The Turks of Azerbaijan and the Iranian Plateau (British Naval Intelligence Division, 1918)

The Turks of Azerbaijan and Iranian Plateau

IV. Black Sea Turks

b. The Caucasian Turks

4. There are various Turkish tribes in Transcaucasia, distributed in the provinces of Kutais, Batum, Tiflis, Elizavetpol, Baku, Daghestan, Erivan, and Kars. They inhabit partly the mountains and partly the steppes, especially those around the Kura river. They are most numerous in the governments of Elizavetpol, Baku, and Erivan. These Turks first penetrated into the Caucasus on the occasion of the Seljuk invasions, about A.D. 1200, from Azarbaijan. Other migrations of these Turks into Transcaucasia took place much later, in the sixteenth and even the eighteenth centuries.

In physique there is little difference between these Turks and their Caucasian brethren. But though they have for a century and a half been under Russian rule, they have not in the slightest degree changed in religion, customs, and usages. In spite of being most fervent Shiites, they are on very good terms with the Caucasian Sunnites and with their Russian neighbours. Polygamy is rare with them, and their women go unveiled to work. These Tatars are noted for their excellence as gardeners, agriculturists, cattle-tenders, and artisans.

The total number of Turco-Tatars (that is, Turks) in Caucasia was in 1897, according to the Russian census, 1,879,908. After the deduction from this aggregate of the figures for the Nogaians, Turkmens, Karachais, and Kumuks, there remain about 1,665,000 Turks for Transcaucasia. After the lapse of twenty years the Turkish population of the whole of Caucasia must now amount to well over 2,000,000.

V. Western Turks

This branch of the Turks comprises all those Turkish tribes which inhabit the territory of the Persian and the Turkish Empires.

a. The Persian or Iranian Turks

Habitat. The Iranian Turks in the widest sense include those of Transcaucasia, who have, however, been grouped, above as IV b, 4 (p. 200), because of their political position as inhabitants of Russian territory. Those of them that live in Persia proper are distributed in the following regions:

1.      Azarbaijan, from the Araxes southward along the frontier of Kurdistan past Urmia towards Kirmanshah. Here the Turks are most numerously represented, being contiguous t their kinsmen in Transcaucasia, from whom they are only politically separated. They thus form the chief seat of the Turkish element in Persia.

2.      Khamseh, the district between Azarbaijan and Tehran, especially in the neighbourhood of Zinjan.

3.      The district of Tehran, in the immediate neighbourhood of the capital and in the valleys of Damavand.

4.      Kirman: in the district bordering on Fars.

5.      Irak: in the neighbourhood of Hamadan.

6.      Fars: where they wander between the borders of Isfahan and the sea coast.

7.      Khorasan: where they are most numerous around Nishapur and Kuchan.

Race. Racially and linguistically the Turks of Persia differ little from one another. They are descended from the Turks who under Seljuk came from the north of the Sea of Aral. That they are closely akin to the Turkmens is shown by the fact that several of their tribes, such as the Khoja-ali and Begdili in Karabagh, the Kara in Kirman, the Bayat around Nishapur, as well as the Kenger in Transcaucasia, are identical in name with corresponding tribes among the Turkmens of Russian Turkestan. Other tribes are known to be of Turkmen origin, though their names have disappeared from among the Turkmens proper. Such are the Avshars, a very numerous tribe, near Urmia, who have become Shiites. Another such tribe are the Kajars, who formerly lived in the steppe bordering on Astarabad and are now scattered about in Persia; from them comes the present dynasty of the Shahs of Persia. Again, the Kashkai in Fars are known to have migrated to the south of Persia during the rule of the Il-khans¹. Thus the Turks of Persia ethnically form a connecting link between the Turkmens proper and the Osmans.

Each of the tribes has its own chieftain, who is appointed by the Shah. In former centuries the clans seem to have lived in compact masses, and to have been confined to particular localities; but at the present day neither is the case. Only the large and powerful tribes attach importance to their descent; while the small fragments are very much in the dark as to their origin. Tribes once forming numerous units are scattered across the wide territory extending from the Paropamisus to the Kurdistan mountains, and from the Caucasus to the Persian Gulf. Thus members of one and the same tribe may now be found in the Caucasus, in Khorasan, in Hamadan, and in Kirman.

