Ilsavan

The Shahsevan ("those who love the shah" in Turkic) are a confederation of Turkic tribes of Iranian Azerbaijan, centred on Ardabil, Meshginshahr and the Moghan steppe. Tradition says Shah Abbas I (r. 1588-1629) created them as a loyalist force against unruly Qizilbash chiefs, but historians such as Minorsky and Tapper doubt it: the name appears in the 16th century, and the confederacy took shape in the 18th, when Nader Shah (1732) united the tribes under Badr Khan Shahsevan. Russian sources trace some lineages to Anatolia. The tribes fought and lost pasture in the Russo-Persian wars, saw their winter grazing cut by the Aras border after 1828, sacked Ardabil in 1909 and were disarmed by Reza Khan in 1922-23.

By their own count they had 32 tribes in Meshgin and 13 around Ardabil (other counts give 11 tribes of 90 camps, or over 60 tribes), with names such as Qojabeyli, Isali, Balabeyli, Ajirli, Polatli, Damirchili, Beydili, Jafarlu and Sarikhanlu. Society runs from tribe to clan, gobak (20-30 families) and oba (camp), led by elders (aqsaqal) and formerly by beys and khans. After the 1979 revolution the state renamed them Ilsevan ("those who love the people"), the source of the name Ilsavan; it had lapsed by 1992. Branches outside the Ardabil heartland include the Khamseh Shahsevan of Zanjan and the Baghdadi Shahsevan and Inanlu of Qazvin, Saveh and Varamin, and a small population lives in the Azerbaijan Republic.

They speak Azerbaijani; Glottolog lists Shahsavani as a dialect of South Azerbaijani. Encyclopaedia Iranica and Wikipedia describe the Shahsevan as a sub-ethnic group of the Azerbaijanis, and the name today chiefly means the tent-dwelling nomads: families who settle tend to drop it and identify as Azerbaijani Turks.

The emblem of Shahsevan life is the alachiq, a dome-shaped felt tent on a frame of 23-28 curved wooden poles, of Central Asian design; a smaller rectangular kuma serves for cooking and dairy work. Camps of related families move twice a year: in mid-June up to the pastures of Mount Sabalan (4,811 m), a journey of 15-20 days, and from mid-September down to the Moghan steppe near the Aras River, over 40-45 days, some 400 km in all, with sheep, goats, cattle, horses and two-humped camels.

Women weave the textiles for which the Shahsevan are famous: kilims, jajim, sumak bags and horse covers, verni flatweaves, felt and knotted rugs. Women's dress has nine pieces, including a long coloured shirt, pleated skirts, the arkhalig jacket, a flowered headscarf and a vest hung with coins that shows the family's wealth; men once shaved their heads, kept temple locks and wore lambskin hats and Circassian coats. Food is mutton, rice pilaf, bread baked on the saj and a wide range of dairy products. Elders negotiate marriages, and weddings can last for days, ending with guests' cash gifts. Ashiq bards sing epics and love songs to the saz. Nowruz is kept with Chaharshanbe Suri fire-jumping and dyed eggs, and some pre-Islamic funeral customs survive.

The Shahsevan are Twelver Shia, and their founding legend ties them to the Safavid shahs who made Iran Shia. Practice is that of rural Azerbaijani Shiism: Muharram and Ashura mourning, Ramadan, vows and votive meals (nazr), visits to imamzadehs and to the Safavid shrine of Sheikh Safi al-Din in Ardabil, and pilgrimage to Mashhad and Karbala when means allow. Camps on the move rely less on mosques and more on household and seasonal ritual, with mullahs from nearby villages called for weddings and funerals. Older customs persist alongside Islam: protective charms against the evil eye, Nowruz fires, and funeral rites that ethnographers trace to pre-Islamic Turkic practice. Settled and urban Shahsevan share the wider Iranian drift away from institutional religion; no study measures it among them.

The complete Bible exists in South Azerbaijani, which the Shahsevan speak (Elam New Testament 2013, Old Testament 2014; Institute for Bible Translation text 2008), with the JESUS film and Global Recordings Network and Faith Comes By Hearing audio. Global Recordings Network lists "Shahsavani" as a people group but holds no dialect-specific recordings. Joshua Project estimates 0.5% Christian adherents and 0.2% evangelical; no Shahsevan church or believer community is publicly known. Nomadic camps are hard to reach, often out of mobile range, and tightly knit.