Lurs

   The Lurs are a people closely related to the Kurds and living in Luristan, or the southern Zagros Mountains of Iran south of the mainly Kurdish area of Iran. The Lurs apparently began to be distinguished from the Kurds some 1,000 years ago. It is interesting, however, that in the Sharafnama, completed in 1596, Sharaf Khan Bitlisi mentioned two Lur dynasties among the five Kurdish dynasties that had in the past enjoyed royalty or the highest form of sovereignty or independence.

   The vocabulary of the Lurs is still largely Kurdish, but their verbal system and syntax are Persian. Lur men can be very heavily bearded, and the Persians sometimes refer to Luristan as madan-i rish, or mine of beards. The Lurs are probably more than 70 percent Shia. Around 20 percent are Ahl-i Haqq, while no more than 8 percent are Sunni. At the beginning of the 19th century, the religion of the Lurs was so unorthodox—even from the Shiite point of view—that Muhammad Ali Mirza had to send for a mujtahid to convert them to Islam.

   The Bakhtiyaris are another tribal group living mainly in Iran and closely related to the Kurds and Lurs. The Turkic Qashqais too are closely associated with these groups both geographically and culturally. Since the time of Reza Shah Pahlavi, beginning in the 1920s, the modernizing central government has brought all of these groups into the main administrative framework.