CONSTITUTIONALISM IN THE WEST OF IRAN: THE CASE OF LAK AND LUR TRIBES IN WETERN ZAGROS

The main concern of this article is to explain why the Iranian Constitutional Revolution، which with its anti despotic nature attracted many Iranian cities around the country، was not welcomed among the Iranian basically tribal areas of the Western Zagros Mountain and why the local elites did not supported the new established constitutional government. In fact there was not a coherence reaction to this political event in Iran. The authors focus on Simarah area of western Zagros، or Pishkooh and Poshtkooh as the local Lak and Lor tribes and others used to call it. Two concepts of nomadic-tribal discourse and urban-constitutional discourse are used to analyze and thus explain the causes of such lack of support to constitutionalism. The constitutional discourse was not welcomed، except for specific cases، by Simarah tribes. This went back to the influence of a political discourse in which factors such as the love for the king (Shah)، across borders living، and centre fugal tendencies played the main role as contrast to the discourse of constitutionalism based on the spirit of urbanism، centralization and authoritarianism.