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Shāhsevan in ṣafavid Persia1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Richard Tapper
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Abstract

The Shāhsevan tribes of Persia are a heterogeneous collection of groups brought together in a confederation of that name some time between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries. The question of how and when this confederation was formed is something of a riddle, which arises from the following considerations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , June 1974 , pp. 321 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1974

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References

2 SirMalcolm, John, The history of Persia, London, 1815, 556, quoted belowGoogle Scholar.

3 Minorsky, V., ‘Shāh>sewan’, EI, iv, 1, 1934, 267–8Google Scholar; first published in French ed., 1926.

4 Minorsky, art. cit.; Rostopchin, F. B., ‘Zametki o Shakhsevenakh’, Sovetskaya Etnografiya, 1933, 3–4, 88–118Google Scholar; Balayan, B. P., ‘K voprosu ob obshchnosti etnogeneza Shakhseven i Kashkaytsev’, Voslokovedcheskiy sbornik, I, Yerevan, 1960, 331–77Google Scholar. I discuss Rostopchin's ideas in a later paper; on Balayan, see below.

5 Nikitine, Basil, ‘Les Afšārs d'Urumiyeh’, Journal Asiatique, coxiv, janvier–mars 1929, 122–3Google Scholar.

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7 Most recently, Sümer, Faruk, OǦuzlar (TürkmenUr), Ankara, 1967Google Scholar.

8 cf. the tīra in the case of the Bāṣirī, Kurds, Qashqā'ī, and other tribal groups.

9 Shaykh ṣafī died in 1334; after him came ṣadr al-Din (d. 1393), Sulṭān Khwāja 'Alī (d. 1429), Ibrāhīm (d. 1447), Junayd (d. 1460), Haydar (d. 1488), Sulṭān 'Alī (d. 1494) and his brother Ismā'īl (b. 1487), who became Shāh Ismā'īl I of Persia. On the rise of the ṣafavid dynasty see especially Glassen, Erika, Die frühen ṣafaviden nach Qāẓī Aḥinad Qumī, Freiburg, 1968Google Scholar; Hinz, Walter, Irans Aufstieg zum Nationalstaat im fünfzehnten Jahrhundert, Berlin, Leipzig, 1936CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Minorsky, V. (tr.), Tadhkirat ul-mulük, a manual of ṣafavid administration, London, 1943Google Scholar; Ross, B. Denison, ‘The early years of Shāh Ismā'īl, founder of the Safavi dynasty’, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1896, 2, 249–340Google Scholar; Sarwar, Ghulam, History of Shāh Ismā'īl Safawī, Aligarh, 1939Google Scholar; Savory, R. M., ‘The struggle for supremacy in Persia after the death of Tīmūr’, Der Islam, XL, 1, 1964, 35–65Google Scholar; Seddon, C. N. (ed. and tr.), A chronicle of the early Safawīs, being the Aḥsanu't-tawārīkh of Ḥasan-i Rūmlū, II (English translation), Baroda, 1934Google Scholar; Sohrweide, Hanna, ‘Der Sieg der ṣafaviden in Persien und seine Rückwirkungen auf die Schiiten Anatoliens im 16. Jahrhundert’, Der Islam, xli, 1965, 95–223Google Scholar.

10 Turkoman is the name used generally for the tribes descended from the Saljūlqid Ghuzz Turks. The name is also borne by one particular tribe, which I shall refer to as Turkmān, to avoid confusion.

11 Turkmān, Iskandar Beg Munshī, Tārīkh-i 'ālam-ārā-yi 'Abbāsī, ed. Afshar, Iraj, Tehran, 1334–6/1956–1957, 119–20Google Scholar. This work will be cited as 'Ālam-ārā.

12 Minorsky, , ‘Shāh-sewan’, 267Google Scholar.

13 Jalāl al-Din Muḥammad Munajjim Yazdi, Tāīikh-i 'Abbāsi, British Museum MS Add. 27241, n.d.; Kamāl Khān ibn Jalal Munajjim, Zubdat al-tawārīkh, Royal Asiatic Society MS P.56, dated 1088/1677; Vartabed Arakel de Tauriz, Livre d'histoires, transl. in Brosset, M., Collection d'historiens armeniens, I, St. Petersburg, 1874, 267–618Google Scholar; Glassen, op. cit.; Müller, Hans (ed. and tr.), Die Chronik Hulāṣat at-tawārih des Qāzī Aḥmad Qumī: der Abschnitt liber Schah 'Abbās I, Wiesbaden, 1964Google Scholar; Seddon, op. cit.; Shaykh ṣusayn ibn Abdāl Zāhidī, Silsilat ul-nasab-i Ṣafauīya, Iranschähr, ed., Berlin, 1924Google Scholar.

