Role of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad Province’s Nomads in Victory of Islamic Revolution: Answering a Historical Query

This paper intends to study the role of Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad Province’s nomads in the victory of Islamic Revolution. Sparse and scattered works on this role of the province’s nomads, many of them disorganized and contradictory, have raised the need for conducting this research. The principal question of this paper is: “Did the nomads in Kohgiluyeh and Boyer Ahmad Province play a role independent of the clerics, pursuing special material gains in 60s and then in the fight against the regime of Shah, or did they play this role in tandem with the Islamic Movement under the clerics with religious motives?” The main hypothesis of the paper points to a combination of material and religious motives in meeting their demands under the leadership of the clerics. The paper has applied a documentary method as well as interviews with local informed individuals. Findings of the paper indicate that unlike the two dominant approaches that try to evaluate these fights completely independent or completely aligned, the nomads continued their fight in 60s and 70s with two material and religious motives so that serious changes happened in their manners of fight against the regime of Shah