LURS

Lurs: translation

The Lurs are a people closely related to the Kurds and living in Luristan, or the southernZagros MountainsofIransouth 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 theSharafnama, completed in 1596,Sharaf Khan Bitlisimentioned 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 asmadan-i rish, or mine of beards. The Lurs are probably more than 70 percent Shia. Around 20 percent areAhl-i Haqq, while no more than 8 percent are Sunni. At the beginning of the 19th century, thereligionof the Lurs was so unorthodox—even from the Shiite point of view—that Muhammad Ali Mirza had to send for amujtahidto convert them toIslam.

TheBakhtiyarisare 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 ofReza Shah Pahlavi, beginning in the 1920s, the modernizing central government has brought all of these groups into the main administrative framework.