14 'Ālam-ārā, 299–300.

15 'Ālam-ārā, 34, 68.

16 Seddon, op. cit.

17 Bellan, L. L., Chah 'Abbas I, Paris, 1932Google Scholar, esp. introduction; Minorsky, , Tadhkirat ul-mulūk, 30Google Scholar; Falsafā, Naṣrullāh, Zindagānī-yi Shāh ‘Abbās-i avval, i, Tehran, 1332/1953, 169 ff.Google Scholar; Minorsky, V., ‘Persia: religion and history’, Iranica, Tehran, 1964, 252Google Scholar (originally published in von Grunebaum, G. E. (ed.), Unity and variety in Muslim civilization, Chicago, 1955, 183–201)Google Scholar; Lockhart, Laurence, The fall of the Ṣafavī dynasty, Cambridge, 1958, 20Google Scholar.

18 'Ālam-ārā,;382–3; Minorsky, , ‘Shāh-sewan’, 267Google Scholar.

19 See Minorsky, , Tadhkirai ul-mulūk, 16–19, 30–6Google Scholar; Loekhart, L., ‘The Persian army in the Safavid period’, Der Islam, xxxiv, 1959, 89–98Google Scholar; Röhrborn, K.-M., Provinzen mid Zentralgewalt Persiens im 16. und 17. Jahrhunderten, Berlin, 1966, 31–7, 44–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Malcolm, , op. cit., 556Google Scholar.

21 Khān, Kamāl, op. cit., fol. 69 a-bGoogle Scholar.

22 Krusinski, Père Tadeusz Juda, , S.J., Histoire de la derniire revolution de Perse, ii, Paris, 1728, 160–1Google Scholar; this is a recension by Père J. A. du Cerceau of Bechon's translation of Père Krusinski's memoirs. An anonymous English translation, The history of the revolution of Persia: taken from the memoirs of Father Krusinski, ii, London, 1728, 80–1Google Scholar, omits the words emphasized above. de Clairac, L.-A. de La Mamye, Histoire de Perse depuis le commencement de ce siècle, I, Paris, 1750, 317Google Scholar, paraphrases the passage; Hanway, Jonas, An historical account…the revolutions of Persia, in, London, 1763, 136–7Google Scholar, translates La Mamye de Clairac without acknowledgement.

23 Chelebi, Evliya (Evliya Efendi), Narrative of travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa in the seventeenth century, tr. from the Turkish by von Hammer, Bitter Joseph, II, London, 1850, 162Google Scholar.

24 'Ālam-ārā, 813, 1049; Muḥammad Ṭāhir Vaḥīd Qazvīnī, 'Abbās-nāma, ed. Dihqān, Ibrāhīm, Arak, 1329/1951, 109Google Scholar.

25 Minorsky, , Tadhkirat vl-mulūk, 12Google Scholar. On Minorsky's own evidence, his ‘Shah Tahmasp’ should read ‘Sulṭān Muḥammad Khudābanda‘.

26 Krusinski, , op. cit., 160–2Google Scholar.

27 Ogranovich, I. A., ‘Svedeniya o Shakhsevenakh’, Kavkazskiy Kalendar na 1871 god, pt. 2, Tiflis, 1870, 68–84Google Scholar; Radde, Gustav, Reisen an der persisch-russischen Grenze. Talysch und seine Bewohner, Leipzig, 1886Google Scholar; Markov, V., ‘Shakhseveni na Mugani. Istoriko-etnograficheskiy ocherk’, Zap. Kavk. Otd. Russk. Geogr. Obskch., xix, 1, 1890, 1–62Google Scholar. At this time the tribes were extremely turbulent, being notorious for their raiding activities across the Russian frontier, but they were still nominally within the control of two hereditary paramount chiefs (elbeǦi). Unfortunately none of the authors indicates the tribal affiliations of his sources, but more than likely they were from the ruling elbeǦi families or their collaterals, the beǦzada. Markov's main source appears to be a report compiled in 1879 by E. Krebel, Russian Consul-General in Tabriz at the time. Passages in Markov's account are identical with passages in Radde's, so we may assume that the latter's manuscript was also a copy of Krebel's report. There are, as will be shown, discrepancies between Radde's and Markov's versions of the traditions, and these may well be explained by revisions or annotations in either copy of Krebel's report, by either Ogranovich, Radde, or Markov, all of whom had first-hand acquaintance with the Shāhsevan. However, to judge from their accounts, none of the authors were familiar with any Oriental sources, and their knowledge of Persian history was rudimentary. Without knowing the identity of the informants, we cannot establish any relationship between discrepancies in the recorded traditions and differing claims to status on the part of different tribal groups; however, the general features of these traditions throw considerable light on Shāhsevan politico-economic organization in the nineteenth century.

