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Turanian Nomadism and Iranian Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

John Masson Smith Jr.
John Masson Smith Jr.*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

The last millenium of Iranian history has been what might best be called the “Turanian period,” a time of Turkish and Mongol rule and nomad domination. It is a period viewed by Iranians and most students of Iranian history with mixed, largely negative, feelings that reflect the experience and writings of the conquered peoples. The experience of the Turanians tends to be disregarded, only in part because they wrote very little about it. This essay considers the nature and some of the experience of the conquering Turanian nomad society.

In discussing nomadism it is important to dispose of some perhaps tacit assumptions of cultural bias. The nomad should not be viewed as a mere vagabond or vagrant. He noves purposefully and he is far from lacking means of support, although they may be hidden over the hill or around the bend in the road.

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 1-4: State and Society in Iran , 1978 , pp. 57 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Association For Iranian Studies, Inc 1978

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References

Notes

1. Mongol Journeys (New York, 1941), p. 253.Google Scholar Lattimore had in mind some three to five sheep per family, albeit augmented by “a few handfuls of millet and a bit of cheese” (p. 252).

2. Barth, Fredrik Nomads of South Persia (London, 1961), p. 16Google Scholar; Vreeland, H. H. Mongol Community and Kinship Structure (New Haven, 1954), p. 31.Google Scholar

3. Smith, J. M. Jr. “Mongol and Nomadic Taxation,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, 30 (1970), pp. 46-85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Barth, Nomads of South Persia, p. 17.

5. Ibid. For milk production, see Bates, Daniel Nomads and Farmers (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology Anthropological Papers No. 52, 1973), pp. 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar (fig. 3), 12-20, 156. The 7,500 liters works out to about 22 quarts per family per day--or would if the 5 to 7 month lactations of the sheep could be scheduled to provide a year-round supply.

6. Their evidence is re-presented and criticized by Bawden, C. R. in The Modern History of Mongolia (New York and Washington, 1968), pp. 88-90Google Scholar, 150; he also considers the tax rate excessive, although the problem is not one of rates but of collection from inadequate herds. See also the History of the Mongolian People's Republic, ed. Guber, A. A. et al. (Moscow, 1973), pp. 147-149.Google Scholar

7. Keddie, N. R. “The Iranian Village before and after Land Reform,” Journal of Contemporary History, 3 (1968), pp. 69-91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Barth, Nomads of South Persia, p. 17.

9. Ibid., pp. 115-116.

10. Keddie, “Iranian Village before and after Land Reform.“

11. Persian Wars, IV, 46.

12. Irons, William The Yomut Turkmen (Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropology Anthropological Papers No. 58, 1975), pp. 2, 71-73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13. Lattimore noted these advantages in Mongol Journeys, pp. 133-134; I have discussed the division of labor and the militarization of the whole adult male nomad population in “Mongol Manpower and Persian Population,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 18 (1975), pp. 271-99CrossRefGoogle Scholar; the quotation from Marco Polo is from the Penguin edition of The Travels (1958), p. 98.

14. The social and political cost of knights in Western Europe is well known. Cavalry was originally provided by the wealthier classes in ancient Greece and Rome, and “horseman” remained an upper-class title even after the arm became obsolete, as also in the West later.

15. Vreeland, Mongol Community, pp. 34-35.

16. Barth, Nomads of South Persia, p. 25.

17. The nomads studied by Bates camped in groups of from 2 to 20 families (Nomads and Farmers, p. 121); Irons’ Turkmen 2 to 10 (Yomut Turkmen, p. 46); the Kalmuk Mongols of the Volga, who have one of the highest population densities recorded for a nomad people, 7 per sq. km. (compare 48.3/sq. km. for the sedentary Ferghana region in Central Asia), camp in groups of from 3 to 12 families (Krader, L. “Ecology of Central Asian Pastoralism,” Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 11 [1955], pp. 301-326CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem, Social Organization of the Mongol-Turkic Pastoral Nomads [The Hague, 1963], pp. 133-134Google Scholar, 148).

