The following is a selection of stories I recorded during fieldwork among the Shahsevan. Habib Sabri, from the Moghan village of Ultan where I stayed for a few weeks in summer 1963, was an old man who, like most of his tribe Pir-Evatlu, had given up pastoral nomadism and settled many years earlier, but had vivid memories of his youth as a nomad warrior, forty to fifty years earlier. 'Emran Imani, elder of the Hajji-Imanlu section of Geyikli tribe, was my host for many months in 1966, then in his late forties: I have written about him (as ‘Akbar’) and his family in my Pasture and Politics, where I noted that he was a good story-teller. When I reestablished contact with his family in 1992, I learned that he had died in 1989 (his grandson Mehdi Mizban has also written an MA thesis (1992) about the family). Hasan Panahi, from another section of Geyikli, was the same age as 'Emran and a close friend. Both 'Emran and Hasan were regular companions of Hatam Bey, the most distinguished of the former Shahsevan chiefs, who was then in his seventies, and died a few years later. I recorded the stories from 'Emran, Hasan and Hatam Bey during the winter of 1966 in Moghan.

'Emran Imani of Geyikli on Nurollah Bey Qoja-Beyli

In the time of Naser ad-Din Shah, the Shah summons Nurollah Bey Qoja-Beyli to Tehran to account for his misdeeds.