Iran - Andrew Burke [28]
Azaris
Commonly called ‘Turks’ in Iran, the Azaris make up about 25% of the population. They speak Azari Turkish, a dialect mixing Turkish with Farsi. They are concentrated in northwest Iran, in the Azarbayjan provinces around Tabriz. Click here for more.
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As the largest and most influential ethnic group, Persians fill most of Iran’s senior government posts. However, people from most other ethnic groups (as opposed to religions) can still reach the top – Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, is an ethnic Azari.
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Kurds
Iran has more than six million Kurds. The Kurds lay claim to being the oldest Iranian people in the region, descended from the Medes. In Iran, Kurds live in the mountainous west, particularly Kordestan province near the Iraqi border. Kurds also live in Iraq, Syria and Turkey. Kurds are widely feared and misunderstood by other Iranians. For more on the Kurds, Click here.
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Butt of The Joke Mark Elliott
‘If you drop your wallet in Qazvin, don’t bend down to pick it up!’ Political correctness has yet to touch the Iranian sense of humour and poor Qazvin, ‘where birds fly on one wing’, suffers constantly from jibes about predatory homosexuality. Other regions are equally unfairly stereotyped for jocular effect. Men from Rasht are portrayed as sexually liberal and constantly cuckold, Shirazis as lazy and fun-loving (in reality, everyone loves Shirazis), Turkmen as vengeful, Kurds as hot blooded and the Loris of Lorestan as congenitally untrustworthy. In common jokes Azaris are supposedly slow-witted yet cash-canny with Tabrizis surly and religious, but those from Orumiyeh, by contrast are relaxed and open-minded. Within their loose-fitting dishdasha robes, Iranian Arab men are whispered to be endowed with an especially impressive set of wedding tackle.
But it’s Esfahanis, who are reputed to be cunning and tight with money, that you’re most likely to hear about. One Yazdi man gleefully told us that Esfahanis are ‘like the Scots; they’ll do anything to save a few tomans’. While in Shahr-e Kord we were told a supposedly true story of how a tired truck driver from Shahr-e Kord had run into a brand new Mercedes driven by a Yazdi. The furious Yazdi’s first accusatory question was: ‘Are you Esfahani?’ When the driver replied ‘No, I’m from Shahr-e Kord’, the Yazdi’s mood immediately softened. ‘Okay, then,’ he’s reported to have said, ‘You’re not Esfahani, you can go.’
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Arabs
Arabs make up about 3% of the Iranian population and are settled mostly in Khuzestan, near the Iraq border, and on the coast and islands of the Persian Gulf. They are often called bandari (bandar means port), because of their historical links to the sea. Their differing language (a dialect of Arabic), dress and faith (many are Sunni Muslims) mean other Iranians consider them exotic. Click here.
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Bahman Ghobadi’s film A Time for Drunken Horses shared Cannes’ 2000 Caméra d’Or prize with Hassan Yektapanah’s Djom’eh, another masterful film using children and nonprofessional actors to follow the story of Kurdish orphans living in a border village. Ghobadi has since had hits with Turtles Can Fly and Half Moon.
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Lors
These proud people constitute about 2% of Iran’s population and are thought to be descendants of the first peoples in the region, the Kassites and Medes. Many speak Lori, a mixture of Arabic and Farsi, and about half remain nomadic. Most of the rest live in or near the western province of Lorestan; see the boxed text.
Turkmen
Making up about 2% of the population, Iranian Turkmen