18. Barth (Nomads of South Persia) provides the very useful definition of a tribe as a political association centered on a chief, and differentiates this kind of organization clearly from the other sort, the patrilineal descent group, commonly used by nomads. Without an understanding of these organizational principles and the differentiation between them it is difficult to understand (among other things) the elasticity and ethnic heterogeneity of tribalism that produced Mongol armies composed of Mongols, Turks, and Tunguses, Akkoyunlu forces of Turks and Kurds, or, for that matter, the Persian-Turkish-Arab Basseri.

19. Bosworth, C. E. The Ghaznavids (Edinburgh, 1963), pp. 126-128Google Scholar, 219-226, 241-251. See also The Cambridge History of Iran, V, The Saljug and Mongol Periods (Cambridge, 1968), pp. 15-22.Google Scholar

20. The difficulty of campaigning in the Levant with forces relying on nomadic logistics is reflected in the awkward and unsuccessful strategy forced by these logistics upon the Mongols in their many campaigns against Syria; see Cambridge History, pp. 350-352, 361-364, 387-395, 403.

21. al-Mulk, Nizam The Book of Government, Darke, H. trans. (London, 1960), p. 105.Google Scholar

22. Seljuk money consisted mostly of gold pieces that were not standardized by weight: the Catalogue of Oriental Coins in the British Museum, Vols. III (1877)Google Scholar and IX (1889) lists 28 gold, 2 silver, and no copper coins o the Great Seljuks. On the lack of weight standard see Plunkett, F. and Smith, J. M. Jr. “Gold Money in Mongol Iran,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 11 (1968), pp. 275-297.Google Scholar

23. Succession struggles are described in The Cambridge History, pp. 58, 88-89; the defeat of Sanjar, pp. 152-153.

24. Cahen, C. Pre-Ottoman Turkey (London, 1968), p. 33Google Scholar. A. K. S. Lambton, “Iran,” Encyclopaedia of Islam2.

25. John of Piano Carpini, History of the Mongols, in Dawson, C. ed., Mission to Asia (New York, 1966), p. 25.Google Scholar John's information was collected during 1246, nineteen years after the death of Chingis.

26. Smith, “Mongol Manpower,“

27. Quoted from Baihaki by Bosworth in Ghaznavids, p. 254.

28. I have discussed the overpopulation problem in “Mongol Manpower” and taxes in “Mongol and Nomadic Taxation.” See Cambridge History, pp. 522-537.

29. The Mongols based six tümens in Azerbaijan, according to Georgian sources (Brosset, M. F. Histoire de la Géorgie, Vol. I [St. Petersburg, 1849], pp. 511Google Scholar, 539), and of these one would have belonged to the sovereign, who would have provided supplementary supplies out of his own resources. The other five probably benefited from the “military fief-holds“/ikta˓s in the Pishkin region of Azerbaijan mentioned by Hamdullah Mustawfi Qazwini in The Geographical Part of the Nuzhat al-Qulub, Le Strange, G. ed. and trans., Vol. I, text (Leiden and London, 1915), pp. 82-83Google Scholar; and Vol. II, trans. (Leiden and London, 1919), p. 85.

30. Smith, “Mongol Manpower“; al-Ahri, Abu Bakr Tarikh-i Shaikh Uwais, Van Loon, J. B. ed. and trans. (S'Gravenhage, 1954), text, pp. 171-173Google Scholar; trans., pp. 71-73.

