019s History of Persia<\/em> (London, 1815, I, p. 556), to the effect that Shah Abbas I (1587-1629) formed a special composite tribe of his own under the name of Shahsevan, in order to counteract the turbulence of the rebellious qezelb\u0101\u0161<\/em> chiefs, who had helped his ancestor Shah Esm\u0101\u02bfil to found the Safavid dynasty a century earlier. Vladimir Minorsky, in his article \u201cSh\u0101h-sewan\u201d in EI<\/em>1, noted that \u201cthe known facts somewhat complicate Malcolm\u2019s story\u201d and that the references in contemporary Safavid chronicles did not amount to evidence that \u201ca single regularly constituted tribe was ever founded by Sh\u0101h \u02bfAbb\u0101s under the name of Sh\u0101h-sewan.\u201d In later readings of Malcolm\u2019s account, the Shahsevan appear as a personal militia, a royal guard, and there is some evidence for the existence of a military corps named Shahsevan in the mid-17th century.<\/p>\n Minorsky drew attention to the writings of several Russian officials who recorded the traditions of the Shahsevan of Mo\u1e21\u0101n with whom they were in contact during the 19th century. These traditions, which differ from but do not contradict Malcolm\u2019s story, vary in detail, but agree that Shahsevan ancestors came from Anatolia, led by one Y\u00fcns\u00fcr Pasha. They present the Shahsevan tribes as ruled by paramount chiefs (elbey\/ilbegi<\/em>) descended from Y\u00fcns\u00fcr Pasha, and as divided between chiefly beyzad\u00e4<\/em> (beg-z\u0101da<\/em>; descendants of the original immigrants) and commoners (hamp\u0101<\/em> or ray\u00e4t\/ra\u02bfiyat<\/em>). They refer to an original royal grant of pastures in Ardabil and Mo\u1e21\u0101n, and to the contemporary royal appointment of the chiefs. These legends, presumably originating with the chiefs, legitimate both their authority over the commoners and their control of the pastures, the most important resource for all their nomad followers. This writer heard similar legends in the 1960s from descendants of former elbeys<\/em>.<\/p>\n This second version of Shahsevan origins gave way in the 20th century to both the first version and a third, commonly articulated among the ordinary tribesmen and in modern writings on them. In the third version the Shahsevan are thirty-two tribes (otuz-iki<\/em> tayfa<\/em>\/\u1e6d\u0101yefa<\/em>), all of equal status, and no mention of paramount chiefs is made. The basis of this story is obscure, but it may refer to the presumed origin of the Shahsevan from among the 16th-17th-century qezelb\u0101\u0161 <\/em>tribes, which in some accounts also numbered thirty-two.<\/p>\n Safavid sources published to this date provide no historical evidence for Malcolm\u2019s story, which is based on a misreading of chronicle sources. Nevertheless, most historians, Iranian and foreign, have adopted it, and it has been assimilated through modern education into Iranian and even current Shahsevan mythology. Among recent writers on the Safavids, only a few acknowledge the doubts about Malcolm\u2019s story; some refrain from comment on Shahsevan origins, others, while referring to Minorsky\u2019s and sometimes this writer\u2019s investigations, ignore the conclusions and reproduce the old myth as historical fact (see Tapper, 1997, pt. I).<\/p>\n Neither the first nor the second versions of Shahsevan origins can be fully documented. Sixteenth-century sources do record tribal groups and individuals in the Mo\u1e21\u0101n region bearing the names of later Shahsevan component tribes. By the late 17th century the name Shahsevan, often as a military title in addition to qezelb\u0101\u0161<\/em> tribal names such as Af\u0161\u0101r and \u0160\u0101mlu (and \u0160\u0101mlu components such as Beydili\/Begdeli, Inall\u0131\/In\u0101llu, Ajirli\/Ajirlu), is associated with Mo\u1e21\u0101n and Ardabil. Other prominent tribes in the region were the qezelb\u0101\u0161 <\/em>Takile\/Tekeli, and the Kurdish \u0160aq\u0101qi and Mo\u1e21\u0101ni\/Mo\u1e21\u0101nlu. But there is no firm evidence of a unified Shahsevan tribe or confederacy as such until the following century.