Organization of the early Shahsevan

In the foregoing chapters, we have sought and examined evidence for the first appearance in their present habitat of the ancestors of the Shahsevan tribes of Moghan, and the first formation there of a recognizable tribal confederacy. The prey has been elusive, and the narrative has been at times dry, dense and complex. The materials have inevitably been of a dynastic and political nature, to do with administration, campaigns and rebellions. With the establishment of the confederacy in the region, finally, in the second half of the eighteenth century, we may attempt, in the absence as yet of any definite information, to imagine the social and economic circumstances of the Shahsevan peoples at the time. First we should summarize the political history we have traced.

Among the tribal names of groups and individuals reported in the Moghan-Ardabil region by the first quarter of the eighteenth century were the following:

• Tekelu/Takleh, Dulqadir/Delaqarda, Afshar, Shamlu (including Inallu, Ajirli, Beydili) are reported in or near Moghan. All these are names of former Qizilbash Turkoman confederacies, with known or suspected descendants among nineteenth-century Shahsevan. The original confederacies were all large and complex, with sections in many parts of Iran by this time. The sections in Moghan may have arrived with Esmaʿil Safavi as early as 1500, but they may not have come until long after 1600.