The only exceptions are the following four tribes, which are less dispersed and partly occupy their old habitat.

1.      The Kajars, the chiefs of whom constitute the present dynasty of the Shahs of Persia. They formerly dwelt on the borders of Syria, but in A.D. 1400 they were forced by Timur to migrate towards their old home in Turkestan; on the way, however, they settled in Azarbaijan and Irak. Till the time of the Shah Abbas the Great (1585-1628) some of them also remained in Transcaucasia; but that monarch forcibly settled them to the north of Astarabad and in the neighbourhood of Kuchan, for the twofold purpose of breaking their power and of making them a barrier against the predatory Turkmens.

2.      The Shahsevens or “adherents of the Shah”, whose name is not an ethnic but a comparatively modern collective name of a tribe composed of various Turkish elements from Azarbaijan and the Caucasus. The bulk of them at the present day live in summer on the slopes of Mount Savelan near Ardebil, but in winter farther north in the Moghan steppe. Besides these a considerable fraction of the tribe is found within the Persian frontier, between Kum, Tehran, Kazvin, and Zinjan. They are, generally speaking, the most restless Turkish element in Persia, being still half or entirely nomadic.

3.      The Kashkais and Allahverdis of the south, in the province of Fars, are with few exceptions nomads². The name Kashkai is still found as a clan name among the Turkmens.

4.      Karakoyunlus, in the neighbourhood of Khoi, are in all probability descendants of a Turkmen tribe against which Timur carried on a war of extermination all his life, but of which a considerable number have survived.

Number. The Iranian Turks numbers approximately 2,000,000, or rather more than one-fifth of the total population of Persia.

Characteristics. The Turks of Persia have been mixed with various Aryan peoples ― Caucasians, Kurds, Armenians, Iranians ― as the result of the importation of male and female slaves, which went on for centuries. A distinctively Turkish type can therefore not be looked for among them; but a marked mixed type, the basis of which has left genuine Turkish physical traces, is noticeable as soon as Azarbaijanis are seen side by side with the relatively pure Persians of Shiraz. According to a close observer, the Iranian Turks compared with the Persians have a less oval skull, a broader and less expressive face, less arched brows, thicker eyelids, a shorter and broader nose, wider cheek-bones and chin, more fleshy lips, a taller and more massive and muscular figure³. The description of the Turks of Transcaucasia given by another authority⁴ is similar. Vambery⁵, who agrees with these accounts, adds that along the whole northern frontier of Persia the Turks in Azarbaijan and in Khorasan show far more traces of the national type than, for instance, the Kashkais in the south.

It is natural that a considerable change in customs must have been undergone by a people who, separated for more than eight centuries from the bulk of their kindred, have for so long lived in the midst of old Persian culture, and been strongly influenced by the religious bias of the Shiite sect. Hence the Iranian Turk appears polite and refined compared with his congeners in the north-east and the west. But his native Turkish awkwardness and frankness is still apparent when he is contrasted with the Southern Persian. This difference is still observable among the townsmen of Tabriz, Tehran, and Hamadan in spite of the immediate influence of these centres of Persian culture, while the population of the country districts shows still more evident traces of the Turkish national character, some of their customs being clearly reminiscent of those still prevailing among the Turkmens of the steppe.

This similarity extends to various usages of family life, such as certain benedictions, which are almost identical, birth and wedding ceremonies, and particularly the laws of hospitality, which the Iranian Turk observes much more conscientiously than the Persian. The word of the Turk, too, is much more to be depended on than that of the Iranian. He is also decidedly superior in manly qualities. To these he owes his dominant position for centuries in Persia, where he represents the really warlike element, for the army of the Shah consist predominantly of Turks.

