Iran - Andrew Burke [29]
Baluchis
The population of dry, barren Sistan va Baluchestan province is largely Baluchi. Baluchis comprise around 2% of Iran’s population and are part of a greater whole that spreads into western Pakistan and Afghanistan. Their culture, language and dress are more associated with Pakistan than Iran; Click here.
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Gabbeh, directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf, is a beautiful film centred on a gabbeh, a type of Persian carpet made by Qashqa’i nomads, and the love story of a nomad girl with the same name.
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Nomads
About a million people still live as nomads in Iran despite repeated attempts to settle them. Most migrate between cooler mountain areas in summer and low-lying warmer regions during winter, following pasture for their goats and sheep. Their migrations are during April and May, when they head uphill, returning during October and November. The majority of nomads are Turkic Qashqa’i and Bakhtiyari, but there are also nomadic Kurds, Lors and Baluchis; see Nomads, Click here.
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Esteghlal or Persepolis? Andrew Burke
The departure lounge at Mehrabad airport in Tehran is packed as I wait for one or another delayed domestic flight. But rather than reading books or arguing with ground staff, the vast majority of people (both men and women) are glued to the football on the big screens.
It’s red versus blue, and as a shot whizzes past the post the entire departure lounge seems to simultaneously inhale or exhale, depending on who they’re supporting. But this is not Man U and Chelsea, it’s Iran’s two biggest football clubs, Esteghlal and Persepolis.
Both teams are based in Tehran. Persepolis (pronounced ‘perspolis’ and playing in a red home strip) is known as the working-class team and has the dubious honour of being both the most-loved and most-hated team in Iran – by a considerable margin; Persepolis has won five national titles. Esteghlal (blue home strip) is the wealthy club and has won seven titles. Just to confuse you, Esteghlal Ahwaz also plays in the Persian Gulf Cup – the fourth name for the national league since its inception in the early 1970s.
If you’re a football fan, it might be worth adopting one of these teams and boning up on the names of their top players if you fancy some lively debate. If that sounds too hard, don’t worry – most Iranian football fans are fully conversant on the major European leagues.
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SPORT
Iran is not a country you’ll automatically associate with sport. And while football is a national obsession and you’ll see kids playing in streets and squares across Iran, you won’t see too many pitches. This is partly because religious strictures mean women should not see unrelated men in shorts, so most grounds are behind large walls. Women are barred from attending men’s sporting events even though they are, conversely, free to watch them on TV; this oft-debated issue is dealt with in Jafar Panahi’s film Offside.
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Chess (shatranj) originally came from India, but it was refined into the version that is played today in ancient Persia.
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Modern-day restrictions aside, Iran does have an interesting sporting history. Polo is believed to have originated in Iran and was certainly played during the reign of Darius the Great. A couple of millennia later, the huge main square of Esfahan was used for polo matches that would be watched by the Safavid Shah Abbas I from the balcony of the Ali Qapu Palace. Today you can still see the burly stone goal posts at either end of the square – Click here – while stylised polo matches can be seen in thousands of miniature paintings. Real-life polo has made a tentative comeback in recent years, though you’ll do very well to see it.
Another ancient sport peculiar to Iran is the zurkhaneh (literally, ‘house of strength’); for details, Click here.
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