<\/p>\n In the 1720s, with the rapid fall of the Safavid dynasty to the Afghans at Isfahan, and Ottoman and Russian invasions in northwest Persia, for several crucial years Mo\u1e21\u0101n and Ardabil were at the meeting point of three empires. The tribal groups of this frontier region were thrust into a political role for which they would have been ill-prepared by decades of peace. Records for those years, the first that mention Shahsevan activities in any detail, depict them as loyal frontiersmen, struggling to resist the Ottoman invaders and to defend the Safavid shrine city of Ardabil, especially in the campaigns of 1726 and 1728. Ottoman armies crushed the \u0160aq\u0101qi in Me\u0161kin in autumn 1728, and then in early 1729 cornered the other tribes in Mo\u1e21\u0101n. Leaving the In\u0101llu and Af\u0161ar to surrender to the Ottomans, the Shahsevan and Mo\u1e21\u0101nlu crossed the Kura\/Kor river to Salyan to take refuge with the Russians, under the leadership of \u02bfAliqoli Khan Shahsevan, a local landowner.<\/p>\n When N\u0101der Shah Af\u0161\u0101r recovered the region in 1732, the Shahsevan and Mo\u1e21\u0101nlu returned to Iranian sovereignty. The \u0160aq\u0101qi, In\u0101llu and Af\u0161\u0101r who had been defeated by the Ottomans were among numerous tribes N\u0101der exiled to his home province, Khorasan. After his death (1747), the \u0160aq\u0101qi returned to settle around Mi\u0101na, Sar\u0101b, and \u1e34al\u1e35\u0101l, and the In\u0101llu and Af\u0161\u0101r (both now bearing the name Shahsevan too) to the \u1e34araq\u0101n, \u1e34amsa, and \u1e6c\u0101rom regions south and southeast of Ardabil. One of N\u0101der\u2019s assassins, Mus\u0101 Beg Shahsevan, was apparently from the Af\u0161\u0101r who settled in \u1e6c\u0101rom.<\/p>\n N\u0101der Shah seems to have formed the tribes remaining in Mo\u1e21\u0101n and Ardabil into a unified and centralized confederacy under Badr Khan Shahsevan, one of his generals in the Khorasan and Turkestan campaigns. Possibly son of \u02bfAliqoli Khan, Badr Khan is linked by the later traditions with Y\u00fcns\u00fcr Pasha, and his family, the Sar\u0131-\u1e35anbeyli\u00a0 (S\u0101ru-\u1e35\u0101nbeglu), probably came from the Urmia Af\u0161\u0101rs. Shahsevan chiefly tribes such as Qojabeyli, \u02bfIs\u0101l\u0131, Balabeyli, Mast-\u02bfAlibeyli, \u02bfAli-Babal\u0131, Polatl\u0131, Damir\u010dili, traced cousinship with the Sar\u0131-\u1e35\u0101nbeyli Af\u0161\u0101r. Many of the commoner tribes (such as Ajirli and Beydili) bear names indicating \u0160\u0101mlu origins.<\/p>\n In the turbulent decades after N\u0101der\u2019s death, Badr Khan\u2019s son (or brother?) Na\u017car \u02bfAli Khan Shahsevan governed the city and district of Ardabil. Shahsevan khans participated actively in the political rivalries and alliances of the time, involving the semi-independent neighboring khans of Qara Dagh, Qara Bagh, Qobba, Sar\u0101b and Gil\u0101n, the Af\u0161\u0101r, Afghan, Zand, and Qajar tribal rulers of Iran, and agents and forces of the Russian Empire. By 1800 the Sar\u0131-\u1e35\u0101nbeyli family had split, dividing the Shahsevan into two confederacies, associated with the districts of Ardabil and Me\u0161kin.<\/p>\n Under the early Qajars, the two wars with Russia raged across Shahsevan territory and resulted in the loss of the best part of their winter quarters in Mo\u1e21\u0101n, and considerable movements of tribes southwards. The khans of Ardabil, notably Na\u017car \u02bfAli Khan\u2019s (?) nephew Farajall\u0101h Khan and grandson, also called Na\u017car \u02bfAli Khan, despite deposition from the governorship in 1808, generally supported the Qajars; their cousins and rivals, the khans of Me\u0161kin, especially \u02bfA\u1e6d\u0101 Khan and his brother \u0160\u00fck\u00fcr (\u0160okrall\u0101h) Khan, eventually accommodated the Russian invaders.