A rare Bakhtiari Sufi manuscript : genealogy of Siyid Muhammad Parhizkar

I have earlier argued that parts of the Bakhtiari landscape are viewed as sacred by the Bakhtiari pastoral nomads. I have also discussed how the Bakhtiari nomads have different ways of knowing about their spiritual environment, nature and their sacred places.2 A sacred site carries with it a whole range of rules and regulations regarding people's behaviour in relation to it, and implies a set of beliefs concerning the non- empirical world, often in relation to the spirits of the ancestors (Carmichael et al. 1994:3); based upon my ethnographic fieldwork among the Bakhtiari, I can confirm that this phenomenon is related to their local saints.