Tribal Order and the State
The Political Organization of Boir Ahmad
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9979562 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Reinhold Loeffler (Western Michigan University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1978 |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue | 1-4 |
| Pages | 145-171 |
| Publication date | 1978-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Iranian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-0862 • E-ISSN: 1475-4819 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00210867808701543 |
| OpenAlex | W1983673224 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 4 |
Among the tribal peoples of the Middle East, from the Atlas to the Hindukush mountains, the most common type of political organization appears to be some form of segmentary structure in which powerful sociocultural mechanisms function to contain every tendency toward the emergence of permanent centralized power figures. Some tribes of Iran characteristically deviate from this general pattern. The Boir Ahmadi is one of them. Their political organization, as it existed during the nineteenth century and up to 1963, consisted in an intrinsically centralized system, that is, a system in which its political power figures showed a vested interest in maintaining, rather than preventing, centralized leadership. In this paper I describe--as much as is possible within a limited space--the bases and the functioning of this system, trace its emergence and inner evolution, and outline its present transformation. In conclusion, to further highlight some of its features, I compare it with European feudalism
Economics · Feudalism · Order (exchange · Political economy · Political science · Political system · Politics · Power (physics · Sociocultural evolution · Sociology · State (computer science · TRACE (psycholinguistics) · African history and culture analysis · Computer Science · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.07 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1980 - 2023 (44) |
| Highly cited | No |