28 Ogranovich gave the time of this immigration as early in the reign of Fath ‘Ali Shāh, about 1216/1801–2. His editor pointed out that the immediately preceding article in the same issue of Kavkazskiy Kalendar, von Seidlitz, N., ‘Etnograficheskiy ocherk Bakinskoy gubernii’, 50Google Scholar, quoted an account of the Shāhsevan in Mughān as early as 1728, when they became Russian subjects for a few years: Butkov, P. G., Materialy dlya novoy istorii Kavkaza s 1722 po 1803 god, I, St. Petersburg, 1869, 92Google Scholar.

29 In the following I reproduce transliterations of names (except for Yunsur Pāshā) employed by the authors, Ogranovich and Markov in Russian, Radde in German.

30 Radde gives the Germanized Russian ending -linzen for those tribes wintering at the time in Russian territory.

31 See p. 338, n. 39.

32 Tairov, M. Mehti and Pavlenko, P. A., Shakhseveniya, ed. Isayeva, F. M., Baku, 1922, 1Google Scholar; quoted by B. P. Balayan, art. cit., 345. Balayan does not quote any further, and I do not know what the authors report of the other branch, from ‘Irāq. Another source mentioned by Balayan is Ya. Shkinskiy, F. and Averyanov, P. I., Otchet o poyezdke po severnomu Azerbaydzhanu v hontse 1899 g., Tiflis, 1900Google Scholar.

33 Bāybūrdī, Ḥusayn, Tārīkh-i Arasbārān, Tehran, 1341/1962, 102Google Scholar.

34 Khān Muḥammad Ustājlū, Shāh Ismā'īl's brother-in-law.

35 Their protector Khān Muḥammad, one of the Shāh's generals, was himself killed in the battle; see Sarwar, , op. cit., 53Google Scholar.

36 For instance, among Ismā'il II's supporters, who according to the 'Ālam-ārā called them-selves shāhisevan; see above, p. 325. Note also my informant's reference to Khān Muḥammad Ustājlū as an Afshar chief; Ustājlū is usually reckoned a clan of the Shāmlū tribe by origin; in any case, we shall have reason to connect both Afshār and Shāmlū with the Shāhsevan. As for Shāh Quli Beg, this name is among the commonest for the Qizilbash chiefs, and there is no reason to connect any particular one of those mentioned in the sources with the presumed Shāhsevan ancestor. It is probably not a significant coincidence that names figuring in the traditions often have the same literal meaning, e.g. Shāh Quli ‘slave of the Shāh’ or 'of ‘Ali’; Band ‘Ali’ slave of ‘Ali’; Allāh Quli ‘slave of God’.

37 I was told by the chief of Geyiklü, a large tribe which did not claim common descent with the former elbeǦis, that in Shāh 'Abbas's time three brothers came to Persia: the eldest, Qoja Beg, was the ancestor of the Mughān Shāhsevan chiefs; the second, Yunsur Pāshā, was the ancestor of the tribes of Qarādāgh; the third, ‘Alī Mardān, went south and founded the Qashqā'ī confederation in Fars. I was also told of the existence of a MS history of the Shāhsevan, in Ottoman Turkish, a copy of which was promised me on several occasions; however, I was not fortunate enough to be allowed to examine this elusive work, and am not even convinced of its existence.

38 Nikitine, B., ‘Les Afšārs’, 73, 105Google Scholar; Minorsky, V., ‘Urmiya’, El, iv, 2, 1934, 1034Google Scholar; Sümer, F., OǦuzlar, 284Google Scholar.