The affinity to the Turkmens is still more evident among the nomads. The very fact that single tribes, in spite of local difficulties and social pressure, have kept aloof from settled life sufficiently indicates the essentially Turkish character of these people. The chiefs alone are tinctured with Persian culture, while the masses differ only in externals, but not in modes of thought or customs, from their kinsmen of the steppe. War and raids are the ideal of their life, and the monotony of their ordinary leisure, lasting often for months, is varied only by the care they bestow on their horses and their weapons. The maxims of Saadi, of Hafiz, and of other Persian poets are indeed often on their lips, but on their hearts are engraved the old Turkish saws which they follow as their standard of life and action. This tenacious devotion of the Turks to their traditional customs is a somewhat striking ethnological phenomenon. For there are few examples of a continuous and intensive contact between two heterogeneous racial elements in which the minority has been so little influenced by the majority as the Turks in Persia. Thought bound together by a common faith and by political interest, they are still as mutually antagonistic as they were nearly three thousand years ago, in the days of Zoroaster. The Persian still sees in the Turk the type of barbarism and ugliness as delineated in the Shahname, while the Turk despises the Persian as a coward. Hence a well-organized propaganda might probably without great difficulty succeed in consolidating the Turkish population of Persia and in bringing about the incorporation of that country in an enlarged Asiatic Turkish Empire.

Manner of Life. In their mode of life the Iranian Turks are divided into two classes: the settled and the nomads or half-nomads. To the settled class belong those Turks of Azarbaijan, Khamseh, Tehran, Irak, and partly also Khorasan, who after the invasion of the Seljuks adopted the manner of life of the Iranian population, settled down in towns and villages, and devoted themselves to trade, industry, and agriculture. But it is to the latter occupation that they are chiefly addicted, because they took to it by way of cattle-breeding, which was an element in their previous nomadism, whereas in trade and industry their Persian neighbours, with their greater aptitude for these pursuits, have generally got the better of them. In the whole north-western part of Persia the country population is exclusively Turkish; in Azarbaijan and Khamseh this is also the case in the towns, while elsewhere the town population of a mixture of Turks and Persians. The change to settled existence came about chiefly after the rule of the Kajars began, when the military and official class, attracted by the life of ease now opened to them, grew more and more accustomed to fixed abodes, and exchanged the sword for the plough.

As to the nomads and semi-nomads, they are by no means new arrivals from the steppe who have begun to wander in Persian territory for want of arable land. They are original nomads, who have been in the country for centuries, and, owing partly to vicissitudes of history, partly to the strong national Turkish distaste for a settled life, have continued their old wandering habits. The territory in which these Turkish nomads (called Ilat, ‘the people’) migrate can only be stated in a general way. Thus, the Shahsevens are chiefly to be found in the regions of Transcaucasia already mentioned, but also in Khamseh and in the district of Tehran; the tribes Khoja-ali, Begdilli, and Sheikhlu in Karabagh; the Mahmudlu in Maragha; the Janbeglu, Imamlu, Avshars, and Usanlu, as also the Kajars, in Mazandaran; and the Kashkais and Allahverdis in the south of Persia.

The designation of nomad in the Central Asiatic sense of the term is hardly applicable to any of the Turkish migratory tribes in Persia, because in the first place they lack extensive pastures, and their flocks and herds are, moreover, insignificant compared with the Turkmen and Kirghiz scale. They breed chiefly sheep. Fewer camels, and still fewer horses. The sheep form a transition between the Central Asian fat-tailed type and those of Anatolia, while their horses are a cross between the original breed of the steppe and the Arab, but without the speed or the endurance of their progenitors. The Shahsevens, the Kajars, and the Avshars appear to have the best horses.

The impression made on the observer by the Turkish nomads of Persia is one of poverty and wretchedness. They live in long low tents which are made of woven horse-hair, and are by Europeans generally called ‘gypsy tents’. The interiors are bare and uncomfortable suggestive of a people that, without abandoning its ingrained love of wandering, has long lost the real spirit of the primitive nomad. Only the old clan conditions and the blind obedience to the tribal chiefs (Il-khan) have still to some extent been preserved among them. All able-bodied men are ready to take up arms at the summons of the chief. Thus the Il-khans of the Kashkais have succeeded down to modern times in inspiring the Persian Government with fear. The same is the case in the north of Persia, where the Khans still enjoy greater authority than the Shah, who would take care to avoid meddling in the internal affairs of the various tribes. The patriarchal constitution of the Turkish nomads in Persia, and even in the Russian territory of Transcaucasia, has thus been but little modified by the ruling power.

