Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2022
“Forced migration” is defined for the purposes of this study as the transportation of a considerable number of a population group (whether nomadic or sedentary), normally in family units and accompanied by livestock and chattels, to be permanently resettled in a region remote from their home; and undertaken as an act of policy by the ruler or his agents. It does not refer to attempts to sedentarize nomads on lands adjacent to their pastures, or to simple dispossession of lands without alternative provision.
Examples of forced migration have been noted in Iran and its imperial appendages from the earliest to the most recent times, chiefly as punishment of stubborn opponents or refractory subjects by a vigorous, centralizing monarch.
A preliminary version of this paper was presented at a panel on “Towns, villages and rural communities in Iranian history, 1500-1900” co-sponsored by the Society for Iranian Studies and the Middle East Studies Association, held at the eighth annual MESA meeting in Boston, Mass. in November 1974. The author would like to thank those bodies, the organizer Thomas M. Ricks, and the other participants for that opportunity.
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