39 The Qurt Beg group mentioned in both Badrie's and Markov's accounts (see above) may also be of Afshār origins. Sümer mentions no Turkoman tribal group called Qurtbeglū, but one group called KutbeǦili, an Afshār clan in south-east Anatolia in the fifteenth century; nothing is known of their later fate, but perhaps they came to Persia with the Imānlū Afshārs and the Ināllū, with both of whom they are associated; Sümer, , op. cit., 263, 268Google Scholar. In recent years there has been a large tribe of Qurtbeglū Shāhsevan in the Khamsa region. That they may be the descendants of Radde's and Markov's Qurt Beg group is indicated by the discrepancies in the two accounts: Markov states that certain groups separated from Qurt Beg's tribe and went to live on the Aras river, while Kadde gives their destination as ‘Arak’, sc. ‘Irāq-i ‘Ajam, a large area of western Persia sometimes taken to include the Khamsa region. Movement to the Aras would not have meant much of a separation from Qurt Beg's tribe, if the latter was with Yunsur Pāshā, in Mughān, which is after all bounded by the Aras; and would thus hardly warrant special mention. For this reason, Radde's ‘Arak’ seems more likely, except for the fact that the tribes which both sources list as having left Qurt Beg—Ṭālish Mikā'illū, Khalifalü, Mughānlū, Udulū, Murādlū, Zargar—are all now found among the Shāhsevan of Mughān; i.e. they at any rate did not move to ‘Irāq. The puzzle remains.

40 The forty or so ‘commoner’ tribes are generally social units of some continuity, but in few of them do all the component sections claim common descent or origin, and there is some-times documentary evidence for their heterogeneity. The ‘noble’ tribes themselves include subordinate sections of different origins.

41 Tairov and Pavlenko, op. cit., quoted in Balayan, , art. cit., 369Google Scholar.

42 1 am grateful to Mr. A. H. Morton for the information that a vaqfnāma concerning properties in Mishkīn and Mughān belonging to one Malik Mirzā. Beg ibn Sayfal Beg Mughānī, is copied in the Ṣarīḥ al-milk, original dated 977/1570, Tehran National Library MS fa' 2734, pp. 194–5. The original document, badly damaged, is in the chīnī-Khāna of the Ardabīl shrine, No. 403 in Mr. Morton's inventory. Travelling through the Mughān steppe south of the Kur in 1623, K. F. Kotov met nomads called MughānI living in felt tents, see Khozheniye kuptsa Fedota Kotova v Persiyu, ed. Kuznetsov, A. A., Moscow, 1958, 36, 73Google Scholar.

43 See below, p. 352. Like the Mughānlū, the Arāllū/Alārlū tribe too has only just been accepted into the number of the Shāhsevan; they preserve traditions of comparative autochthony in the Ujārūd-Ṭālish region. The Lärīlū are based on the village of Lāri/Lārūd, as the Khīaulū are on Khīau/Mishkinshahr. Yürtchi are said to have had a special role choosing Nadir Shāh's camp-site(yurt), v. Radde, , op. cit., 442Google Scholar, but cf. Markov, , art. cit., 13Google Scholar. Others of the present tribes (Khusraulū, Ja'farlū) have plausible stories of comparatively recent advent to the region. The names of others (Shaykhlū, Sayyidler, ‘Arablū, Qurtlar, Ṭālish-Mikā'illū) suggest separate, non-Turkic origins, though these may well have been in the Shāhsevan confederation since its formation.

44 Dupré, A., Voyages en Perse fait dans les années 1807, 1808, et 1809, II, Paris, 1818, 461Google Scholar; SirBrydges, Harford Jones, The dynasty of the Kajars, London, 1833, 389Google Scholar; Lady (M. L.) Sheil, , Glimpses of life and manners in Persia, London, 1856, 346Google Scholar.

45 Sümer, , OǦuzlar, esp. 292–304Google Scholar.

46 'Ālam-ārā, 1085.

47 Sümer, , OǦuzlar, 302–4Google Scholar.

48 Some of the Shāmlū, at least, became part of the Afshār tribe by the beginning of the eighteenth century; Lambton, A. K. S., ‘Īlāt’, El, second ed., iii, 1102Google Scholar. A century later James Morier reports that one of the two Afshār clans was Shāmlū; ‘Some account of the íliyáts, or wandering tribes of Persia, obtained in the years 1814 and 1815’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, iii, 1837, 233Google Scholar.

49 From Ṣafavid times until the development of Khīau/MishkīnShahr in the present century, the largest villages in this tract were Garmi, Barzand, and Lārūd, each with a population probably not exceeding 2,000 souls, not large enough ever to have provided a governor's residence.

50 Minoraky, , Tadhkirat vl-mulūk, 188Google Scholar; also Spuler, Bertold, The Muslim world, ii: the Mongol period, tr. by Bagley, F. R. C., Leiden, 1960, 25Google Scholar.

