SHAHR-E-KORD
Provincial Capital of Chahar Mahal and Bakhtiari Province, 107 km to
the S.W. of Esfahan. 521 km to the S.W. of Tehran.
The Bakhtiaris are the largest and most purely Iranian of all the
Persian tribes. They belong to the Lur race and their language is
closely related to the oldest known forms of Persian. The annual
Bakhtiari migration in April from their Garmsir, or winter
quarters Khuzistan, to their Sardsir, or summer pasture in the
Chahar Mahal region of the plateau south/west of Esfahan, takes from
four to six weeks.
"The Bakhtiari tribes"
It is an epic of human courage and endurance in which men, women and
children of all ages, with their animals and household goods, travel
by five different migration route across some of the wildest and most
difficult mountain country in Persia in their search for grass.
The Bakhtiaris are divided into two major groups - The Haft Lang and
the Chahar Lang which in turn are divided into tribes, sub/tribes and
clans. No one seems to know precisely how many Bakhtiaris there are
in Persia; one estimate, which may be on the high side, is of 450,000,
perhaps half being migratory and pastoral, the rest agricultural and
settled.
The Bakhtiari man and women live permanently in the village of Karyak,
about 120 miles south of Esfahan where the Kershan river, a tributary
of the Karun, serves as the boundary between the Bakhtiari and Bor
Ahmadi tribes.
"The Bakhtiari tribes"
