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Hierarchical Image and Reality: The Construction of a Tribal Chiefship

Image and reality interplay in the chiefship of the Basseri tribe of southern Iran. We know the Basseri through the influential and rightly esteemed ethnography, Nomads of South Persia, by Fredrik Barth. Barth's account of the Basseri chief is vivid and striking, and, in placing the chiefship within the complex society of Iran, was an original contribution to the ethnographic literature. And yet there appear to be certain subtleties of the Basseri chiefship, which, while implied in the historical and ethnographic information provided by Barth, are not included in his explicit description. As a result, Barth overstates, I believe, the degree of the Basseri chief's power, and underestimates the extent to which the chief depended upon the consent of his tribemen.