51 Barbaro and Contarini describe nomad life of the Turkomans at the time; indeed Barbara details the construction of a Turkoman tent in north-east Ādharbāyjān apparently identical to the present Shāhsevan alaçiǦ; Barbara, J. and Contarini, A., Travels to Tana and Persia, tr. by Thomas, W. and Roy, S. A., ed. by Lord Stanley of Alderley (Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, [First Series,] 49), London, 1873Google Scholar.

52 Minorsky, , Tadhkiral ul-mulūk, 188Google Scholar.

53 Chardin, Jean, Voyages du Chevalier Chardin en Perse, et avires lieux de l'Orient, ed. Langles, , v, Paris, 1811, 300 ffGoogle Scholar. All these characteristics they share with present Shāhsevan tribes.

54 Lambton, , ‘Īlāt’, 1101Google Scholar.

55 Seddon, , op. cit., I (Persian text), 295–6Google Scholar. These were farming communities, with lands irrigated by canals from the Kur, but probably including the steppe pastures of Mughān.

56 See Dorn, B., Geschichte Shirwans, pt. ii of Beiträge zur Geschichte der Kaukasischen Länder und Vōlker, St. Petersburg, 1840, also Leipzig, 1967Google Scholar. Anthony Jenkinson noted nomadic pastoralists in Mughān in 1562, but does not name them: Early voyages and travels to Russia and Persia (Works issued by the Hakluyt Society, [First Series,] 72–3), I, London, 1885–1886, 128–9Google Scholar. They may have been Takalū, or tribal followers of the governor of Shīrvān, ‘Abdullāh Khān Ustājlū.

57 'Ālam-ārā, 529–30, and see above; Balayan, , art. cit., 338, 360Google Scholar.

58 'Ālam-ārā, 322, 340, 529.

59 See below, p. 348. We hear of Musayyib Khān Takalū accompanying Muḥammad Khān Turkmān from Ṭālish and Ardabīl to court at the very beginning of Shāh 'Abbas's reign (1587); Müller, , op. cit., 30Google Scholar. In the nineteenth century, separate groups of Takalū were to be found dispersed over Kussian Ādharbāyjān, see Ismail-zade, D. I., ‘Iz istorii kochevogo khozyaystva Azerbaydzhana pervoy polovini xix v.’, Istoricheskiy Zapiski, 1960, 125 and map IGoogle Scholar.

60 Rohrborn, , op. cit., 7Google Scholar.

61 Or Mahdī Qulī Khān Chāūshlū Ustājlū, see Rohrborn, , op. cit., 35Google Scholar.

62 See Martin, B. G., ‘Seven Ṣafawid documents from Azarbayjan’, in Stern, S. M. (ed.), Documents from Islamic chanceries, first series, Oxford, [1966], 177Google Scholar; Husayn, Shaykh, op. cit., 104–5Google Scholar. On soyūrghāl, hereditary land-grants with exemptions from taxes, see Minorsky, V., ‘A soyūrghāl of Qasim b. Jahangir Aq-qoyunlu’, BSOS, ix, 4, 1939, 927–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lambton, A. K. S., Landlord and peasant in Persia, Oxford, 1953, 115 ffGoogle Scholar. Shāh ‘Abbās suspended the soyūrghāls of Ādharbāyjān in 1009/1599–1600, but was eventually obliged to reverse this, see Martin, , art. cit., 205–6Google Scholar.

63 'Ālam-ārā, 670 ff. This venture failed, and when Shīrvān was recovered in 1607, it was the same Dhū'lfiqār Khān Qarāmānlū who became governor-general.

64 'Ālam-ārā, 442.

65 Balayan, , art. cit., 346Google Scholar, finds it unlikely that recent immigrants from Ottoman territory, such as the Shāhsevan tribes claim to have been, would have been entrusted with the defence of any frontier region against their former countrymen, his implication being that either the Shāhsevan did not come from Anatolia, or they did not arrive in north-east Ādharbāyjān before 1600. He forgets the religious factor: a declaration of shāhisevanī included a conversion from Sunnī or Christian to Shī'ī affiliations, if the immigrants were not already Shī'ī before they arrived. In many cases, newcomers had left Sunni domains and ‘become Shāhsevan’ just because, as Shī'īs, they were being persecuted. In other words, it would have been quite logical to entrust the defence of north-east Ādharbāyjān, during Ottoman occupation of neighbouring districts, to loyal shāhisevanān, devoted adherents of the Shi'a sect and the Ṣafavi family, who would be fanatical in their defence of the shrine-city and their resistance to the hated Sunni Ottomans. However, there is no indication other than the above in the 'Ālam-ārā, that people known as Shāhsevan were especially introduced into the region at this time.

