ABSTRACT
Bakhtiari history, stretching back to the fourteenth century, tantalises the social historian of Iran. There is a great temptation to assume that the extraordinary continuity in that name can also be found in Bakhtiari political, economic and social organisation. The historian is frustrated further because a narrative of Bakhtiari political history cannot be reconstructed from primary sources until the late nineteenth century, and even then major parts of it are still fragmentary. The social scientist is likewise thwarted in attempting to obtain a detailed account of Bakhtiari social structure. Basic institutions, relationships and values are obscured by the very nature of complex societies, by differences between internal and external perceptions of the Bakhtiari, and by the lack of sources. The basic problem continues to be the absence of detailed information from which generalisations may be drawn – generalisations which, in turn, may prove to be of little value except in specific, concrete instances and which, consequently, risk the charge of being either commonplace or self-evident. Whether the approach is synchronic or diachronic, major analytical problems arise – which should not discourage the attempt.
