Arabs of Khuzestan

Khuzestani Arabs

File:Arabgirl.jpg Khuzestani Arab girl from Ahwaz
Regions with significant populations
Khuzestan Province:   1,200,000 [1] (other estimates vary)
Languages
Arabic, Persian
Religion
Shi'a Islam, Sunni Islam, Christianity, Judaism
Related ethnic groups
Arabs

The Arabs of Khuzestan are the Arabic-speaking or Arab-descended peoples of the Iranian province of Khuzestan.

People and culture

Many Khuzestani Arabs identify themselves as members of the following tribes:

• Bani Kaab (the largest)
• Bani Lam
• Bani Saleh
• Bani Torof
• Bani Tamim
• Bani Marvan
• al-Khamiss
• Kassir
• Bavi
• Kenane

Many tribes share a common heritage and a number have retained their original customs. A small percentage continue to adhere to the nomadic way of life. They are primarily concentrated in the western region of the province. The vast majority are Shi'a Muslims. There are also small Sunni, Christian and Jewish minorities.

Traditions

The tribal groups of Khuzestan have a very rich and detailed oral tradition, a practice which has survived despite the encroachment of the modern world. The oral literature of the Arab tribes has been uniquely influenced by the mystical poetic legacy of the Msha'sha'iya in previous eras.

Ahmad Kasravi (The Forgotten Kings and The Five Hundred Year History of Khuzestan) and Yusef Azizi Bani-Torof (The Arab Tribes of Khuzestan) have been among the very few Iranian writers to document in detail the history and traditions of the Khuzestani Arab tribes.

Language

Most Khuzestani Arabs are bilingual, speaking Arabic as their mother tongue, and Persian as a second language. The variety of Arabic spoken in the province is Khuzestani Arabic. As with other Mesopotamian dialects across the border in Iraq, it has significant Persian influence and is not understood by most other Arabic-speakers.

However, Khuzestani Arabic dialect is not taught or offered as an optional course in public elementary schools, which have ethnically diverse student populations, and there are currently no private schools specifically for Khuzestani Arabs. However, Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, which differ greatly from Khuzestani Arabic dialect, are taught across Iran to students in secondary schools, regardless of their ethnic or linguistic background.

History

Origins

Ethnic groups in Iran

The Iranian Arab journalist and writer Yusef Azizi Bani-Torof, in a speech given in 1999, claims that the historical ancestry of Khuzestani Arabs "goes back to 6 main tribes. They consider themselves to have sprung from a common ancestry and we see this in the Aalam al-Insab." Bani-Torof has also said that "the Arab people of Khuzestan are not Arabic-speakers. By that I mean they were not Persians, Kurds or Lurs who changed their language to Arabic and are now referred to as Arab-speakers." [2]

Bani-Torof writes in the preface to the published speech, "Also after delivering this speech I found new sources that prove that the indigenous Arabs of Khuzestan used to live in the area before the coming of the Aryans to the Iranian plateau. These sources include “A Pause and Reflection on History of Iran- 12 Centuries of Silence” by historian Nasser Pourpirar and “The Complete History of the Pre-Islamic Arabs” by Professor Javad Ali. Two volumes of the 10 volumes of the latter work have been translated into Farsi by the late Dr.Mohammad Hussien Rohani."

According to the Encyclopedia Iranica, Arab tribes such as the Bakr bin Wael and Bani Tamim began settling in Khuzestan sometime during the Sassanid era. During the Umayyad period, large groups of Arab nomads from the Hanifa, Tamim, and Abd al-Qays tribes crossed the Persian Gulf and occupied some of the richest Basran territories around Ahvaz and in Fars during the second Islamic civil war in 661-665/680-684 A.D.(see Encyclopaedia Iranica, p.215, under Arab Tribes of Iran). In 10th century CE, an Arab tribe named Asad moved into Khuzestan(see Encyclopaedia Iranica, p.216). In the latter part of the 16th century, the Bani Kaab, originating from what is now Kuwait, settled in Khuzestan and during the succeeding centuries many more Arab tribes moved from southern Iraq to the province, and as a result, Khuzestan became "extensively Arabized." (see J.R. Perry, "The Banu Ka'b: An Amphibious Brigand State in Khuzestan", Le Monde Iranien et L'Islam I, 1971, p133) Also see Khuzestan#The_Arab_Conquest_of_Khuzestan.