66 de Tauriz, Vartabed Arakel, op. cit., 285–6, 328–9Google Scholar.

67 'Ālam-ārā, 771–82, and see above, p. 328. On the Jalālīs see Sümer, , op. cit., 185 ff.Google Scholar, and Mustafa AkdaǦ, Celâlî Isyanlan, Ankara, 1963. Balayan, art. cit., calls the Jalālī revolt a ‘peasant movement'.

68 'Ālam-ārā, 657. It is tempting to connect these Otūz-ākā ‘Thirty-two’ with the Shāhsevan of Mughān, who nowadays state it as dogma that they have always consisted of 32 tribes. There is a stock phrase: otuz-iki Shahsävän-dä, ‘throughout the Shāhsevan’. However, the Otūz-īkī tribe has persisted until recently in Qarābāgh with no close connexion with the Shāhsevan. Besides, the number 32 seems to have almost the same proverbial value as the number 40; apart from the Otūz-īkī and the Mughān Shāhsevan, the Qizilbāsh confederation itself is said to have comprised 32 tribes, see Strange, G. Le (ed. and tr.), Don Juan of Persia, a Shiah Catholic, 1560–1604, London, 1926, 45Google Scholar. According to Minorsky, ‘the opposite number of the Otuz-iki were the Yigirmi-dört, i.e. the Twenty-Four Kurdish tribes of Qarābāgh’, Tadhkirat ul-mulūk, 167. The Yigirmi-dort are associated with, or part of, the Qajars of Qarābāgh, while the Otūz-īkī are associated with, or part of, the Javanshir tribe, see 'Ālam-ārā, 857, 1085. On the Javanshlrs, see Mirzā, Qarābāghi, Jamāl Javānshīr, Tārīkh-i Qarābāgh, Baku, 1959Google Scholar; and Javanshir, Ähmādbāy, QarabaǦ KhanliǦmn siyasi vāziyyätinä dair, ed. Shükürzadä, A. B., Baku, 1961Google Scholar.

69 'Ālam-ārā, 648–9; see also, ibid., 416–17, 643.

70 'Ālam-ārā, 648.

71 'Ālam-ārā, 782, 797, 1046, 1087. Sümer, , op. cit., 152Google Scholar, referring to his forthcoming study of the role of the Turks in the Safavid state, writes that the Jerid-Sil-supur came from the Dulqadirli district of Anatolia, whence came also the Qizilbash tribes of Dulqadir(lü), Shāmlū, and Īmānlū Afshār. A MS of the 'Ālam-ārā used by Petrushevskiy differs from the published version in the passage quoted above, adding that the Sil-supur were appointed land for settlement (yūrt ū maqām) in the Sāva district; Petrushevskiy, I. P., Ocherki po istorii feodalnykh otnosheniy v Azerbaydzhane i Armenii v xvi-nachale xix vv., Leningrad, 1949, 96Google Scholar. Balayan is led by this, by his former assumptions concerning the population of Mughān, and by confusing the qorchī with the qullār, to conclude that the Shāhsevan tribal organization was already in existence by this date (1604), and that it was now overflowing from the Mughān-Ardabīl region; art. cit., 347–8.

72 'Ālam-ārā, 1085; Petrushevskiy, , op. cit., 131Google Scholar. In Shīrvān, Dhū'lfiqār Khān Qarāmānlū was followed as governor-general by a number of ghulāms, until in 1635, under ‘Abbās's successor Shāh Safi, the post went to ‘Arab Khān of the Shāmlū tribe, a man of humble origins from Sarab. Other notables in Shirvan in the early seventeenth century came from the Alpaut and Khinislii tribes. Under Shāh ‘Abbās the governors of the neighbouring districts of Qarādāgh and Arasbārān seem regularly to have been drawn from the local tribes of Qarādāghlu and Bāybūrdlū, whose descendants remain there today; 'ĀAlamāaā, 1086.

73 See above, p. 338.

74 Balayan, , art. cit., 341, 347, 352Google Scholar.

75 de Tauriz, Vartabed Arakel, op. cit., 290Google Scholar.