Language. As regards its linguistic character, the Turkish of Azarbaijan is most closely connected with the Osman dialect, especially that spoken in Anatolia. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there was probably no difference at all between these two dialects, as at that time the Iranian Turks and the Osmans constituted one and the same tribe, the nearest kin to the Turkmens of to-day. The comparison of the earliest linguistic records confirms this conclusion. A Turkish Seljuk poem dating from the thirteenth century and the language of the historian Neshri, who lived in the second half of the fifteenth century, compared and contrasted with the Azarbaijan Turkish of to-day, show clearly that these two old Turkish specimens are both grammatically and lexically very closely akin to the dialect of the present day Iranian Turks. In course of time the Osman dialect, owing to special cultural influences, diverged more and more from the common language, while the Azarbaijan dialect remained essentially unchanged. The Iranian Turks can understand the Osmans much more easily than they can the Turkmen.

Literature. Owing to the strong influence of Persian writers there has been little chance for the development of a national Turkish literature among the Iranian Turks. In the first place, there have been very few Turkish literary men in Persia, and these have for the most part confirmed to the fashion of employing the Persian language. A small number have, however, written Turkish poetry, which generally bears the stamp of Central Asian culture or resembles the popular lays of Anatolia. The works of some of the Turkish poets of Transcaucasia belonging to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have been collected and published⁶. There is also a collection of epic songs by the national hero and national bard Köroglu, who always appears as the prototype of the Turkish spirit and the true representative of Turanian heroism. That the nucleus of this heroic saga⁷ was brought with them by the western Turks from their home in the steppes is undoubted. The epic of Köroglu is known among the Uzbegs and Turkmens in Khiva, by the Kazaks on the Sea of Aral and to the north-east of the Caspian, and westwards as far as the coast of Syria. Though not of much linguistic value, this epic is all the more important as representing the national Turkish character. There are besides some wedding songs, parables, and proverbs that live in the tradition of the Iranian Turks and can all be traced to a Turkmen or Central Asian source. They all show how superficially centuries of Persian influence have affected the customs and the modes of thought of the Iranian Turk. He still appears much nearer to his Central Asian kinsman than to the Osman, in spite of the bitter feuds that have raged for 400 years between the Shiite Turks and their Sunnite brethren in the north-east.

History. When the Turks first entered Iran it is difficult to say. When the Turks first entered Iran it is difficult to say. But we know from the evidence of the Avesta that Turanians, that is, Turks, were on the borders of Iran and in conflict with its inhabitants many centuries B.C., and there can be no doubt that the northern edge of Iran, that is, Khorasan, the southern shore of the Caspian, and Transcaucasia must from time immemorial have been subject to the invasions of single Turkish tribes and hordes. But the Iranian Turks of to-day are for the most part descendants of those Turks who invaded Persia from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries during the Seljuk and the Mongol periods.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. ― Vambery, Das Türkenvolk, pp. 569–93; Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question, 2 vols., London, 1892, especially ch. 24 and vol. ii, pp. 112–14. Scobel, Geographisches Handbuch, 2 vols., Bielefeld and Leipzig. 1909–10, vol. ii, p. 136. Sir Percy Sykes, Ten thousand miles in Persia or eight years in Iran, London, 1902; The History of Persia, 2 vols., London, 1915.

¹ Vambery, Das Türkenvolk, p. 576, enumerates the tribal names of the Persian Turks; see also Sheil, Glimpses of Life and Manners in Persia, London, 1856, pp. 396–401.

² An account of a visit to the Kashkais is given by Colonel Oliver St. John in the Report of the fifty-second meeting of the British Association (London, 1883), p. 638. Their winter quarters in the neighbourhood of the village of Farashkend are especially described.

³ Cp. Polak, Persian, das Land und seine Bewohner (Leipzig, 1865), i, 16.

⁴ Seidlitz, Russishce Revue, XV, p. 498.

⁵ Das Türkenvolk, p. 580.

⁶ By Adolf Bergé, Dichtungen transkaukasischer Sänger des 18. Und 19. Jahrhunderts in aserbaidschanischer Mundart, Leipzig, 1868.

⁷ See Chodsko, Specimens of the popular poetry of Persia as found in the adventures and improvisation of Kurroglu, the bandit minstrel of Northern Persia, and in the songs of the people inhabiting the shores of the Caspian Sea, London, 1842.

A manual on the Turanians and Pan-Turanianism. Compiled by the Geographical Section of the Naval Intelligence Division, Naval Staff, Admiralty. ― London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1918, pp. 204―211.