Ahmad Kasravi writes in The Forgotten Kings that the "Arabs immigration to Iran postdates that of to Syria and Iraq, what is certain and there is proof for, is that the date of that immigration is centuries before Islam, and from the early days of the Sassanid. In the Parthian era the gates of Iran were open to the Arabs ... but it is certain and there is proof for it that during the Parthian era Arab tribes were living in provinces of Kerman, Khuzestan, Bahrain and Fars." [3]

The Pahlavi era

Throughout the 1930s Reza Shah Pahlavi and his successor, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, implemented policies designed to suppress nomadism and tribal customs, and destroy any possible resistance on the part of the local inhabitants. Khuzestani Arabs were, in particular, singled out by the Pahlavi governments for increased scrutiny over other groups. Many Khuzestani Arabs grew increasingly angry at the central government as a result of being forbidden to publish local newspapers in Arabic and their children unable to learn Khuzestani Arabic in public schools, as well as due to tribal groups having been pushed off their lands in order to clear the way for facilities for the oil industry and government institutions.

The Iran-Iraq war

The Iran-Iraq war was cast by Saddam Hussein as yet another episode in a millennium long conflict between Arabs and Persians (see Battle of al-Qādisiyyah). Iraqi government propaganda claimed that Saddam's intentions were to "liberate" the Arabs of Khuzestan from oppression under the Persians. While some Khuzestani Arabs fled into Iraq to escape the war and a minority separatist faction aligned itself with Saddam, most stayed and defended the province alongside other Iranians against Iraqi forces.

Contemporary status of the Arabs of Khuzestan

Before the 1908 discovery of oil in Khuzestan, most of the province's inhabitants were settled or semi-nomadic Arabs. The growth of the oil industry, and later Iranian government policies tipped the demographic balance. There was much immigration into the province of people from other parts of Iran. Arabs may now be a minority group in Khuzestan (see ethnic politics of Khuzestan).

There are no reliable statistics as to the exact proportion of each ethnicity or language community. The Iranian government has not collected such statistics for some time. The CIA World Factbook estimates that 3% of Iran's 68,017,860 citizens are Arabs, which would put the Arab population at 2,040,540, of whom the majority live in Khuzestan, while Elton Daniel in The History of Iran (Greenwood Press, 2001), states that the Arabs of Iran "are concentrated in the province of Khuzistan and number about half a million" (pg. 14). The Historical Dictionary of Iran puts the number at 1 million. (J. Lorentz, 1995, p172)

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, "More than half the population are Arabs who live in the plains; the rest are Bakhtyaris and other Lurs (peoples of West Persia), with many Persians in the cities. Some of the Bakhtyaris and Lurs are still nomads." [4]

According to Human Rights Watch, "precise figures on the ethnic composition of Iran's population are impossible to obtain. The last census in which such data was compiled was carried out in 1956." [5] HRW, in a report from 1997, further states that "Arabs make up 70 percent of the three million inhabitants of Khuzestan Province". [6]

However, according to Yusef Azizi Bani-Torof in a lecture at the Industrial University of Isfahan in 1999, based on information from unofficial provincial census data gathered in 1996 by the Centre for Iran Studies and published in 1997, "the population of Arabs in southwestern Iran is 4,548,240. And the ratio to Iran's total population is: 4,548,240/65,000,000 = 6.997%." [7]

References

• Ansari, Mostafa -- The history of Khuzistan, 1878-1925, unpublished PhD. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1974.

See also

• Ethnic minorities in Iran
• Ethnic politics of Khuzestan
• History of Khuzestan
• Msha'sha'iya
• Origin of the name Khuzestan

External links

• Minorities At Risk: Assessment for Arabs in Iran
• Mesopotamian Dialects of Arabic
• Arab Music in Khuzestan Province
• Ethnic minorities singled out for attack in Iran