The social order in Iran, like many other Middle Eastern countries, was marked until well into the twentieth century by a tension between the central government and powerful, semi-independent chiefs of nomadic tribes. At the same time, the rulers themselves were either of tribal origins or dependent on tribal support – the Pahlavis (1925–79) were the first for nearly a millennium to be neither. Under the Pahlavi Shahs the major tribal chiefs were systematically stripped of their economic and political influence, but tribal loyalties and forms of social organization survived in many parts of the country, and indeed have continued relevance in the Islamic Republic.

In recent decades, the tribes of Iran have attracted the attention of both anthropologists and historians. Several book-length ethnographies and histories of individual tribal groups have been published, as have some broader historical and theoretical analyses of the tribe–state relation.

The present work, the fruit of both extensive documentary research and intensive fieldwork, attempts a synthesis of anthropological and historical approaches. It tells the story of one of the great tribal confederacies, the Shahsevan of Azarbaijan. The confederacy had ceased to exist by the middle of the twentieth century, and the changes that have now occurred are probably irreversible, but many thousands of Iranians still claim or acknowledge their identity as Shahsevan, many of them continue a pastoral way of life, and the component tribal groups persist.