'Persia and the Persian Question by the Hon. George Nathaniel Curzon, M.P.' [‎269] (340/748)

THE SOUTH-WESTEEN PEOVINCES 26^
winter), and yeilak (from yil, i.e. year), are Turkish words em
ployed for the tribal haunts at the two periods. The Persian
words garmsir (warm region) and sardsir (cold region) cover a
similar application. At the division of the seasons the nomads
may be encountered upon the march, their black goats'-hair tents,
as easily pitched as struck, dotting the slopes, and thousands of
sheep and goats heralding or encumbering the column. Even
at other times in almost every province of Persia, but particularly
in those which I now approach, the traveller off the beaten track
will alight upon their encampments, and may study in nineteenth
century duplicate the pastoral economy of the books of Genesis or
Job.
A perusal of the pages of this work will have shown that the
population of Persia is in no sense of a homogeneous description.
Foreign Placed as her territories have been in the track of
elements armies, they have been repeatedly overrun, and at times
held in long-enduring pawn. As the human tide has ebbed and
flowed, it has deposited large portions of its burden upon Persian
soil; and the mere spectacle of a country, owning an Iranian
majority among its people, an Arabian religion, and a Turkish
ruling dynasty, is enough to indicate a history of storm. It is
from the foreign elements thus imported into Persia, and there, so
to speak, precipitated and left, that the nomad portion of her
present population is chiefly, though not wholly, derived.
Eoughly speaking, the tribes of Persia 1 are susceptible of a
fourfold classification—Turks (i.e. offshoots of the great Turki or
Tribes of Turkoman or Tartar stock, not to be confused with the-
Persia Osmanli branch of the same root) ; Arabs, Beluchis, and
a great nameless class, sometimes described as Leks, by those who
defend their common Iranian origin, more commonly known by the
names of their various constituent elements, the principal of which
are the Kurds and Lurs, with the Feilis, Bakhtiaris, Mamasennis,
etc., as sub-divisions of the latter title. In a greater or less
1 Of the few existing accounts of the tribes of Persia, I can only cite the
following as in the least satisfactory: Sir J. Malcolm (1800-10), ITistori/, vol. ii*
cap. xxiii.; M. Jouannin in Dupr^'s Voyage en Perse (1808) ; J. P. Morier (1814-
15), Journal of the R.Gr.S., vol. vii. pp. 230-42 ; C. Hitter (1838-40), Die Erdhmde
ran Asien, vol. vi.; Sir J. Sheil (1840-50), Note to Lady Shell's Glimpses of Life;
Comte J. de Kochechouart (1865), Souvenirs, cap. iv.; and F. Spiegel, Eranisohe
AltertJivmshmde, vol. i. Ritter's is the most comprehensive account, and corre
sponds more nearly than the others to the status quo.