76 Olearius, Adam, The voyages and travells of the ambassadors, translated by Davies, John, second ed., corrected, London, 1669, 168Google Scholar.

77 ibid., 177, 180.

78 ibid., 295.

79 Husayn, Shaykh, op. cit., 49Google Scholar.

80 Togan, Z. V., ‘Azerbaycan’, Islam ansiklopedisi, ii. 1943, 92Google Scholar, considers that Hatzikasilu is the present-day Shāhsevan ta'ifa Ḥajji-Khāajaūu/Khojalū, but I find this far-fetched.

81 Possibly Armaīi(ūu) = Armenians?

82 Olearius, , op. cit., 295Google Scholar. In early spring 1608, the Ottoman governor of Baghdad declared himself Shāhisevan and sent an envoy to Shāh 'Abbas to invite him to take over the city; the envoy was one Bayram Khān Takalū, who had been among the Takalū Khāns who fled earlier from Persia to Baghdad (see above, p. 325). The Shāh accepted the invitation, but before his Qizilbash army had time to reach Baghdad, an Ottoman army attacked the city, and the governor changed his mind. Meanwhile the Jalālīs arrived in Persia (see above, p. 345), and further plans for Baghdad were postponed; 'Ālam-ārā, 764–5. Bayram Khān Takalū, who presumably remained in Persia, was perhaps sent to Mughān on this occasion, though the story in the 'Ālam-ārā hardly amounts to documentation for that which Olearius tells. We are left wondering, was it Olearius's Persian escort, or the tribesmen themselves, who told him of the latters' origins; no doubt his ‘particular Treatise’ could tell us more.

83 Munshi, Iskandar Beg, Dhayl-i Tāīikh-i ‘ālam-āā-yi ‘Abbāsī, ed. Khwansari, Suhayl, Tehran, 1317/1938, 34Google Scholar.

84 Tavernier, Jean Baptiste, The six voyages of John Baptista Tavernier through Turky into Persia and the East-Indies, transl. by Philips, J., I, London, 1678, 162Google Scholar. This account is also strangely similar to that in the 'Ālam-ārā, of the reception of the Jalali chiefs some 60 years earlier, see above, pp. 328, 345.

85 I am grateful to Mr. A. H. Morton for this reference. The document is No. 397 in his inventory.

86 Ṣariḥ al-milk, Tehran National Library MS fa' 2734, pp. 189, 366. This MS, dated 1115/1703, appears to be a copy of MS 3719 in the Iran Bastan Museum; MS 3718 in the same library seems to be the original, dated 977/1570, and is without these marginal notes. MS 3719 was entered in the Safavid Royal Library in 1080/1669–70, and the note referring to Takla and Shāhsevan could have been added at any time before then. I am indebted to Mr. Morton for the above information.

87 Olearius, , op. cit., 177, 180Google Scholar; Qazvīnī, Muḥammad Ṭāhir Vaḥīd, op. cit., 109, 216Google Scholar; Rohrborn, op. cit., ch. iii.

88 Dānish-Pazhūh, M. Taqī, ‘Dastūr al-muūuk-i Mirzā Rafi'a’, Majalla-yi āanishkada-yi Adabīāat va ‘Uūum-iĪIssdīi, [11] 1968, 62–93Google Scholar; Lambton, , ‘Ilāt’, 1102Google Scholar.

89 Tadhkirat ul-mulūk, 101, 165. These must have been of some extent, to judge from the relatively high revenue assessment. Apart from the ancient canal system restored by Timfir in 1401, which may or may not have still been operating, in 1700 a new canal from the Aras was constructed in Mughān by order of the Khān; according to de Bruin, the settlements there were known as ‘Anhaer’, i.e.anhār; de Bruin, Cornells, Travels into Muscovy, Persia and divers parts of the East-Indies, iv, London, 1759, 12Google Scholar.

90 Struys, Jean, Les voyages, Amsterdam, 1681, 276Google Scholar.

91 Maze, Père de la, ‘Journal du voyage…de Chamakie a Ispahan’, in Nouveaux me'moires des missions de la Compagnie de Jesus dans le Levant, in, Paris, 1723, 409Google Scholar.