<\/p>\n For some decades after the Treaty of Turkmanchai (1828) Russia permitted Shahsevan nomads limited access to their former pasturelands in Mo\u1e21\u0101n, but they failed to observe the limitations. The Russians wished to develop their newly acquired territories, and for this and other more strategic reasons found Shahsevan disorder on the frontier a convenient excuse for bringing moral and political pressure to bear on the Persian government, insisting that they restrain or settle the \u201clawless\u201d nomads. Persian government policy towards the tribes varied from virtual abdication of authority to predatory punitive expeditions, and an attempt in 1860-61 at wholesale settlement.<\/p>\n The mid-19th century is the first period for which there is any detailed information on Shahsevan tribal society: the main sources are the reports of Russian officials, especially Mo\u1e21\u0101n frontier Commissioner I. A. Ogranovich and Tabriz Consul-general E. Krebel, though Keith Abbott, British Consul-general in Tabriz, is also informative.<\/p>\n By this time most of the Ardabil tribes, like their elbeys<\/em>, were already settled. Most of the Me\u0161kin tribes, however, despite the brief forced settlement of 1860-61 and the famine and bad winters of 1870-72, remained nomadic; but their elbeys <\/em>too, especially \u02bfA\u1e6d\u0101 Khan\u2019s son Far\u017ci Khan (between 1840 and 1883) and his son \u02bfAliqoli Khan (1883-1903), had settled bases and soon lost overall control of the nomads. Both elbey <\/em>families had marriage ties with the Qajar kings, and several members served at court or as military officers.<\/p>\n No longer a unified confederacy with a dynastic central leadership, Shahsevan tribal structure reformed on new principles. Weaker tribes clustered around a new elite of warrior chiefs of the Qojabeyli (notably Nurull\u0101h Bey), \u02bfIs\u0101lu, \u1e24\u0101j-\u1e35ojalu and Geyikli tribes in Me\u0161kin, and the Polatl\u0131 and Yort\u010di in Ardabil. A shifting pattern of rivalries and alliances extended into neighboring regions, involving the powerful chiefs of the Alarlu tribe of Ojarud, the \u0160atranlu (an offshoot of the \u0160aq\u0101qi) of \u1e34al\u1e35\u0101l, and the \u010calabianlu and \u1e24\u0101j-\u02bfAlilu of Qara Dagh.<\/p>\n Russia finally closed the Mo\u1e21\u0101n frontier to the Shahsevan in 1884. The winter pasturelands in Persia were redistributed among the tribes, but the Mo\u1e21\u0101n and Ardabil region and the nomads confined there underwent a drastic social and economic upheaval, whose causes were to be found not simply in the closure but also in the behavior of administrative officials. The Shahsevan, numbering over ten-thousand families, were virtually independent of central government for nearly four decades, known as khankhanl\u0131kh<\/em> or ashrarl\u0131kh<\/em>, the time of the independent khans or rebels. Although some, such as Mo\u1e21\u0101nlu, the largest tribe, pursued a pastoral life as best they could, for most nomads life was dominated by insecurity and increasing banditry and vendettas between the warriors of the chiefly retinues.<\/p>\n Russian officials give a detailed and depressing picture of the upheaval, without appreciating or admitting the degree to which their 19th-century rivalry with Britain was responsible for both the frontier situation and the abuses of the Persian administration. V. Markov, concerned only to justify Russian actions and their benefits to the inhabitants of Russian Mo\u1e21\u0101n, having narrated in detail the events leading up to the closure, does not consider its effects on the Persian side. L. N. Artamonov, however, conducted a military-geographical survey of the region in November 1889, a year after Markov, and was shocked at the poverty and oppression of the peasantry and the obvious distress and disorder suffered by the nomads as a result of the closure. In 1903, Colonel L. F. Tigranov of the Russian General Staff published an informative and perceptive account of the economic and social conditions of the Ardabil province and of the nomad and settled Shahsevan. The detailed reports of Artamonov and Tigranov, although clearly to an extent influenced by political bias, are corroborated by other sources, including accounts recorded by this writer among elderly Shahsevan in the early 1960s.<\/p>\n