Jaffer Kuli Khan . . Ja’far Quli Khan . . Jafar Gholi Khan . . Jaf’r Quli Khan

Recently I introduced you to Sattara Khanum, and her husband Jaffer Kuli Khan (Sitara and Ja’far Quli Khan in Lorimer’s translated Duraki/Behdarwand poem).

The puzzle in the posting this week is a salutary lesson in careful reading of transliterated names and also, perhaps, in not believing everything that even the most renowned authors write  – as well as a heartening example of how it is possible to find out more about individual women, even if they are often left out of mainstream histories.

Layard describes in his book how, forty years after he left Iran, he tried to find out what had happened to the families he stayed with.  A diplomatic contact wrote to him to tell him that ‘Jaffer Kuli Khan’ was the father of the “the first eelkhanee”, Hossein Gholi Khan (HGK), and that both father and son had been killed.

For a brief moment, I was hugely excited by the possibility that I had been reading a first hand account of the father (and perhaps mother!) of the Great Khan, the Consolidator, the the first Khan to hold all the various Bakhtiari factions in balance.

But on thinking about names and dates, I quickly realised that I (and Layard too) was probably confusing two men with similar names.  HGK’s  father did indeed have a sound-alike name: ‘Jafar Gholi Khan’ – but this man died in 1836, before Layard arrived in Iran.  And HGK’s grandfather was Habibollah Khan – not the “drunkard” (H)asad Khan included in the Duraki/ Behdarwand poem.  Anyway, my Bakhtiari contacts told me that Layard had not stayed with any Ilkhani, Haji Ilkhani or Ilbegi families.

So perhaps Layard’s ‘Jaffer Kuli Khan’ / the poem’s ‘Ja’far Quli Khan’ was the ‘Jaf’r Quli Khan Bakhtiarvand’ that Sherry Sharzad Bakhtiar describes in her very helpful ‘Biography of Bakhtiary leaders’ as killing HGK’s father!  This fits nicely with Lorimer’s notes describing the hero of the poem as the chief of the Behdarwand (or Bakhtiarwand).

Then the opponent in the poem, ‘Qalb ’Ali Khan’ – “chief of the Duraki . . another powerful Haft Lang tribe” – could be HGK’s uncle, ‘Kalbali Khan’, who raised HGK after his father’s death.  This fits nicely too – with Layard’s description of his ‘Jaffer Kuli Khan’ having a rival: ‘Kelb Ali Khan’.  Looking again at Layard’s book, he does say that Jaffer Kuli Khan killed Kelb Ali Khan’s brother.

So Layard’s Jaffer Kuli Khan / the poem’s Ja’far Quli Khan is the killer of the father of HGK – and Sitara / Sattara Khanum, as Qalb ’Ali Khan’s’ daughter, must have been HGK’s first cousin, as well as the wife of the man who killed HGK’s father.

I think, anyway!?  All you Bakhtiari out there – please tell me where I’ve gone wrong, if I have!