92 Bāaybūrīi, Ḥusayn, ‘Panj farmān-i tārīkīi’, Bar-rasī-hā-yi Tārīkhī, iv, 2–3,1348/1969, 67–75Google Scholar.

93 See Sümer, , op. cit., 174, 191, 302 ff.Google Scholar; e.g. in 1609 Qaāan Sulṭān Begdilū and Imām Quli Ajirūu co-operated in dealings with the Jalālīs, 'Ālāmāād, 800. In the military forces of the later Safavids there was a special corps of gorchī-yi ajirlū, ‘with functions similar to those of a gendarmerie’, Minorsky, , Tadhkirat ul-muluk, 51, 117Google Scholar, cf. Chardin, , op. cit., vii, 421Google Scholar. In the nineteenth century, Begdilu and Ajirlu are found together in Khalajistān, Abbott, K. E., ‘Geographical notes, taken during a journey in Persia in 1849 and 1850’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, xxv, 1855, 6Google Scholar.

94 De Bruin, op. cit.; John Bell of Antermony, ‘A journey from St. Petersburg in Bussia to Ispahan in Persia’, in Travels from St. Petersburg in Russia to diverse parts of Asia, London, 1764, 70Google Scholar. One might infer from these two references that the prosperity of the Mughān nomads had increased since the time when Olearius and Strays observed them.

95 Volinskiy, A., in Zevakin, E., ‘Azerbaydzhan v nachale xvm veka’, Izv. Obshchestva Obsledovaniya i Izucheniya Azerbaydzhana, 8, 1929, 13Google Scholar; quoted by Abdurakhmanov, A. A., Azerbaydzhan vo vzaimootnosheniyakh Rossi, Turtsii i Irana v pervoy polovine xvm v., Baku, 1964, 17Google Scholar. Volinskiy's mission returned through the area in 1717–18.

96 Kazim, Muḥammad, Vazir of Marv, Nāma-yi 'ālam-ārd-yi Nādirī, introd. by Miklukho-Maklaya, N. D., i, Moscow, 1960, fol. 16aGoogle Scholar. Manṣür Khān returned to Ādharbāyjān, where he was involved in disturbances and executed in 1734; ibid., I, fol. 277b. Lockhart and Minorsky both refer to him as Manṣūr Khān Shāhsavan; Lockhart, L., The fall of the Ṣafavī dynasty, 97Google Scholar; Minorsky, , Tadhkirat ul-mūluk, 10Google Scholar.

97 Tadhkirat ul-mulūk, 100.

98 von Hammer-Purgstall, J., Histoire de VEmpire Ottoman depuis son origine jusqu'à nos jours, transl. from the German by Hellert, J.-J., xiv, Paris, 1839, 149, 154Google Scholar. Hammer refers to Chelebizadeh. At this time a survey of population an d lands was mad e for th e city and province of Ardabīl, a copy of which is preserved in th e Basvekalet Arsivi, Istanbul, see R. Frye, ‘Ardabīl’, El, second ed., I, but I have unfortunately been unable to consult it.

99 Hammer, , op. cit., 176–7Google Scholar.

100 Hammer, , op. cit., 178Google Scholar. The text reads ‘Enballou’, but I take this to be a misreading of Ināllū. Cf. Gärber, J. G., ‘Naehrichten, von denen an der westlichen Seite der Caspischen See… befindlichen Volkern und Landschaften,… in dem Jahre 1728’, in Muller, G. F., Sammlung russischer Oeschichte, iv, St. Petersburg, 1760, 137Google Scholar.

101 Refik, Ahmet, Anadolu'da Türk Asiretleri (966–1200), Istanbul, 1930, 183Google Scholar. See also Minorsky, V., ‘Aynallu/Inallu’, Rocznik Orientalisticny, xvii, 1951–1952, (pub.) 1953, 1–11Google Scholar.

102 Garber, , art. oit., 146–7Google Scholar.

103 I infer the last from their known presence in the region a century later, and from their usual association with Īnāllū and Ajirlii within the Shāmlū Qizilbāsh tribe.

104 e.g. Struys, , op. cit., 276–8Google Scholar, and de Bruin, , op. cit., iv, 13–14 and v, 206–9Google Scholar, report bands of robbers in the region, and cf. Volinskiy's account of the revolt in Mughān, above, p. 351.

105 Only Chardin (above, p. 342) mentions that the Turkoman tribes reared sheep for sale, implying an economy similar to that of the Shāhsevan today, but differing from that of the Bāsirī tribesmen of the Khamsa confederacy, described by Barth, Fredrik in Nomads of south Persia, London, 1961Google Scholar, as rearing their sheep for skins and milk produce rather than for meat.

106 Ahar was already, and has been ever since, within the sphere of the tribes inhabiting Qarādāgh.