Notes on the Ethnology of Khurasan

Bibliographic Data

ID7782075
AuthorsW Ivanov (corresponding author)
Year1926
Volume67
Issue2
Pages143
Publication date1926-02-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueGeographical Journal (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0016-7398 • E-ISSN: 1475-4959
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/1783140
OpenAlexW2315528767
LanguageEN
Citations received7

TWO principal factors were continually at work in the evolution of the Persian ethnical type. The first was the periodic admixture of races of different stocks during the numerous wars and invasions, frequently combined with the depopulation and devastation of large areas. The second, perhaps the more powerful of the two, was the unceasing migration of the population due to economic causes. Probably very few corners in Persia can claim to be ancient from the point of view of their village population. In the greater part of the country, although the towns and the principal villages may be very old, the population often consists of new settlers who migrated there from some other province. Many changes have taken place here since the tenth to thirteenth centuries, the period at which several important works on the geography of this part of Asia were written, containing some information about the distribution of the Persian element at that time. Since that period in the ancient seat of the Persians many of the most fertile and flourishing areas have become populated with different races, chiefly Turkish. Such are the provinces of Samarqand, Bukhara, Merv, Khiva, Northern Khurasan, and a considerable portion of Fars, Hamadan, Azerbaijan. Only a small number of Persians live on the Upper Oxus, and in Persia itself they form nowadays but a small part of the population, occupying, with the exception of the towns, the most sterile and arid land. There is very little chance under these conditions to find the more or less pure Persian type. Often the Persian-speaking population has much foreign admixture, whilst non-Persian people, like Turks from Hamadan and Azerbaijan, not rarely preserve a comparatively pure Iranian type.* For the purposes of anthropological research, therefore, it is not an easy matter to define the idea of a Persian. Before the physical type of this people can be properly described, with its standard peculiarities, the best way to act perhaps will be to regard, conventionally, every individual as Persian, in the strict sense, whose mother tongue is one of the Persian dialects, and who belongs neither to a non-Persian tribe nor exhibits any clear physical signs of his connection with some other

Ethnology · Geography · Ancient Near East History · Archaeology and Historical Studies · Eurasian Exchange Networks · History

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