Arasbaran (Qaredaq) Nomadic Tribes’ Settlement; a Historical Necessity or a Political Project

Iran’s political elites from the late Qajar era considered the settlement of the nomadic tribes as part of their inevitable social measures in line with the renovation of the government and invention of a modern state-nation. The issue was largely taken into account since late Naseri era in Azerbaijan as the most important entry point of the modern thoughts. Arasbaran (Qaredaq) migrant clans were inter alia the tribes included by such an attitude. This set of tribes had passed through a process of sedentarism till Reza Shah’s take-over of the power. The present study is seeking to elaborate the inhabitation process of these nomadic tribes and the effect it has had on this process and it makes use of the method of document contents analysis and historical narrations’ examination to find an answer to the question as to whether the settling down of the nomadic tribes has been a historical must or a political project. In doing so, the effect of the Qarehdaq nomads’ inhabitation till the late Pahlavi era has also been taken into consideration. Their active participation in the constitutionalism’s political evolutions and their learning about the novel mindsets made the central government sustain a lesser amount of costs. But, the problems derived of the inhabitation implementation, including the lack of the governmental agents’ awareness of the regulations and circulars, the shortage of the educational, sanitation and other facilities having an adverse effect on the governmental plans, the multiplicity of Qaredaq tribes and the extant discrepancies and disputes, and the central government’s lack of paying adequate attention to the issue as well as the government’s lack of recognition of the region’s geographical position, all in all, made it slackened; but, the process was never stopped or reversed rather it was a move forward featuring a slow pace. These problems led to some cases of violent treatment of the nomadic clans by the government but they were small in volume and extent as compared to the conflicts in the other regions of Iran.