Living with the Shahsevan: Before they became famous for their textiles

Wednesday 19th April 2017 at 7pm

A talk by Richard Tapper

Richard says “I lived among Shahsevan nomads in the 1960s, when their weavings were almost unknown, or commonly labelled 'Kurdish' or 'Qarabagh'. I visited them again briefly in 1968, 1973, and then in 1993 and 1995 - by which time of course their weavings were very well-known, and production had been widely commercialized. I shall describe life among the nomads, give some background to their history, and some details on the weaving that I observed, all illustrated with slides from the field.”

R. L. Tapper, MA PhD is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology with reference to the Middle East.

Main research interests: Iran, Afghanistan and Turkey, pastoral nomadism, ethnicity, tribe/state relations, anthropology of Islam, documentary film, Iranian cinema.

Books include: Pasture and Politics (Academic Press 1979); Frontier Nomads of Iran (CUP 1997); with Ziba Mir-Hosseini, Islam and Democracy in Iran (IB Tauris 2006); ed. Tribe and State in Iran and Afghanistan (Routledge 2011/1983); ed. Islam in Modern Turkey (IB Tauris 1991); ed. with Sami Zubaida, A Taste of Thyme (IB Tauris 2000/1994); ed. The New Iranian Cinema (IB Tauris, 2002); ed. with Jon Thompson, The Nomadic Peoples of Iran (Azimuth, 2002); ed. with Keith McLachlan, Technology, Tradition and Survival (Frank Cass, 2003). A Golden Tent-Peg: Stories from an Afghan Tribal Community is forthcoming.