Qashqai people

Uncommon card · No. 199511

Qashqai people ( kash-KY; Persian: قشقایی [ˌɢæʃɢɒːˈjiː]) are a Turkic tribal people indigenous to southern Iran. Almost all of them speak Qashqai, an Oghuz language they call Turki, as well as Persian in formal use. The Qashqai mainly live in the provinces of Fars, Khuzestan, Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad, Chaharmahal and Bakhtiari, Bushehr and southern Isfahan. The majority of Qashqai people were originally nomadic pastoralists and some remain so today. The traditional nomadic Qashqai traveled with their flocks twice yearly between the summer highland pastures north of Shiraz roughly 480 km or 300 miles south and the winter pastures on lower (and warmer) lands near the Persian Gulf, to the southwest of Shiraz. The majority, however, have now become partially or wholly sedentary. The trend towards settlement has been increasing markedly since the 1960s under government pressure, and encouragement, which has built housing for those willing to settle, starting in the early 20th century during...

Read on Wikipedia · Image Hossein Khosravi, CC BY 4.0