Khorasani Turk

The Khorasani Turks are the Turkic-speaking people of northern Khorasan in northeastern Iran, around Bojnurd, Quchan, Shirvan, Esfarayen, Dargaz, Kalat and Sabzevar. Their language, Khorasani Turkic (kmz), is an Oghuz Turkic language that the German Turkologist Gerhard Doerfer showed in the 1960s-70s to be a language of its own, intermediate between Azerbaijani and Turkmen and the bridge between the western and eastern Oghuz languages. Doerfer distinguished northern (Quchan), northwestern (Bojnurd), northeastern, southwestern (Soltanabad near Sabzevar) and southeastern dialects; Glottolog counts seven.

Their ancestors arrived in waves: Oghuz tribes with the Seljuks in the 11th century, later Turkic groups of the Mongol and Timurid eras, and above all the Qizilbash tribes (Afshar, Bayat, Qajar and others) that the Safavids resettled in Khorasan from 1510 to guard the frontier against the Uzbeks. Nader Shah came from the Khorasan Afshars. The main tribal groupings are the Bayat, Gerayli, Afshar and Tatar, but most people today call themselves simply Khorasani Turks (Xorasan Türkləri). They are distinct from the Sunni Turkmen to their north and from the Azerbaijanis who settled in Mashhad in the 20th century, and they live side by side with the Khorasani Kurmanji Kurds, with whom they share music and much custom.

Northern Khorasan is a land of wheat fields, vineyards and sheep pastures, and the Khorasani Turks are mostly farmers, herders and townspeople. Their best-known art is the music of the bakhshis, bards who sing epic, love and religious songs in Khorasani Turkic, Kurmanji and Persian to the two-stringed dutar; UNESCO inscribed the music of the bakhshis of Khorasan on its list of the intangible heritage of humanity in 2010. Haj Ghorban Soleimani (1920-2008) of Quchan was the most famous of them. Ashiq-style storytelling, the Koroghlu and Shah Ismail epics, and dutar schools centred on Quchan, Bojnurd and Dargaz keep the tradition alive. Weddings last days, with music, wrestling (koshti chukheh, shared with the Kurds) and horse races; Nowruz and Muharram are the main festivals. Families are patrilineal and tribal loyalties persist in villages.

The Khorasani Turks are Twelver Shia, the descendants of Qizilbash tribes that fought for the Safavids, and they live near Mashhad, whose shrine of Imam Reza is the holiest place in Iran. Pilgrimage to Mashhad, Muharram mourning and ta'zieh, religious songs performed by bakhshis, vows (nazr) and visits to local imamzadehs shape their faith. IMB lists them as Sunni, probably by analogy with the neighbouring Turkmen, but every independent source describes them as Shia.

No Scripture has been published in Khorasani Turkic; Joshua Project records translation as started. Global Recordings Network audio exists. Most Khorasani Turks are bilingual in Persian and can use Persian Bibles, the JESUS film and Persian Christian media; Azerbaijani and Turkmen materials are partly understood. No church among them is known.