31. R. M. Savory, “Djunayd,” Encyclopedia of Islam2.

32. Lindner, R. P. “Ottoman Government and Nomad Society, 1261-1501” (Berkeley: University of California Ph.D. dissertation, 1976), pp. 43-45.Google Scholar

33. Al-Umari, E. Quatremere trans., in Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque du Roi, 13 (1838), p. 364.Google Scholar

34. Minorsky, V. “A Civil and Military Review in Fārs in 881/1476,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 10:1 (1939), pp. 141-178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar One often wonders, when dealing with nomad armies organized in units nominally of ten thousands (tümen), one thousand, and so on, just how closely organizational theory approaches the actuality of manpower. Under the Akkoyunlu it approached it quite closely: the “ration strength” of the Fars corps was just over 30,000, and the corps with Uzun Hasan during 1474-75, counted by Barbaro with his beans, just under 30,000; these corps each had three tümens, in principle; see Woods, J. E. The Agquyunlu (Minneapolis and Chicago, 1976), pp. 122Google Scholar and 131, n. 122.

35. Comparable proportions are found in a modern Mongol nomad population. The analysis of wealth distribution in the Narobanchin district by Vreeland (Mongol Community, p. 31) shows that of the 400 families in the district, about 86 (taking half of groups 6 and 7 in Vreeland's table) or just over 20 percent, owned between 50 and 100 sheep.

36. Minorsky, V. “The Poetry of Shah Isma˓il,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 10: 4 (1942), poem no. 194.Google Scholar

37. E. Denison Ross, “The Early Years of Shah Isma˓il,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1896), pp. 329-330.

38. R. M. Savory, “Haydar,” Encyclopedia of Islam2.

39. Woods, Aqquyunlu, p. 155.

40. Rashiduddin, passim, has information on the time of year the lowlands of Azerbaijan were occupied by the Mongols--especially by the sovereign and his entourage--as winter quarters. The campaigns against the Golden Horde are discussed in The Cambridge History, pp. 353-354, 356, 370, 408, and 412-413; what appears to be a summer campaign in 1265 (p. 356) was probably in fact an expedition like that of 1335 (pp. 412-413) which began to move through the highlands in summer, in response to intelligence reports of the intentions or preparations of the Golden Horde, and reached the lowlands in the fall.

41. Details of the campaign are given by Fadlullah b. Ruzbihan Khunji, in V. Minorsky, trans., Persia in 1478-1490 (London, 1957), pp. 71-81.Google Scholar

42. Minorsky, “Poetry,” poem no. 249.

43. Rumlu, Hasan A Chronicle of the Early Safawis, Seddon, C. N. trans., Gaekwad's Oriental Series No. 69:2 (Baroda, 1934), pp. 15, 18.Google Scholar

44. Woods, Aqquyunlu, pp. 197-198.

45. Rumlu, Chronicle of the Early Safawis, p. 57; Shaw, S. J. History of the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey, Vol. I (Cambridge, 1976), p. 78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46. Rumlu, Chronicle of the Early Safawis, pp. 18, 26.

47. Woods (Aqquyunlu) has information bearing on the size of the Akkoyunlu army as a whole on pp. 113, 122, 130, and 131, n. 122. I work out of this that the Akkoyunlu forces were divided between the sovereign and 9 governor-generals and their appanage/provinces in corps of 3 tümens each, which would give a total of 300,000; Zeno gave this figure, but mistakenly applied it to the army that fought at Terjan/Bashkent/Otluk Beli in 1473, which included only 5 corps (p. 132).

48. Minorsky, “Poetry,” poem no. 7.

49. V. Minorsky, “Shāh-sewan,” Encyclopedia of Islam1.

50. “If one asks an ordinary Persian who had built an unknown, ancient, ruined mosque or other structure in some locality, the chances are great that he would reply it was Shah ˓Abbas…” (Frye, R. N. The Heritage of Persia [New York and Toronto, 1963], p. 253Google Scholar).

51. Chodzko, A. B. Specimens of the Popular Poetry of Persia (London, 1842), pp. 29Google Scholar, 35, 334-344. Chodzko or his informant, trying to historicize the epic, makes the Shah into Abbas II, when, properly to match Köroghlu, he must be Abbas the Great. Chodzko also repeats (p. 335n) “the notorious boasting of Turkmans, that they never reposed under the shade of a tree or a king.”