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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The present work is the outcome of my efforts over several years. I had to encounter a great number of difficulties and odds during the course of my research work. Therefore, it is with a sense of great personal gratification that I have completed it. But it would have been impossible for me to accomplish it, had there not been constant and sincere help and encouragement from quite a few people who also shared with me my moments of anxiety.
First of all I would like to mention Prof. Dr. Hans-Christoph Schmitt of Erlangen University, who spent much time on this work. With my sincere gratitude I dedicate this work to him.
I have had the opportunity to enjoy the scientific guidance of Prof. Dr. Peter Waldmann of Augsburg University and Prof. Dr. Bert Fragner of Bamberg University. They have been sources of constant help and encouragement.
The help and cooperation of some of my friends have been of crucial importance in completing this work. I especially would like to mention Mr. Anthony Hornby of Augsburg University who took the trouble of going through all the work and patiently improving the language.
I have been helped in various ways by many other friends to all of whom I am very much indebted. Among them I would only like to mention Markus Ohlenroth, Regina Zitzelberger and Christine Baier.
My final thanks are also due to Isabel Haensch, Zohreh and Farivar Hamzeh’ee, Morteza Najafi and Mohsen Bahrami.
1. Concept and Methodology
1.1. Structure of the Research
1.1.1. Delimiting the Questions
“Yaresan" and "Ahl-e haqq" are the names of an important community concentrated in South Kurdistan. Inspite of its importance, very little is known about this community. For this reason the existing information, although inadequate, has been extensively used by social scientists, including sociologists. But a sociological case study of this community does not exist. Therefore there will be many questions regarding this community which are yet to be answered.
In the present investigation, which is the first general study of this community, attempts are made to draw an overall picture of the community and present some outlines for future research.
The study will focus on three basic questions regarding the community:
a) The most important is to find out who the people are.
b)The second question investigates the contexts in which this community was born. This question concerns the past existence and the factors which contributed to its emergence.
c)The third question will be an extention of the above two and will look at the factors which have contributed to the survival of the community.
1.1.2. The character of the community
This report consists of nine chapters. The first is devoted to methodological explanations. The remaining eight are divided into three groups, each of which aims at answering one of the questions raised above. Chapters two to seven are devoted to the introduction of the Yaresan, mainly to answer the first question: Chapter two concentrates on the Yaresan as a community, and is divided into two parts. The first part is a description of the socio-economic background, class and social status. Here it is indicated that the majority of the community have always belonged to the lower strata of the Iranian society. In the second part, the historical records regarding the community and the region they live in from the time of their emergence, have been collected and chronologically arranged. In the arrangement of this historical and traditional information the style in which the traditional history of the Yaresan is related has been adopted. Among other things, this short …
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