The Chegini tribe ( ku, چەگینی ,Çengînî, fa, چگنی) is a mostly sedentary Kurdish tribe which lives in Lorestan Province and scattered around Qazvin Province and Fars Province in

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

. The tribe also lives in

Kurdistan Region Kurdistan Region ( ku, هەرێمی کوردستان, translit=Herêmî Kurdistan; ar, إقليم كردستان), abbr. KRI, is an autonomous region in Iraq comprising the four Kurdish-majority governorates of Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Duhok, ...

and

Kirkuk Kirkuk ( ar, كركوك, ku, کەرکووک, translit=Kerkûk, , tr, Kerkük) is a city in Iraq, serving as the capital of the Kirkuk Governorate, located north of Baghdad. The city is home to a diverse population of Turkmens, Arabs, Kurds, ...

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...

. While the tribe migrated to Lorestan from Northwestern Iran, not much info exist on its origins. Iraq_ethno_2003

Early scrutiny

Charles MacGregor Major General Sir Charles Metcalfe MacGregor KCB CSI CIE (12 August 12, 1840 – 5 February 1887) was a British explorer, geographer and officer of the British Indian Army. He was the Quartermaster General for the British Army in India, the ...

classified the tribe as

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish languages *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern Kurdistan **Eastern Kurdistan **Northern Kurdistan **Western Kurdistan See also * Kurd (dis ...

in his

topographical Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the land forms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...

and

ethnographical Ethnography (from Greek ''ethnos'' "folk, people, nation" and ''grapho'' "I write") is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject o ...

oeuvre from 1872. Oskar Mann however argued in 1910 that the tribe's name "Čegīnī" might be related to the

Romani Romani may refer to: Ethnicities * Romani people, an ethnic group of Northern Indian origin, living dispersed in Europe, the Americas and Asia ** Romani genocide, under Nazi rule * Romani language, any of several Indo-Aryan languages of the Roma ...

term "čingāna". According to the

Encyclopædia Iranica ''Encyclopædia Iranica'' is a project whose goal is to create a comprehensive and authoritative English language encyclopedia about the history, culture, and civilization of Iranian peoples from prehistory to modern times. Scope The ''Encycl ...

there exists some non-Kurdish tribes in iran that have the same name, such as the clan of the Amala tribe by the name of Čegīnī in the Qašqāʾī tribal confederacy and the Jabbāra Arabs of Fārs by the name of Awlād-e Čegīnī.

History

During the reign of

Tahmasp I Tahmasp I ( fa, طهماسب, translit=Ṭahmāsb or ; 22 February 1514 – 14 May 1576) was the second shah of Safavid Iran from 1524 to 1576. He was the eldest son of Ismail I and his principal consort, Tajlu Khanum. Ascending the throne after t ...

, the Chegini Kurds settled in

Khorasan Khorasan may refer to: * Greater Khorasan, a historical region which lies mostly in modern-day northern/northwestern Afghanistan, northeastern Iran, southern Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan * Khorasan Province, a pre-2004 province of Ira ...

as they were on their way to

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. In Khorasan, they prospered under the protection of the shah. In 1597,

Sharafkhan Bidlisi Sharaf al-Din Khan b. Shams al-Din b. Sharaf Beg Bedlisi ( Kurdish: شەرەفخانی بەدلیسی, ''Şerefxanê Bedlîsî''; fa, شرف‌الدین خان بن شمس‌الدین بن شرف بیگ بدلیسی; 25 February 1543 – ) wa ...

wrote that the tribe lived by

brigandage Brigandage is the life and practice of highway robbery and plunder. It is practiced by a brigand, a person who usually lives in a gang and lives by pillage and robbery.Oxford English Dictionary second edition, 1989. "Brigand.2" first recorded usa ...

and intercepting the roads. Moreover, unlike other Kurdish tribes, they had no

emir Emir (; ar, أمير ' ), sometimes transliterated amir, amier, or ameer, is a word of Arabic origin that can refer to a male monarch, aristocrat, holder of high-ranking military or political office, or other person possessing actual or cerem ...

mirza Mirza may refer to: * Mirza, Kamrup, town in Assam, India * Mirza (name), historical royal title & noble * ''Mirza'', the genus of giant mouse lemur * "Mirza", song by Nino Ferrer * ''Mirza – The Untold Story'', Punjabi action romance film wri ...

which could lead the tribe.

Early scrutiny

History

See also

References

Further reading