ABSTRACT
Iran appears to have had a mid-nineteenth-century population of perhaps as many as nine to ten million people which, as a result of drought, plague, and famine, fell to eight million in the early 1870s, before rising again to about ten million at the turn of the century. A quotation from Barth hardly represents new information. However, the implications of this familiar material bear further exploration. Komachi 'protect' themselves through linkages to members of the local, settled elite, and the far more numerous Basseri appear to have the same kind of relationship with their khans. The notion that leaders build groups is also explicit in much work on Iranian pastoral communities. Most of the larger and more powerful Iranian pastoral populations share the same character. The reasons for this also seem clear: they are to be found in the relationship of pastoralists to their leaders; and 2, the demographic history of the region.
