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The Baloch in Islamic Civilization, Western Ethnography, and World History

2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 4; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/21520844.2013.831021

2152-0852

Brian Spooner,

South Asian Studies and Conflicts

Abstract Our interest in the Baloch today is different from when we first studied them over a hundred years ago. None of the published work on the Baloch explains how or why they have changed. Each publication describes a situation rather than a process and provides no link to earlier or later situations. This article uses the published work and the writer's ethnographic experience to construct a historical framework that allows us to see the Baloch in a world-historical perspective, suggesting generalizations that are helpful for understanding events in the world today. KEYWORDS: BalochethnographyIslamic civilizationworld history Notes 1“Baloch” is the preferred spelling in Pakistan, but the standard romanization from Persian is “Baluch.” 2Cf. Fredrik Barth, “Ethnic Processes on the Pathan-Baluch Boundary,” in Indo-Iranica: Mélanges présentés à Georg Morgenstierne à l'occasion de son soixante-dixième anniversaire, ed. G. Redard (Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1964), 13–20. 3Brian Spooner, “Baluchistan” (1988), in Encyclopædia Iranica, vol. 3, fasc. 6, ed. Ehsan Yarshater (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982–), 598–647. 4Cf. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983). 5Brian Spooner, “Balochi: Towards a Biography of the Language,” in Language Policy and Language Conflict in Afghanistan and Its Neighbors, ed. Harold F. Schiffman and Brian Spooner (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 319–36. 6Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974). 7Cf. Spooner, “Baluchistan,” 606ff; C. E. Bosworth, “The Kūfichīs or Qufs in Persian History,” Iran 14 (1976): 10. 8See Brian Spooner, “Anthropology” (1985), in Yarshater, Encyclopædia Iranica, vol. 2, fasc. 1–2, 107–16, and the references on Baluch in Brian Spooner, “Ethnography” (1998), in Yarshater, Encyclopædia Iranica, vol. 9, fasc. 1, 28–45. 9Kalat is 90 miles south of Quetta, on the edge of the Iranian plateau. 10Cf. Henry Scholberg, The District Gazetteers of British India: A Bibliography (Zug: Inter Documentation Co., 1970). 11Cf. Georg Morgenstierne, Report on a Linguistic Mission to Northwestern India (Oslo: H. Aschehoug & Co., 1932). 12See references in Spooner, “Baluchistan” and “Ethnography.” 13Selig S. Harrison, In Afghanistan's Shadow: Baluch Nationalism and Soviet Temptations (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1981). 14Joseph Elfenbein, “Balochistan III: Balochi Language and Literature” (1988), in Yarshater, Encyclopædia Iranica, vol. 3, fasc. 6, 633–44. 15Cf. Brian Spooner, “Who Are the Baloch? A Preliminary Investigation into the Dynamics of an Ethnic Identity from Qajar Iran,” in Qajar Iran: Political, Social and Cultural Change, 1800–1925, ed. C. E. Bosworth and C. Hillenbrand (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1984), 66–78. 16The term “Persianate” was introduced by Hodgson (1974) to indicate the cultural and administrative orientation conveyed by New Persian, which is the form of the Persian language that became the koine of the Islamic world east of Baghdad from the ninth century onward. 17Cf. Fredrik Barth, “Principles of Social Organization in Southern Kurdistan,” Universitetets Etnografiske Museum Bulletin [University Ethnographic Museum Bulletin] 7 (Oslo: Universitetets Etnografiske Museum, 1953). 18Cf. Philip C. Salzman, “Multi-Resource Nomadism in Iranian Balochistan,” Journal of Asian and African Studies 7 (1972): 60–68. 19Cf. Beatrice Nicolini, Makran, Oman, and Zanzibar: Three-Terminal Cultural Corridor in the Western Indian Ocean, 1799–1856 (Leiden: Brill, 2004). Additional informationNotes on contributorsBrian Spooner BRIAN SPOONER is a professor of anthropology and Penn Museum Curator for Near Eastern Ethnology at the University of Pennsylvania. His research has focused mainly on ecological topics and issues of language use within the larger study of Persianate civilization. His most recent publication, edited with William L. Hanaway, is Literacy in the Persianate World: Writing and the Social Order (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).