The Bakhtiari: Nomads Who Ruled Iran
The Bakhtiari are one of the largest of all the Iranian nomadic tribes. In 1908, the first ever find of Middle East oil was in their tribal areas. They played an important military role in the Constitutional Revolution – even invading Tehran in 1909 – and a leading political role both at that time and in the subsequent decade.
I recently curated an exhibition of many rarely seen early images of the Bakhtiari at the London School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS). This included some of the personal image collections of the Bakhtiari Khans, as well as the British Petroleum archives.
I have also walked the traditional migration over the Zagros Mountains of SW Iran with the Faridgi, a nomad Bakhtiari family.
Also included here is some of the Bakhtiari poetry translated by DLR Lorimer from when he was in the area in around 1906.